The Dark Side of How We Think Without Thinking: Malcolm Gladwell on Amadou Diallo (2005)

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The author describes the main subject of his book as "thin-slicing": our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316010669/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp;=1789&creative;=9325&creativeASIN;=0316010669&linkCode;=as2&tag;=tra0c7-20&linkId;=6c085526f95bbedfefa8068778f4e8f7 In other words, this is an idea that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. Gladwell draws on examples from science, advertising, sales, medicine, and popular music to reinforce his ideas. Gladwell also uses many examples of regular people's experiences with "thin-slicing." The book argues that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training, and knowledge. For example, Gladwell claims that prejudice can operate at an intuitive unconscious level, even in individuals whose conscious attitudes are not prejudiced. An example is in the halo effect, where a person having a salient positive quality is thought to be superior in other, unrelated respects. Gladwell uses the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, where four New York policemen shot an innocent man on his doorstep 41 times, as another example of how rapid, intuitive judgment can have disastrous effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28book%29 The Diallo shooting has been referenced in the music of [16] 88 Keys;[17] Bruce Springsteen's song "American Skin (41 Shots)";[18] the Ziggy Marley song "I Know You Don't Care About Me"; the Trivium song "Contempt Breeds Contamination"; The Spooks song "Things I've seen"; the song "What Would You do?" by Paris; the Blitz the Ambassador song "Uhuru"; the song "Diallo" by Wyclef Jean;[19] and the song "Lament For The Late AD" by Terry Callier.[20] Electro pop band Le Tigre, formed by Kathleen Hanna (formerly of Bikini Kill), lamented the Diallo shooting in their song "Bang! Bang!", which ends with a vocal chorus counting numbers that ends with 41, the number of shots fired.[21] In his song "The other white meat", which deals with police brutality and racism, the New York rapper Immortal Technique tells the Police "I got 41 reasons to tell you to suck ..." and "Guns don't look like wallets". Clearly referencing the shooting and counting every bullet fired as a reason.[22] It was also referenced in the song, "So You Wanna Be a Cop" by the Crack Rocksteady 7, in the lyric: "and after 41 shots, you're grinning in the donut shop". "One Dead Cop", by the related band Leftöver Crack, references the incident in the lyric "Bragging how you blasted gunshot 41." The incident was briefly mentioned by rapper Heems in his song "WOYY": "Diallo got shot when he said the block was hot.".[23] The piece "Amadou Diallo", included in the album Ethnic Stew and Brew by jazz trumpeter Roy Campbell, Jr., was inspired by the shooting, ending with a rapid burst of notes replicating the 41 gunshots.[24] The incident also served as the basis for Erykah Badu's track from the Mama's Gun album, "A.D. 2000" (the abbreviation standing for Diallo's initials). Rather than singing a condemnation of the NYPD, as had most other artists who were incensed by the event, Badu chose to sing an elegy which, while noting the tragedy of Diallo's killing, also observes the furor over the circumstances, which she viewed as likely to be temporary:: "No you won't be name'n no buildings after me/To go down dilapidated ooh/No you won't be name'n no buildings after me/My name will be misstated, surely". In his album The Beautiful Struggle Talib Kweli speaks of "Brother Amadou as [...] a modern day martyr."[25] "I'll Draw You a Mapp", the May 11, 1999, episode of the television police drama NYPD Blue, features suspects making references to the Diallo case and the 41 shots. In the 2002 film Phone Booth the caller tells Stu Shepard, "You know you can be shot 41 times for pulling out your wallet". In the 2002 film 25th Hour during Monty's rant about New York, he says, "Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust". The Boondocks episode "The Block Is Hot" contains a scene in which Uncle Ruckus is shot at by police officers repeatedly after reaching for his wallet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo Image By Ed Schipul from Houston, TX, US (Malcolm Gladwell) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons