I had high expectations going into the book. I felt the book did not do a good job going into the nuances of the prejudice that blacks face in today's US. It is quite well-knows that there is still tons of discrimination and I would have expected the book to dive deeper into the why and how to fix it.

Not that engaging for me.

4 stars I slowly listened to this book on and off for 3 months. I only picked it up when I was doing dishes or chores around the house and occasionally would forget about it because of how busy I got at the hospital during this time. However, I managed to finally finish it earlier this month. I had some issues connecting the themes of the book, but I think that was largely because I kept putting the book down for periods of time. I still recommend this read as its so relevant to everything happening today in the US. It was interesting learning about implicit bias from someone who studies it for a living. It provided a wider scope of knowledge. While the book still stressed the importance of social justice and equity, as well as discussing the facets of racism seen today, it also provided some psychological and neurological explanations for the bias that affects us day-by-day. This book tackles everything from bias and racism in the education system, health care, protests, and policing. The last of which was really the stand-out segments of the book. The way bias influences police officers, police shootings, who they target, who is arrested, who is jailed was really the highlight of the book. One thing I had seen recently on Twitter was a discussion of how the term "implicit bias" is just an erasure of racism and that people are too scared to call it what it is, which is racism. However, I thought the author actually countered that and argued that implicit bias really may not be racist because how we act is based on how our brains were wired to think based on our environment and exposures. She provided examples of black cops or foreign cops who learn the bias that is so ingrained into the US justice and policing system. It really just highlighted the systemic issues that face this country. One thing the author did was bring up countless examples of black men who have died at the hands of police within the last 10 years. And while I recognized many of them, her book made me also realize that there are so many... too many too count, that there are so many more that aren't as high-profile as the ones in recent memory that I either never heard of or perhaps even forgot about. The middle part of this book was almost discouraging in a way because it really just showed how nothing has changed in the last couple of decades in the US. Despite that, the book ended by giving me some hope for the millennial generation. She discusses how its size rivals boomers and how it's shifting what we tolerate today. In the last part, she discusses a police officer who wanted to help the black community but kept getting push back because he's a cop. I felt like I could relate in that it can be very similar in health care. All the historically awful things this country has done to black and indigenous people have led to an ingrained mistrust in the system, in particular, the police and medical system. So I can understand the frustration in that when you feel like you're really trying to help but the patient/person just does not want that help from you, and it's not necessarily because of YOU but rather because of that built up mistrust from centuries and centuries of abuse. I also liked how the author described her work with the Oakland police department, and it's amazing to see that there has been actionable change within the Oakland PD... I hope that she will be able to work with other communities and expand upon her current work. There's so much distrust of cops (and rightfully so). The ending of her book made me more interested in community-based policing that Minneapolis has started since the shooting of George Floyd. I wonder what the author's thought is on that, and I would hope she could be consulted on that project. I woulder if she thinks an entire police department be dismantled or if she thinks there are ways to improve the system with what we've got? I do truly because some people are in the police force for the right reasons but there are so many toxic and racist individuals that seep into and poison the department as a whole, especially when they end up as police chiefs or people in positions of power. A few other notable sections that were eye-opening: - The author tackling her own biases and working with inmates at a federal facility facing life in prison. - How schools are becoming more and more segregated again thanks to charter schools and housing/district borders. - The Charlottesville Alt-Right Rally. It hit so close to home since it was so recent and I'm relatively close to the area. Weaker sections of the book: - The chapter near the end of health care was a bit confusing to me. She discusses both the need to combat implicit racism in health care but also how implicit bias training in the work place can have the opposite effect. She also uses the example of a doctor who tolerates being called racist names by elderly or senile patients, yet didn't discuss the mental toll that that takes on BIPOC health care providers. It sucks that the way to break stereotypes about things like work ethic and laziness seem to need to be combatted by just being a role model for essentially your entire race. Maybe I misunderstood that section, but the black physician that she spoke to seemed to endorse doing that. - I also just had a hard time jumping from topic to topic and trying to figure out how it all eventually tied together. It wasn't quite a memoir but she also brought in a lot of personal and family experience that I sometimes couldn't piece together with her bigger picture. ------ Initial thoughts: 4 stars I listened to the audiobook on and off for the past 3 months. I wish that I had done it a bit faster because I had problems connecting threads and understanding the flow of the themes throughout the book. That was by no fault of the book, I just got really busy and the fact I only had the audiobook meant I only really listened while I was doing dishes or chores around the house. Full review to come but I thought this book was really relevant to everything this year. The fact that I brought up Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and others from years ago also just really showed how almost nothing has changed since then.

Important read Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt is such an important book, whether you are a police officer or just a common citizen. We all deal with innate biases, those we have picked up through personal interaction or through more implicit messages which we gain simply by watching television or movies. This book will help us to understand our biases so that we can start doing the work of deconstructing those biases and become better citizens to those around us.

It's just too apologist. I understand the argument to meet people where they're at, especially in a conversation on bias, but it comes off as too "both sides" for me. I liked the coverage of the white supremacy riot in Charlottesville, it's the best I've seen from a personhood and reckoning perspective, but unfortunately it wasn't tied back to the theme of the book - implicit bias.