SAN FRANCISCO—Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt initially chuckled at her 5-year-old son’s comment that a Black male passenger on their cross-country flight resembled the boy’s Stanford University law professor father.
“This man’s facial features and complexion were very different from those of my husband,” recalled Eberhardt, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford. “He was about four inches shorter, and he had long dreadlocks flowing down his back. My husband is bald.”
Because the passenger was the only Black man on the plane, Eberhardt dismissed her son’s mistake as mere age-appropriate confusion. But his next remark was much more alarming.
“He said he hoped the man would not rob the plane,” said Eberhardt, whose scholarly research focuses on racial biases. “I asked him why he would say such a thing, because his dad would never rob a plane.”
The boy agreed. When Eberhardt pressed him about what sparked the fearful remark about the stranger, her son’s expression turned sad. He replied, “I don’t know.”
Eberhardt shared the troubling anecdote last Friday during a public hearing examining so-called stand your ground laws. The hearing occurred during the six-day annual meeting of the American Bar Association (ABA). Individuals such as Eberhardt discussed reasons why the self-defense laws and doctrines, which currently exist in more than half the U.S. states, unnecessarily and disproportionately jeopardize the lives of people of color, especially Black men.
