Confirmation Bias, Blind spots and Covid-19

Hi guys, I'll like to address an issue today that has been bothering me a lot on social media. I have seen a lot of people sharing posts about incidents of racism against Chinese people in the West in the wake of Covid-19. There's another side of it that doesn't get talked about much (if at all) and I'd like to address this in today's post. From my previous post about the 'damsel in distress', I am upset that a lot of Chinese people who were at the receiving end of this kind of racist harassment do not know how to stand up for themselves, defaulting instead to this 'damsel in distress' mode. Further to that, I would like to point out something else, the other side of the story. Allow me to start with a story that happened recently: I Skype my sister in in Singapore on a regular basis and sometimes, my father or my mother would join in the conversation (at least for part of the call) and there was this time when I was telling my sister about a difficult time I was having at work - now I'll spare you the technical details but basically, I was dealing with a very difficult client at work who was giving me a hard time. And without actually understanding what actually happened, my father simply jumped to the wrong conclusion: he then swore in Chinese and said some rather racist and disparaging things about 'angmoh' people.

My sister could see how utterly aghast I was at his outburst and she explained that the client's behaviour had absolutely nothing to do with racism whatsoever, that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion in assuming that I had been talking about racism at all. I think the problem could have been that I was explaining the technical nature of the problem that I was dealing with at work and of course, that's beyond the understanding of my father - he's just a retired primary school teacher and let's just say he isn't that educated. I didn't think he would have understood the story I was telling my sister (even though I was speaking in Mandarin for his benefit, rather than in English) given the rather technical nature of the situation I was explaining, thus he jumped to the wrong conclusion. My sister and I did make a valiant effort to point out to him that in this situation, it was absolutely nothing to do with racism, even if the dispute did involve a white person and myself - oh believe you me, there are plenty of reasons why I can get into a dispute with someone at work apart from racism. But it is clear that my father is a racist who really hates white people - oh yeah, I don't want to justify it, he is downright racist. He is old, he is in his 80s and I'm not saying that all old people are racist, but you'll find the average age of racists far closer to 80 than 18. Allow me to point out something that may seem obvious but many people don't realize: all too often, this discourse on racism is always about white people being nasty to others who aren't white. I'd like to point out that Chinese people are also equally capable of being very racist to others as well and my father is one such person.

Don't get me wrong, my father isn't the kind of person who would verbally harass white people he would run into say on public transport. I'm married to a white guy for crying out aloud, ironically that's his worst nightmare come true - it's some kind of karma to punish him for being such a racist I suppose, not only is his only son gay, but his gay son would get married to a white guy. but I digress. My father's kind of racism against white people is based on 'an assumption of mutual hatred' - he hates white people so he assumes that white people would hate him; either that or he assumes that all white people are racist, thus he will hate people who already hate him. Trying to figure out this 'assumption of mutual hatred' is like trying to figure out which came first: the chicken or the egg? Regardless, he is always on the look out for any kind of 'evidence' that would confirm his instincts that white people are racist and hate Chinese people - that's why when I presented my sister with the story of having to deal with a difficult client at work, he immediately assumed that it was yet another example of racism (he was wrong of course). There's an element of confirmation bias going on here - my father ignores the fact that I had moved to the West and had built a successful career here working with white people, but the moment he comes across a story of racism in the West (such as in the wake of Covid-19 and the incidents of anti-Asian racism), he would get excited because it is evidence that supports his longstanding belief that white people are inherently racist and therefore he is justified to hate white people in return (something which he has done all his life).

Oh you would be shocked at how massive my father's blind spot can be. You see, I moved to France in 1997 the moment I finished my national service and I have been living in Europe ever since. My father hasn't once turned to me and asked me if I faced any kind of racism in the West - my guess is that he doesn't want to hear my answer which is, "of course not, white people are not racist." He doesn't like to have his point of view challenged - instead, he clings on to a story that he was told by my neighbour Mrs Fong back in 1985. I actually have a pretty good memory of that story as I was there when she told the story: she was in France with her husband and they entered a busy restaurant. However, the waitress came up to them and told them something in French, there was a huge language barrier as Mr and Mrs Fong do not speak French and that French waitress spoke very little English, but the bottom line was that they were turned away from that restaurant for some reason that the waitress couldn't explain in English. Was it racism? Or simply a case that they didn't have a reservation and the restaurant was full? Did the waitress try to tell them something like, "I am very sorry but I don't have a table now but if you came back in 45 minutes then we can serve you?" We don't know but just because there was a language barrier doesn't mean that there was racism. Nonetheless, my father can't recall the details of a story he was told in 1985, so he would embellish it with his own creativity: each time he used that story as prove that white people are racist, it would come out very differently: Mr and Mrs Fong would be in a different country, instead of a restaurant, they were turned away from a hotel or shop. He would rather cling on to a story from 1985 which he can't recall than simply ask his own son about the issue of racism in the West - that's how ridiculous and irrational my father is.

I can see my father applying this kind of warped logic to other areas of his life as well - he is guilty of confirmation bias on so many issues. I feel incredibly sorry for my brother-in-law, my sister's husband - now for some reason, my father doesn't like him. It doesn't matter how much effort he puts into trying to get along with my father or lavishing my father with nice gifts, those gestures are ignored. But the moment he does something that displeases my father (however minor), my father latches onto that and makes a big deal of it whilst ignoring all the other evidence to the contrary. There are times when I do feel extremely sorry for my brother-in-law because he is essentially a good father and husband at the end of the day, I actually get along pretty well with him but I have no idea how he puts up with my father. Even my sister said this about my father, "once he has made up his mind about something, it is impossible to change his mind on the matter even if he is proven wrong with solid evidence. He will conveniently shove the evidence into his blind spot to avoid having to change his mind." So as you can see, this kind of mindset is very difficult to deal with because normally, you would expect a reasonable person to react to evidence in a rational manner, but if you're dealing with someone like my father who is irrational (and downright autistic), then no amount of evidence or reasoning is ever going to convince him to change his mind. To compound this problem, my father is completely delusional. Oh boy, welcome to my world. He actually thinks he is wise and intelligent, he is oblivious to his own stupidity, talk about Dunning-Kruger effect. Hence that is why he really thinks he does not need to change his mind despite being presented with ample evidence to the contrary.

I have this old friend on Facebook, let's call him Tiong (not his real name) - I knew him from back when I lived in Singapore in the 1990s. He keeps posting all of these links to reports on anti-Asian racism during the Covid-19 outbreak; I am not denying for a moment that these events are true and have happened, but he is an Asian person living in an Asian country. I'm thus left wondering what Tiong is trying to achieve by sharing those links? After all, it seems like he has an agenda to tell his friends in Singapore that white people in the West are very racist. Now allow me to put this in context: I'm not denying that there are incidents of racism in the West, but when they do happen, Western societies are usually so appalled by what happened that they make the news. If this was somehow normal and acceptable in the West, then it wouldn't be mentioned in the news at all. The fact that white people are so shocked and appalled by racism is their society is the only reason that these racist incidents are in the news in the first place. Now allow me to use an analogy to make this point: it rarely ever snows in London and in fact, we've not had a single flake of snow in London this winter, it has been one of our warmest winters on record. But when it does snow, it becomes headline news as it is such a rare occurrence. I would rush out and take photos of the streets covered in snow as it is so unusual for us, many would also go to the park where the snow would settle and you'll see adults having snow ball fights or building snowmen. We react like that because snow is just so rare for us in London. However, in a much colder country like Finland where it snows a lot every winter, nobody bats an eyelid when it does snow in January, even if it is a heavy snowfall because this is just normal. It wouldn't make the headline and the locals just get on with their daily lives regardless of the very cold weather.

So, allow me to use yet another analogy to put these reports of racism in context: I read a disturbing article the other day of a major road accident in Scotland today where two young girls were killed along with their parents in the accident. This made the news because we're all obviously saddened by the way this family was wiped out in that one accident - yet when we contrast that to a war zone like Yemen, Iraq or Syria where so many people are killed on daily basis, thus if four people were killed in a bombing in Yemen today, then cruel as it sounds, that's just not newsworthy. Perhaps if a bombing raid killed 100 people in Yemen, then it might muscle its way into our headline news otherwise sadly, people are so desensitized to the violence in Yemen that people getting killed on a daily basis isn't even newsworthy anymore. Imagine if we lived in a world where people don't even bat an eyelid or react when Chinese people suffer racism in the West, if people reacted to racism in the West the same way they simply shrug their shoulders rather nonchalantly when they read about the people getting killed in Yemen or Syria. The fact that these stories are featured in the news means that Western society is still shocked by racism, that the action of these racists are unacceptable to the vast majority of the people in the West. Often, the stories are covered in a compassionate manner, giving the victims of these incidents a chance to share what happened to them, in order to allow them to get support from others. A good example of that was the incident in Wales when Taiwanese lady Su Chu Lu who went public with her story of being asked to leave her market stall and quarantine herself, even though she had never been to China - what then followed was a massive outpouring of public support for Ms Su. But of course, people like my father would focus on the three people who confronted Ms Su rather than the thousands of other Welsh people who had supported her. Such is a classic example of confirmation bias.

That's the kind of ratio we're dealing with here: in that incident we had three racists vs thousands of people who showed Ms Su supported, the ratio would look something like 3:3000 - so which end of that ratio do you want to focus on? Hey, I did ace that module on statistics back at university, so I am keen to apply what I have learnt in real life. What this ratio tells me is that the probability of being a victim of racism is very low - that the vast majority of East Asian people in the West are getting on with their daily lives in the West as normal without any kind of Covid-19 related racism. Have I encountered any kind of racism relating to Covid-19? Actually no, the closest I have come to that are two friends who are ignorant of what is happening because they haven't been paying too much attention to the news. The first is a friend in the gym who assumed that the Covid-19 is deadly, that you would die quickly if you were infected, but before I could correct him, two other friends already told him that he was wrong. The other friend who was ignorant asked me why it seemed to be mostly Chinese people who were susceptible to the virus and if white people were somehow immune to it? Good grief, what a hideously ignorant question. Again, this friend didn't pay much attention to the news, he didn't know much about the virus and had asked a dumb question in casual conversation but if anything, he came across as stupid rather than racist. In any case, I have lived in Europe amongst white people for more than half my life, having arrived in London in 1997. I would say that this 3 : 3000 ratio is quite correct, the vast majority of the people I encounter in the West are not racist, there is only a tiny minority, like 0.1% who are racist but why are some people focusing on this 0.1% then?

So remember that horrific car accident in Scotland that killed a family of four that I mentioned earlier? Well if we were to use that accident to make a point that driving is dangerous, then by that token, we should never ever get into a car or bus in case we get killed in a horrific road accident. Nonetheless, as I look out of my window (hey, I live by a busy junction in north London), I see plenty of cars, taxis, trucks, bicycles, buses and other forms of vehicles on Camden Road and nobody is that concerned about their safety. This is because we know that horrific road accidents are extremely rare, thus the risk of something like that happening to us as we take a bus home is really tiny. Likewise as an Asian immigrant who has lived in Europe for 23 years who has experienced hardly any racism at all in Europe, I must say that whilst I do find all these incidents of racism reported in the media appalling, I react to them in the same way as I react to the news of that horrific car accident in Scotland - that I know the chances of me experiencing something like that is really very low. So when I see someone like my friend Tiong from Singapore constantly posting articles about racism on Facebook, I do wonder what his agenda is? Is he like my father - is he a racist who hates white people and thus is constantly looking for news of racist white people in the media to justify the way he hates white people in the first place? What about Asian people in the West like me who point out that we're not actually experiencing any racism - would Tiong simply shove the evidence that I am presenting into his blind spot, because it contradicts his long held beliefs that white people are inherently racist? Is Tiong racist? He probably is, I believe he really hates white people (though he would never admit it).

My point is simple: when somebody focuses on the wrong end of the ratio, they are clearly pushing their own agenda by being so selective with the evidence they are focusing on whilst ignoring all other evidence that would contradict their long held beliefs. Heck, I've had another tough week at work and it's the kind of thing I would speak to my sister about - however, if my father comes onto the Skype call, then I wouldn't even mention it because he's always going to assume that it is racism when really, it is yet another technical issue which has nothing to do with racism at all. Even if I said "I am having a hard time at work at the moment but it has nothing to do with racism," my severely autistic father has a habit of hearing what he wants to hear and I don't even trust him to listen to what I say - so by that token, I tend to simply default to saying, "everything is fine, life is great" and then only tell my sister about what has happened when he is not around. So that's it from me on this topic, over to you: what do you think when you see someone like Tiong constantly posting articles about racism on social media? Do you see him as someone trying to fight racism or do you actually see him as a racist trying to make Asian people hate white people? What is his agenda, what is his motivation then? Given that Tiong has never lived in the West before and probably doesn't even have a single white friend, why do you think someone like him is trying to stir up racist hatred like that? Am I right to assume that Tiong is a Chinese racist: a Chinese person who really hates white people, just like my father? Or am I being too harsh on Tiong, have I misunderstood his intentions? So, are people like Tiong even aware of his confirmation bias? Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.