The Criminal, the Ape, and the Static Being: Three Views of Blacks in the Modern Era

Jennifer Eberhardt will discuss three long-held views of blacks in the United States that have continued to have influence in the modern era: blacks as criminals, blacks as apes, and blacks as static beings. She will discuss studies demonstrating the power that these views have to guide what we see and attend to in the world, producing effects that contribute to egregious racial inequalities.

Jennifer L. Eberhardt is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. She conducts research on stereotyping and discrimination, with a focus on how stereotypic associations of Black Americans with criminality can influence visual perception, attention, and memory. Eberhardt developed and directed the Policing Racial Bias Project, a national project designed to bring together social psychologists and law enforcement officials to examine race in the policing context. In her most recent work she argues that Black Americans are not only criminalized, but also dehumanized in contemporary society. She is exploring the implications of this dehumanization across a variety of domains, including the domain of education. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

This talk is part of SCOPE's brown bag seminar series, which brings notable experts to the Stanford
community to address issues of educational opportunity, access, equity,
and diversity in the United States and internationally.