The Difference Between “Racism” and Racial Bias

If you’ve ever been to a diversity training or had a difficult conversation about race with someone, chances are you’ve heard one of people’s most common protestations: 

“I’m not racist.”

The emphasis is almost always on the word “racist.” Because in our society, as in many others, racism has become one of the ultimate markers of social disgrace. To be called a racist is to be attacked – personally, morally, and even spiritually. Racism, we are taught to believe, is at odds with the teachings of morality and religion, with common sense, and with the ideal of a harmonious, functioning society.

Because, to most contemporary minds, nobody is intrinsically “better” than anyone else.

The most fundamental definition of racism implies that you believe the opposite. Racism is the belief, held chiefly by racists, that members of one race are somehow naturally or culturally superior to those of another race.

Racism is a complex idea, with many definitions and interpretations. This definition of ideological racism is broader and less contextual than, say, the definition of systemic racism, which refers to the societal disadvantages and inequalities ingrained in a historically racist society over time. Or take ethnic racism, which can be used to describe prejudicial beliefs between members of the same “race” but different ethnicities. Structural racism, like systemic racism, refers to racist policies that disadvantage members of a certain race within an organization, government, or other large institution.

By the broadest, most general definition, however, only a minority of the world’s population would qualify as racist. It is increasingly rare in most developed societies to encounter people who seriously believe, for example, that Black people are naturally inferior to white people. In popular American culture, we could look to some of the most blatant examples, like the KKK or the Proud Boys, to appreciate how ugly and backwards ideological racism appears in modern society. (That’s not to say there aren’t people who continue to uphold racist beliefs less vocally and explicitly than an organization like the KKK – racism can survive in many forms, explicit or not.)

I’ve written about race and its “scientific” history in the past, but it’s worth recalling here. Because part of the reason racism has declined as an acceptable ideology is because we have thoroughly debunked the underlying conception of race that originally justified it – i.e. the idea that some races are predisposed to certain characteristics, physical or psychological, that we value more than others.

When British and American scientists studied the skulls of Black and Indigenous peoples to prove their racial inferiority in the 19th century, they were helping to provide white people with the conceptual tools to justify racist ideologies, practices, and institutions. Chattel slavery is the most famous in our nation’s history, probably followed by Jim Crow laws. But even the Abolitionists thought along racist lines: one of their views was that Black people were intellectually and spiritually inferior to white people, and thus deserved the latter’s charity and sympathy rather than enslavement. It’s perhaps a less violent belief than slave-traders’, but it’s still deeply racist.

“Race” as a socially constructed concept is very recent in the history of human civilization (it dates back to a 15th-century Portuguese observer of West African slave markets in a form that we would recognize). But that’s not to say that humanity hasn’t used other markers of difference to wage political, cultural, and sectarian war against each other.

In the Middle Ages, the Crusades were fueled by the dehumanization of Muslims at the hands of Western European leaders. “Racist” ideology was perpetrated along lines of religion rather than skin color. This would later lead Ferdinand and Isabella to expel all Muslims (and Jews) from a religiously and ethnically pluralistic Spain – including ethnically Spanish Muslims and Jews. It’s not for nothing that these same monarchs would later preside over Christopher Columbus’ journey to the “New” World to drive even more people from their homelands in the name of their holy Christian empire.

Before Christianity, the Greeks had coined the term barbaros – which is where we get the English word “barbarian” – to describe foreigners who didn’t sound like them. (To the Greek ear, foreigners appeared to be mumbling something that sounded like bar-bar). Instead of religion, language was seen as a marker of culture, sophistication, and civilization. So for the Greeks, anyone who didn’t speak their language was necessarily othered, and therefore deemed unworthy of cultural esteem, military alliance, diplomacy, and most importantly, freedom from enslavement.

“Racism” as we know it today is a relatively modern construction. But what we might call “prejudice” or “bias” is very ancient. We still feel those biases just as keenly as our ancestors did. While fewer and fewer of us believe in the intrinsic superiority or inferiority of a given race, all of us are prone to thinking and behaving in certain ways based on racial bias.

Racial bias refers to the primarily unconscious thoughts, preconceptions, or experiences that cause people to think and act in prejudiced ways. I can feel it when a white woman looks back at me on the street and clutches her purse a little closer to her waist. I can feel it when a white man does the same thing and crosses the street entirely. The racial bias that Black men are dangerous and prone to crime is deeply ingrained in our society’s collective unconscious. And these internalized beliefs cause otherwise rational people to behave in completely irrational ways.

The difference between racism and racial bias is that racism is based on a system of beliefs that always privileges one group of people above another, while racial bias refers to a constellation of associations and stereotypes that unconsciously impact our behavior. There is, of course, gray area between the two. Racists have particularly developed racial biases, which they express openly. But that doesn’t mean you have to be a member of the KKK to evince racist behavior, beliefs or language. In fact, in some cases, racial bias can be just as malicious and dangerous as racist ideology.

Racial bias is also not limited to white people. It impacts everyone. Even within the Black community, it’s not uncommon to see racial bias impacting how Black people of different ethnicities think about one another.

By normalizing “racial bias” as a phenomenon experienced by pretty much all human beings, we can begin to address it and work around it. Everyone has a vested interest in understanding how racial bias works, because it affects so many people and its consequences can be just as dangerous to society as ideological racism.

To do this, we need to appreciate the fundamental role of “bias” in human nature. There are many types of cognitive biases that govern human behavior and psychology in astoundingly predictable ways.

“Selective hearing,” for example, refers to the brain’s ability to tune out extraneous sound and hear information that is uniquely interesting or important to an individual. That’s why you can easily hear your own name being called out at a loud party or on a city street. This is an example of an unconscious neurological bias, which operates – like racial bias – without you even knowing.

Confirmation bias refers to the likelihood that people will only search out or pay attention to information that confirms their existing beliefs. They are also less likely to retain information that challenges those beliefs. This is obviously a critical element of racial bias: we maintain our biases about members of other races in part by ignoring the ample evidence that runs to the contrary.

Attribution bias refers to the tendency to overemphasize an individual’s personality, instead of their situation, when explaining that individual’s behavior. It can also cause people to attribute the characteristics of an individual member of a group to the whole group. This is also an active mechanism in maintaining racial and class biases – humans like to believe that people’s personal judgements and characteristics are better explanations for their actions than the environments and circumstances they find themselves in.

There are dozens more of these cognitive biases, which psychologists, sociologists, and behavioral economists have successfully used to understand why people make irrational judgements or decisions. And I’ve belabored the point a bit to illustrate just how natural and well-studied this aspect of human decision-making is. We are intensely irrational creatures, far more prone to making inferences and judgements based on preconceived notions or past experiences than objective data.

That’s one of the reasons it can be so hard to challenge racial bias with facts and figures. When you are forced to deal with someone’s racial bias and its impact on their behavior, it can be very tricky to rely on logical, factual reasoning. People in those situations are much more likely to respond to personal stories and experiences that create a shared connection rather than a string of statistics.

This is partly what makes racial bias so insidious. Whereas racism in its purest form is fairly easy to identify, racial bias shows up in more covert ways. At work, someone’s racial bias may incline them to think of a potential candidate for a job as intrinsically less qualified or educated. This has been demonstrated in independent studies repeatedly: for example, candidates who use traditionally “Black” names on their résumés are less likely to get interviews. (By the way, the study in that link confirms a similar one from 20 years ago…these biases do not go away quickly, despite the progress we make as a society.)

Racial bias can also be lethal, as Americans have consistently seen in cases of police brutality against Black people. Tamir Rice was 12 years old when police shot him because he “looked older” and appeared to be carrying a “real gun”. There is a demonstrable racial bias that Black children, and Black boys in particular, are perceived to be older and more culpable than their counterparts. This is a stereotype that has its origins in the Jim Crow criminalization of Black people, and we can draw a straight line from that period up to the 1990s when Black men were described by the press as “superpredators”.

That’s not to say that the officer who shot Rice wasn’t also racist – it’s hard to believe that someone who uses lethal force against a child in a playground is operating solely through unconscious biases. But again: just because racial bias operates largely on an unconscious level doesn’t mean it can be any less serious or damaging to our lives than explicit expressions of ideological racism.

For most of us, though, racial bias guides behavior and thought more invisibly than outright racism. It requires critical thinking, alertness, and a good deal of empathy to identify it and call it out successfully. But it’s important that we do, because those conversations can improve people’s livelihoods, not to mention their actual ability to stay alive.

When you’re confronted with racial bias, it’s best to call it out privately and in a direct, one-on-one environment. Because of the societal shame we impart to “racism” and “racists,” people can be very sensitive to this kind of conversation.

It’s therefore important to come at these discussions from a place of curiosity and openness, rather than judgment. It’s easy to think of someone as stupid or backward or “cancellable” when they say or do something influenced by racial bias. It’s a lot harder to try to unpick those thoughts and determine their origins, which almost certainly are learned or inherited from the environment a person grows up in.

Once you understand the origin of racially biased thinking, you can offer your own stories or experiences with racial bias – and we all have them, whether we are the objects or perpetrators of that bias (I’d venture most people have at least a bit of both). That empathy is powerful when you’re trying to change someone’s mind, because it makes it OK for them to feel mistaken or to reassess something they previously thought in a new light.

Anger and impatience are some of the most common reactions to these discussions – on both sides – and it’s because this is hard work. That’s why in the Black community we often talk about the importance of white people doing this work and not relying on people of color to call out racial bias when they see it. It takes emotional energy to talk about something so sensitive and important.

Racial bias, unlike racism, is ubiquitous in 21st century America. On an individual and collective level, it is almost impossible to think without it. And for all the progress we’ve made as a nation, we have to reckon with our history – as a society and as a species – of judging people and groups based on unconscious biases.

But if we learn to speak up and speak out about them, and if we’re able to normalize the experience of racial bias while remaining wary of the dangers it poses, then we can do the work that’s necessary to disarm and destabilize these mental shortcuts.

It can help save lives, and it will certainly make the world a more civilized, sensible place.

Porter Braswell