Cognitive Bias: Interracial Homicide in New Orleans, 1921–1945

Abstract

White killers of African Americans in New Orleans between 1921 and 1945, nearly half of whom were policemen, insisted that they acted in self-defense, only after their victims had threatened them, often by reaching for weapons. But many of their victims were unarmed. The conventional interpretation is that white residents invoked a formulaic justification of self-defense to mask their real intention, to uphold the city's racial hierarchy. Recent studies by cognition researchers, however, suggest a more complicated interpretation—that endemic racism can influence how the brain processes information, even to the extent of causing people to see a weapon where none exists.