I often read the weblog Sepia Mutiny, and today there was a post about a pair of men flying while brown. They were pulled off the plane and their bags were sent ahead. It was a big foul up. Now, here is the kicker: the men were wearing "traditional" South Asian clothes and skull caps and one of them was reading the Koran. This scared the crap out of a flight attendent. Now, I pointed out that dressing likes this was likely to scare the crap out of people on a plane, so it is a really idiotic modus operandi for a terrorist, so the response was probably irrational. Frankly, the people you really have to be scared of look like me, "normal" and "assimilated" in appearance men who try and blend in before we blow up in your face (I'm saying "we" figuratively). Nevertheless, the human mind isn't primed toward game theory or mathematical probability. We don't have Bayes' theorem hardwired into our brain, as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have shown. Though I am pretty sure that the probability of a brown skinned man who is Muslim being a terrorist who is going to blow up the plane is higher if that man is not bearded with a skull cap, I am pretty sure people simply can't help but be more unnerved by the bearded with skull cap individual. The vague outline of the logic is like so:
A) Muslims are more likely to blow up planes than non-Muslims
B) Bearded with skull cap individuals are more Muslim than those who are clean shaven
C) So being more Muslim, they are more likely to blow up planes
The human mind has rough & ready heuristics that trigger reflexive responses, and we find them incredibly compelling in a given moment (if this wasn't so, credit card companies and marketers would be shit out of luck). To some extent the assocation between very Muslim looking men and terrorism is going to be subject to the same issue as the Muller Lyer illusion, you know rationally the the state of affairs, but your brain keeps popping out different results. The way to change behavior and dampen irrational biases is not to tell people that they are bad, or they have "learned wrong," etc. That is like lecturing people on the threats of obesity caused by fatty food, and expecting that to do the trick. Rather, you need to give people mental tools, or educate them in a deep way in regards to specifics as opposed to general platitudes.
Instead of general non-discriminatory principles and exortations, it might be practical to give airline employees quick primers on South Asian ethnology so that one can quickly discern religious origin by name. Additionally, a basic outline of probabilities would probably help at least dampen the emotional fires that will inevitably get triggered by the bearded-while-flying.
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You write as though people can be educated into being rational. As though teaching someone the facts about race and religion short circuits their racism and fear.
I don't think it works like that. Racism, even if it doesn't prevent the assimilation of the facts, can still bypass them - creating new ad-hoc justifications if the old ones are blocked.
kapitano, but is the fear of bearded ones "racism" (ie., there is a race of men with obligate beards and skull caps?). i think using the term "racism" as if it is a black box is part of the problem, there is a specific issue here with specific responses. for example, probabilistic reasoning can't mitigate racism against young black men re: crime because young black men are far more likely to commit such crimes than you white men. on the other hand, my point is that the problem here is a simplified cognitive model.
Actually, I think young black men are mostly more likely to be prosecuted for it. The white kids in my town who are drug users or dealers are rarely prosecuted, since their rich parents can hire good lawyers.
Now, I pointed out that dressing likes this was likely to scare the crap out of people on a plane, so it is a really idiotic modus operandi for a terrorist, so the response was probably irrational.
Ah, but that's exactly what they want you to think--that they're too scary to be really dangerous, therefore lulling you into a false sense of security. It's a diabolical inverse switcheroo! Or, no, wait, maybe WHAT I JUST WROTE is exactly what they want you to think. It's wheels within mazes within a riddle within an enigma within stupidity!
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
Maybe it's understandable that people felt scared or uncomfortable, we can't always help the way we feel and, like you said, not everyone has a good understanding of probability. But - I'd like to think we could expect the flight attendants and airline staff to behave rationally, and they did not.
On Razib's main point, a friend of mine told me that where he lives the highest risk for rabies comes from squirrels. But bats are much creepier.
Rattlesnakes and black bears are also pretty low-risk in the real world, but people are terrified of them.
I have a beard. Fear me.
I knew a statistician who was terrified of being blown up in an airplane. He calculated the probabilities that he would be on a plane with a bomb and he found the odds were millions to one, but that wasn't good enough. Then he calculated the odds for getting on a plane with 2 bombs on it and found it was trillions to one. Now when he flies, he always carries a bomb with him.