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There Is Such a Thing as a Stupid Question

March 16, 2011, 2:00 pm

By Allison M. Vaillancourt

My first post, a response to Julianna Baggott’s “Answering the Illegal Question ,” prompted some debate about whether certain questions are illegal or just ill advised. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the only interview questions that are expressly prohibited relate to a candidate’s disability, though certain states have other unique restrictions. And just because a question is not absolutely illegal, doesn’t mean it is safe to ask.

Questions related to such things as age, race, nationality, and other characteristics protected by state and federal law may not be illegal themselves, but the information gleaned from them can be used to discriminate illegally. More importantly, candidates may perceive that the information you obtained through such questions led to a discriminatory action. Should they file a charge of discrimination against you, you will have to explain why you asked the offending question and prove that it had no bearing on your final decision. Why cause yourself such heartache?

Interviewers who ask “taboo” questions often have (at least in their own minds) legitimate reasons for asking. Here are some unfortunate questions and why the asker thought they might be appropriate:

Bad Question: You’re not Jewish, are you?
Reason for Asking: We teach on Saturdays here.
Better Question: Would you be available to teach classes Monday-Saturday?

Bad Question: Do you have a reliable babysitter?
Reason for Asking: She would be the only person in the office in the morning, so we can’t have her being late.
Better Question: You would be the one to open and staff the office each morning. Could we count on you to arrive each day at 8:00?

Bad Question: Were you born in Mexico?
Reason for Asking: We need someone who knows more than “book Spanish.”
Better Question: Are you fluent in Spanish?

Bad Question: Are you completely Asian or just part Asian?
Reason for Asking: Our Asian Affairs Advisory Board members might have preferences about this.
Better Question: Good grief; there is no better question.

In general, it is wise to avoid questions related to age, arrests (convictions are a different matter), citizenship, disability, health, marital status, nationality, race, religion, and sexual orientation. This list is longer than this, but you get the idea.

Not sure what’s safe and what’s not? Discuss your proposed questions with others in advance of the interview. The power of group intelligence might just save you some unintended trouble.

This entry was posted in Administrative Hiring, Faculty Hiring, Interviewing. Bookmark the permalink.

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  • wvsulibrary

    Ah, but I hope it was actually whisky.

  • 22266017

    Maybe it’s just my previous experience in Career Services coming through, but this all seems like it should be common sense. I don’t want to believe that educators educators would actually ask such questions or have that much trouble formulating a better question.

  • sanjoaquin

    I am sorry for you, then, because you would be utterly horrified.

  • 22266017

    I’m not denying it. I’m just lamenting it… especially since students may learn these same habits from such educators.

  • stuckatmoou

    There is such a thing as a stupid reason for a stupid question, however. I was on an academic search where a senior colleague considered that a candidate who was not married with children would be weaker than one who was. He seems to think that adults aren’t adults unless they are married parents. So, I later found out that he asked all the candidates about their personal lives on their campus visits . .

  • utchron9

    Wow. Now I’m really wondering why us graduate students were asked by the faculty hiring committe to “Find out fun things about the candidates, e.g., do they have kids, are they married, do they have special needs, family in the area, what church do they go to, etc.”

    Although, come to think about it, now I’m not so surprised how time-after-time women and minorities were never offered a job.

  • sunshinesmama

    So…on the flipside, when IS the appropriate time to tell an employer you have a(n invisible) disability? My daughter has Asperger’s. She could be *very* successful at some jobs, but there are a few adaptations she needs (straight speaking – no hints or assumptions, clear directions, or write them down, etc). And how do you tell an employer you need to bring your service dog to work?

  • vaillancourt_az

    In response to sunshinemama, employers aren’t permitted to ask candidates about disabilities prior to offering employment, so I would strongly urge your daughter not to reveal her disabilities until after she has a position in hand. There are a number of people who benefit from straight talk and clear instructions, so I don’t know that she even needs to reveal that she has Asperger’s. I have a colleague who takes copious notes in meetings and asks for me to put requests in writing because “he remembers better that way.” We all want him to be successful, so we just go with it and don’t get into the potential reasons for his requests.

    As a for a service dog, employers really aren’t in a position to decline legitimate needs like this. Again, I wouldn’t mention this until AFTER a job has been offered and perhaps even started. If the service dog is needed during the interview process, it is wise to notifify the search committee, especially if a member will be picking up the candidate and the dog from the airport.

  • http://www.latinforpayattention.tumblr.com NotaBene

     Nice post, Laura.  I had the same challenges as a first-year admissions counselor.  And, though I am now 32, have a PhD and a tenure-track job, I am still often mistaken for a student–at least its for a college student this time!  People tell me I’ll be pleased if that is still happening when I’m 40 . . . 

  • Ferdinand

     The problem is not only that students and parents use the rankings for decision-making; the problem is that colleges keep using the rankings as marketing tools, validating something that everybody knows is flawed. This is a compilation of some articles on this subject: http://mylearningnetwork.com/?p=206

  • disembedded

    This survey only had a response rate of 27.4 percent of surveys sent out, and the response rate was less than half that to surveys sent to colleges. Would be interesting to know the list of colleges that did respond.

  • Brian Abel Ragen

    Many good points here. I would add three observations of my own:

    First, the private office is the worst possible place to meet students individually. The risk of accusations of impropriety is much higher when there is no one else present. A coffee shop or a common area is much safer. (I admit that I am putting little stock is concerns about student privacy: the details of students’ private lives are not my business and we can whisper when we talk about grades.)

    Second, faculty nap rooms _are_ needed, especially in situations where the day may begin with a 9:00 AM class and end with a 7:00 PM seminar. I also want a place to change my shirt or socks now and then. Let me have a coat hook, a reading light, and a Barcalounger.

    Third, faculty common rooms are very important. There needs to be some place where we actually see our colleagues in the flesh between meetings, and other venues won’t do: The hall is too noisy. The bathroom cuts the department in two. The office makes life hard for the secretaries. Let’s have a room where faculty can store a few books, complain about students, and share a cup of coffee. And let the university spring for the coffee: since they’re cutting my pension, it’s the least they can do.

  • ardub44

    Though obviously well-intentioned, this entry demonstrates an unwitting capitulation to the aggressive faculty disempowerment pursued by a growing number of institutions. Perhaps it’s merely an unintended co-optation, which is hard for all of us to avoid. My point is that space, meaning presence, remains extremely important not merely to faculty but to their students, which is more important, after all. Yes, collaboration is growing in both importance and acceptance, thankfully, but the sense of a faculty member as just that, a member, is diminished gravely by his or her lack of value to the institution, as demonstrated by the institution’s investment in that person. Students clearly understand hierarchy, and it affects their comprehension of the faculty member, her course, and ultimately the institution itself. That last may be the most significant and overlooked aspect; administrations aren’t notable for their long view. In their personal discussions, students evaluate faculty by their perceived permanence or value, as demonstrated by whether they have an office or are working out of their zip drive or briefcase, not to mention whether their sole presence exists in the cloud. I’ve had this evaluation shared by students both unintentionally and intentionally, as in offhand comments about other faculty. Digital access notwithstanding, students still seem to place some value on the notion that there’s a place where the they can go to find and address us in real time, even if only to leave a hardcopy note. If you, as faculty, aren’t present in some fairly permanent, visible sense, the administration reasons that your impact, your concerns, your voice in any sense, is as far off campus and outside the margins of the institution as that crowded study, coffee shop, or whatever found space defines your presence. And, irrespective of the presence, undeniable benefit, and impact of the digital world, we still are defined by our physical presence. Or absence.

  • landrumkelly

    “I mean that the idea of an individualized cloistered space is integral
    to what is considered to be academic knowledge production.”

    You bet!  There is nothing like a quiet study for serious thought–and there is still nothing like serious thought if one is going to be really good in the classroom.  If you cannot see that, then no one will ever be able to show it to you.

    Landrum Kelly, Jr.
    http://www.philosophicalquestions.org

  • azadpoor

    I disagree with the author about the place of actual office. I almost always prefer to work in my office. I also meet my students there and hold small meetings with other colleagues. During the day, I often have multiple interactions with my graduate students. It is therefore impossible to work in any other place than in my office. I guess the author’s suggestion only applies to professors in humanities and alike and definitely not to science professors.

  • hypatia

    I think this is a bit classist.  It was a long long time before I was able to have a proper study space at home, and an “allowance” would not have helped.  The house I lived in for the first eighteen years of my academic career was small; there were no extra rooms; and I wasn’t going to try to make part of my bedroom or my children’s bedrooms into a study!  For all academic purposes I had to have my office on campus, and I did almost all my work there, including the writing of several books.  In addition, my office was the only place where I could have reasonable peace and quiet for working intensively.

    I’m also old-fashioned enough to own, use, and enjoy a large collection of books, which are essential to my work.  My house, even the bigger one that I now live in, could not possibly house them all.  Once again, I need my office for that purpose.

    For those reasons, I “clung” to my office in the past, and I will continue to “cling” to it.  Some people in the humanities still do individual work.  Collaborative research is fine; it just isn’t what all of us do.  I continue to write books by myself, without collaboration; publishers continue to publish them.  I feel no shame in valuing and needing my office; I refuse to consider myself as “belonging to another age” or as selfish for doing so.

  • hank_devereaux_jr

    Experimentation and innovation are wonderful — if they are mutually agreed up by faculty and administrators.

       But, Fallacy of Composition applies to this dialogue.  What is preferable for a sub-component of faculty is not preferable for all.  Some who “cling” to their offices have very good reasons for doing so. 

    The diversity of discipline, personality, and responsibility for teaching v. research v. service vary enormously across and within institutions  — and so do faculty needs for private offices.

    Some, at institutions more focused on teaching, need more than an occasional seminar room to meet privately with students. Some faculty  need private office space to store the files of the dozens of students they have to advise. Faculty at teaching oriented colleges can’t get by with office hours only by appointment, but are expected to be available at set times — just in case a student comes by.   It helps to have a place to get work done in between student visits.  Private office space filled with hundreds of books in the disciplines one teaches and researches are handy for meetings with the numerous undergraduates supervised in independent studies. 

    For the professors in a research university – some disciplines and fields of research within disciplines don’t involve collaborative research with one’s colleagues down the hall — but collaborative research with colleagues across the country or the globe.  A private office with your own computer, files, printer and telephone for private conversations is productivity enhancing.

    Finally, in my academic career  I have noted numerous faculty parents who keep children in their offices during spring and summer breaks, snow days, when a child is sick, on holidays when public school is closed but the university is open, etc. Work-family balance  *is* an on-going  issue in  the professoriate.  Providing individual office space has costs — but let’s not phase them out until we  have weighed the benefits.  How many more faculty (male and female) would be staying home, canceling or rescheduling classes and meetings — if they had no private office where they could bring  their children  when needed?

    I vote for offices.

  • dnewton137

    The eighteenth century “bureaucracy” that drove the creation of the current academic ideal was in fact a group of prominent faculty who convinced the Prussian government, represented by Wilhelm von Humboldt (brother of Alexander), that it should found the world’s first research university.  It did so, in Berlin in 1810.

    Incidentally, what’s “Protestant” got to do with that bit of history?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=504848480 Michael Byron Nelson

    I need my office!  Don’t take it away!
    While I could be satisfied with a different type of office arrangement, perhaps an office space like I’ve seen at Google or Pixar (where would the money come from to build such spaces?), I do fully rely on my office on campus for work. I am one of those who really finds it difficult to work at home. And I know a large number of others who feel the same way.

  • dnewton137

    OOPS!  1810 was in the nineteenth century, as stated by Thrift.

  • wilkenslibrary

    As a contingent faculty member, I am one of the lucky few to have an office, albeit shared, where I have bookshelves and file drawer space, access to a computer and a telephone, and a place to go before and after class to prep or grade papers or meet with students or colleagues.  For those of us who teach regularly and long-term, it is wonderful to be able to leave books and papers there between semesters.  Some semesters, I have shared with as few as four others; one semester, we were nineteen, but there has always been lots of shelf space and sufficient file drawer space around the four desks and three computers for us to be comfortable.  Our fabulous administrative assistant and our department chair make sure to distribute contingent faculty among several available offices based at least in part on our schedules, so that we don’t tread on our colleague’s toes too much.  Some of us use the office more than others, but I’m pretty sure that we all value it and feel grateful that our department provides us that space.

    Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College.

  • kathleenchgriffin

    Of course, you are preaching to the tenured, and ignoring 50% of college instructors.

    As a gypsy scholar teaching part-time at more than one institution, I needn’t worry about office space: About 60 of us share a small classroom, and at that we have the best adjunct office in the building!  Try meeting students when there ate 7 instructors in a room with 3 desks, a table, and 3 PCs.  Then try having no space at all, as in 2 colleges, but a small open mailbox.  And as I live in a 2.5 room apartment, not a house with the luxury of a study, imagine the living room which is currently filled with student files, papers, 7 bookcases, and a computer desk.  I don’t earn enough to itemize and claim my living room as my home office.

  • duppy_conqueror

    Interesting. As a career adjunct, my office is whatever horizontal surface is at hand, often just my lap if all the tables are already taken. More than a few times, it’s been the driver’s seat and steering wheel of my freeway flyer-mobile, but not (yet) while driving!  :)

  • http://edsslipper.net/ Pierre

    The move towards “working from home” is one that blurs the boundaries between the academic’s working life and their private life. It makes sense in a world where working hours make little sense and creative working is expected to continue and impinge on private life. I argue this lack of clear separation can be detrimental to the work of many (through, for instance, more distractions – although the office is not free from distractions).
    However, in practical terms, not having an office on campus makes it harder for students to contact their lecturer. If universities are concerned with the advancement of knowledge, they should be concerned with the tuition and support of students, and for a visible presence (outside of lectures) of academics. Shared spaces are of course perfectly acceptable as long as long discussions with students are not expected in those spaces – the mere presence  of an extra person in the room increases fear of judgement on the student’s part, should they ask a stupid question; the discussion distracts the other person from their own work.
    The quote “providing offices which are smaller because they no longer assume student interaction except on a very small scale” is yet another indication that universities are no longer concerned with teaching or supporting (undergraduate) students in their overall training. A lecturer should be able to welcome a group of students who don’t understand specific parts of the course into their office – or in a designated postgraduate’s office. These offices should hold relevant course material (which the lecturer/postgrad would probably own as a part of their research). More importantly, they should be easily accessible to students and merged with the undergraduate student’s life, rather than all grouped in the same area.
    If such offices were actually used, then maybe academia and the world of research would seem less obscure to undergraduate students who would then move on to carry out some research themselves.

  • crankycat

    Are you kidding me? The author may not mind being part of that beehive, but it’s driving me absolutely bonkers. I work in a building built just three years ago, in which the faculty offices have modular walls. It is freakin’ NIGHTMARE. There is no quiet, no uninterrupted work time, no privacy. It is universally HATED. When faculty wish to have private phone conversations, they take their cell phones and go into a less populated hallway. When they want to actually work – they leave the office and go home or to a conference room. The lack of a quiet place to work is incredibly disruptive. 

  • davi2665

    It is noted above that New Zealand scientists are “having relatively good success getting grants from U.S. science agencies.”  With the restricted NIH, NSF, and other research budgets, and some institutes funding only a small percent of excellent grants, why do these U.S. science agencies hand out grants to laboratories in other countries?  Since U.S. taxpayers are funding this science, the dollars should support research in the U.S., not in foreign laboratories.  If there is a great desire in congress to fund NZ science and laboratories, it should be done with a separate appropriation, and should not occur by giving out U.S. science agency funds, with the consequence that some U.S. scientists will end up not being supported, and most likely losing their faculty positions, as a consequence. 

  • not4nothin

    Not bad.  Better than most.  Certainly could have been worse.  No f-bomb, no n-word, no reference to 9/11 or the War on Terror.   Intelligent, grammatical, modest and introspective.  Thank you, Mr. Jones.

  • beedhamm

    I have to disagree with the first two comments. His lack of preparation mocks the importance of the event. The “one big thought” idea has potential but isn’t developed or explained in a manner befitting the occasion. It’s true that there was no “F-bomb” etc. but is that really the standard by which we’re now evaluating public discourse? Grammatical? “Youz guys”? Not so much. Finally, I think a modest approach would have involved treating the event more seriously. His approach was apparently, “I’m a star. I’ll just show up and they’ll be impressed.” 

  • raza_khan

    Seriously?
    The first few minutes were horrendous and simply embarrassing.

    This was probably one of the worst college graduation commencement speeches I have ever heard.  I would not want to invite him even for a high school graduation speaker!

    Raza
    __________________________
    Raza Khan, Ph.D.
    Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com

  • chicoescuela

    In reply to Antsy Kuhnwisse: Interesting, but I didn’t find anything “hostile” in spike33′s comments. Actually, just the opposite.

  • katisumas

    There is no point in arguing against the white supremacist ideology spewed by realangel (an ironic moniker if ever say one!)

    But do you actually agree that you can tell the intelligence of a person by the amount of melaning in his/her  skin?

    Would you actually advise a black man to look at a cop in the eye when stopped for DWB (driving while black)?  Don’t you know what happens to black people when they lood at a white cop in the eyes?

    Up to the early seventies, black men and women AND CHILDREN were lynched for the crime of looking at  any white person in the eye.  You really think that a black men or women looking straight in a cop’s eye will not risk being pepper sprayed or beaten and/or hauled off to the police station?

    As for the insane belief that someone speaking a different dialect of English than your own shows a lack of intelligence, why don’t you read a Linguistics 101 textbook?  Good grief!  How ignorant can you be. 

    Of course that would be useless.  Racists listening to Obama actually “heard” black  English. 

    The gist of this white supremacist argument is that intelligence is measured by the amount of melanin you  have in  your skin…   Does that seem intelligent to you?

  • traneman

    Well, I feel compelled to jump in here. Each of you have very valid points in your comments. I am an African American male and I have been racially profiled all of my life, in all of the instances mentioned below–and more. I was chased and shot at by a police officer when I was 10 years old for throwing a snowball that accidentally hit his personal car. I have been followed around in stores, stopped and frisked on the street, taken in for questioning about crimes I knew nothing about, and pulled over on the road more times than I can remember. I was used as a human shield by a cop while he had the barrel of his pistol pressed against my neck, because he felt threatened by some of my teenage friends. And the list goes on, many times with weapons pointed at me. And no, I was never charged with any crimes by these “well-trained” officers. And growing up in the inner-city, I have watched officers who were otherwise nice guys take bribes from people I knew who ran the illegal numbers racket. Yet, I get the point from spike33 that officers are not “trained” to be afraid of non-whites. But realangel21′s point that there is socialization to distrust non-whites is also valid. Such socialization may not take place at a police academy. It happens by simply living in our society. And it remains embedded in people’s psyche. It does not matter that I have 3 college degrees, dress professionally, speak, walk and act intelligently. I am still treated the same as mentioned above. White women still clutch their purses, some gasping audibly if they happen to turn and catch me walking behind them, day or night–in my own neighborhood. I have friends and family in law enforcement, so I agree with spike33 that cops are also stereotyped, however, they certainly don’t go through what I have experienced. I applaud all good cops for their service and I also commend those who try to weed out the bad ones.

  • katisumas

    Not all white persons are afraid of black persons.  But that false fear was inculcated to most white people in the South.  Don’t you remember the time when black folks were expected to get off the sidewalk to let a white person pass without risk of touching them (which did not prevent white men from raping black women without any fear of consequences).  Don’t you remember Jim Crow?

    It would appear from your post that you might be from the same generation as I am, so what happened to your memory? 

    And of course, not all white people are afraid of black folks.  Many white people participated in the Civil Rights movement.  Many white people are still aware of the historically deep rooted racism in our country and are still trying to fight it.  Yes they are  trying “to make the world a better place” and some have lost their lives  doing it

    PS: perhaps you might be interested in the SPLC website which keeps track of hate crimes and hate groups in the county, including the couple of black hate groups (in contrast to the hundreds of white hate  groups).  Perhaps you might also read a few books or talk to a few people who experienced Jim Crow and the terror of whites it created in ALL black people? 

  • wendyxqm

    How do you equate “Less than average intelligence” with speaking improper grammar (according to white standards, but which aligns perfectly with the roots of West African languages as per Ebonics), looking down, not making eye contact….? Those are not signs of lack of intelligence.

  • wendyxqm

    One of the greatest omissions of the study is that in the African community it is widely known that there is a war on the black community and police officer shoot unarmed blacks with impunity. Then later, suddenly these black become “armed”. There is a separate protocol used by police when dealing with the black community. Time and time again, witnesses to police shooting will state that the victim had no gun, but somehow, a gun always shows up when needed.

  • traneman

    The issue of the “plant gun” is an old one and for the most part is not as widely used as it was years ago. I know about this “plant gun” problem because I had a friend and also my next door neighbor who were police officers. They admitted to me that in situations where a shooting may be questionable and their jobs may be on the line, they kept an old pistol that they carried for that purpose. Two people I knew had guns taken from  them by police officers, but they were never arrested for them. My guess is that those guns were going to be used as “plants” if needed. I also had police friends who carried knives for the very same purpose. You may have always wondered why, in news reports, the victim “attacked or threatened” an officer–with a gun–with a knife. The knife also appeared after the shooting. I am not making  this stuff up.  But I thought it was an outdated police practice.

  • deshun bolden

    It would have been nice to have you as a police officer in St Louis 3 of my boys are dead and the police are not interested in them because it was just another black they were all educated the police use to harass them so bad and in each crime one was robbed. doctor killed one he was white and he fled St Louis they let him go .the other son was caught in a random shooting one I buried 7 months ago and the white authorities treat me so bad because I want justice they snap at me and they are uncaring but all the white young men that get murdered they do everything to solve the murders can you come work here as far as white officer are concerned that’s just another dead black I will leave the other word out black no justice all were college men

  • deshun bolden

    I looked up history how true 

  • deshun bolden

    I told my son that while he was in the first thing they see is his color he was in high school at 12 but in their eyes he was still just a black an honor student but after his death the college did a beautiful honor the president of the college did attend the honor at the college but you no a black honor student kicked it off with a beautiful newspaper article.I know you are being real in your comment the police here in St Louis act like the KKK

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    Read realangel’s post again.  I interpreted it quite differently.  Other than that, I’m in total agreement with you.

  • demisty

    “Q. Based on these results, is there anything officers (and others) should do?
    “A. One of the key questions that these
    results raise is: What can police officers and police departments do to
    increase accuracy in shooting decisions?”

    Really?  That’s the “key question” this researcher thinks of in response to the interviewer’s question?  Not, “How can we address these societal prejudices in our officers during these stressful situations?”  Not, “How can we train law enforcement personnel to treat citizens fairly based on their attitudes and actual threat levels and not their skin color?”  Maybe I’m missing something here.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    The bitterness in the description of relations with the public, the expression of the feeling of being treated as “a second-class citizen,” followed by the confrontational “What have YOU done to make the world a better place?” … sounds like hostility to me.  (True, I added the capital letters in that last quote, but that’s what I was hearing in my head while reading that comment.)

  • wberrymendes

    It is interesting to read these impassioned comments. I am a co-author on the study – the lead author, Modupe Akinola completed this research as part of her dissertation at Harvard, which I supervised. I do think it is important to point out that the interview and the comments don’t quite cast the results correctly. What we found is that police officers were *more* accurate (made fewer errors) in their shooting decisions when the targets were African American compared to when the targets were White. As someone who has studied racial discrimination for the past 15 years, I can tell you that in much of our research we find evidence of stereotyping and discrimination especially when using implicit measures like physiological responses or reaction time measures, but in this example, we did not observe more shooting errors with black targets. Indeed, we had some difficulty getting this work published initially, and I would speculate it was, in part, because the results were less newsworthy due to the finding that the police officers did not make more errors when targets were African American. This finding doesn’t sit with news accounts of police officers mistakenly shooting unarmed African Americans. I will note that non-police officers do tend to make more errors when completing this task, and do tend to shoot more unarmed African American targets than White targets, but that was not the case in our sample of police officers.
    Wendy Berry Mendes
    Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Francisco

  • pianiste

    Uh, how come nobody asks if there were any black (or Latino or Asian or female) police officers in the shooting study? All of the commenters seem to assume that the officers in the study were white. Lots of black cops out there, you know.

    I’d be most interested to know if there was any difference in the responses in the study between black and white officers, or between male and female officers.

  • wberrymendes

    Pianiste, this is a good question. The majority of the officers were White (56%), 29% were Black, 14% were Latino (there was 1 Asian officer). The pattern of decision making looked similar between White and Black officers — meaning both groups made fewer errors when making shooting decisions with Black targets compared to White targets. Latino officers also showed the same pattern, but note that we are now talking about 10 officers so the numbers are really too small to be confident about the results.  In short, in this sample there were no officer race differences in shooting decisions.  

  • pianiste

    Thanks to Prof. Mendes for the answer. Commenters can speculate on whether the black officers were a) conditioned by the same racism–in their training and without–as their white counterparts, or b) simply responding like the Rev. Jesse Jackson:

    “There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” (1996)

    Now, were there any differences in the shooting patterns of female officers? Lots of women cops with guns out there, too, you know.

  • wberrymendes

    Though there was reasonable (not great) racial diversity there was not good gender diversity. Only 2 female poice officers so we can’t conclude anything about their shooting decisions.

    I agree it is unclear why there were no race differences and it may be due to training, cultural stereotypes or some other factors.

  • pianiste

    So, The Great Police Shootout greatly considered the targets of the shooting, but not really so carefully the particulars of the shooters. I’m not a psychiatrist, nor do I play one on TV, but it sounds like this study was designed with a sledgehammer. Back to the ol’ drawing board, methinks.

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