By Maya Wiley

George Zimmerman may not be that different from the rest of us. In fact, research shows that college students and most everyone else are more likely to shoot a Black man holding an object like a wallet, than a white man.

In just two short months between January 1, 2012 and March 31, 2012, 28 Black people were intentionally shot dead. The shooters were most often police, but also security guards and the George Zimmermans of the world – the fearful, frustrated and self-styled protectors of their communities. Eighteen of the Black people shot were unarmed. Only two had confirmed firearms. Eight allegedly had non-lethal weapons. Trayvon Martin was one of those killed in this period. We don’t account for implicit racial bias in our criminal laws, nor our everyday interactions; honoring the legacy of Trayvon Martin means no longer making this mistake.

But first, why are so many unarmed Black people assumed to be armed and dangerous — and, therefore, shot? Over the last two decades, researchers have made tremendous strides in understanding how our brains understand race.

In 1999, police officers in New York City shot an unarmed, 23-year-old West-African immigrant named Amadou Diallo. The police shot Diallo in the doorway of his apartment building when Diallo reached for his wallet. The police insist they saw that Diallo had a gun. After the officers were acquitted of Diallo’s murder, Joshua Correll, then a graduate student in psychology, asked himself, “What if the officers had approached a white guy and he had run into the vestibule of his apartment building and reached for a wallet?” Correll decided to find out.

Correll formed a video game-like experiment based on decades of “implicit associations” research. Participants had milliseconds to assess whether a person (or “target”) on the screen was carrying a gun. If the person had a gun, the participant had to quickly push a button to “shoot” the person. If the person had something else, like a wallet or a cell phone, participants had to press a different button. Time and again, research subjects wrongly shot the unarmed Black “targets.” And here is the kicker: Correll’s findings held even when the research subjects were Black. In other words, even Black people are more likely to shoot unarmed Black targets than armed white targets.

Read More Inside our racist brains – Salon.com.