In Speech on Race, FBI Director James Comey Says
We All Are Biased
“Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.”
Look around and you will find
No one’s really color blind.
Maybe it’s a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgments
Based on race.
FBI Director James Comey said experienced police officers “often can’t help
but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.” —Associated Press
The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that Americans all carry bias, and called for more open discussion of the sometimes strained relationship between police and minorities.
In a speech to students at Georgetown University, FBI director James Comey quoted a Broadway song called “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,’’ and said more work needed to be done to help police officers and people in minority communities see each other fairly.
Citing the protests surrounding the deaths at the hands of police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner in New York, the head of the FBI said it was time to speak hard truths on matters of race and policing.
Mr. Comey’s boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, came under withering criticism in 2009 when he gave a speech on race with some similar themes. Mr. Holder was sharply criticized for saying then that America was a “nation of cowards’’ when it comes to talking honestly about race.
The FBI director said, “we all, white and black, carry various biases around with us,’’ and added that some officers become jaded by their dealings with criminals.
“Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts,’’ he said. “After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.’’
He said people often make wrong and unfair assumptions about the police, as well.
Citizens “need to really see the men and women of law enforcement… If they take the time to do that, what they will see are officers who are human, who are overwhelmingly doing the right thing for the right reasons, and who are too often operating in communities, and facing challenges, most of us choose to drive around,’’ he said.
After the speech, in response to a question from an audience member, Mr. Comey said his proudest moment so far in his year and a half on the job was sending agents to Ferguson to question witnesses in the Brown case. Mr. Comey said it meant a great deal to him that residents in the area implicitly trusted his agents and talked to them about what they saw or knew.
He told another questioner it was “ridiculous’’ that there is no accurate national data on the number of times people are shot by police in the U.S. In December, a Wall Street Journal analysis detailed many gaps in local data reporting that leads to that problem.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/...-director-james-comey-says-we-all-are-biased/
