Bias can have a significant influence on the way we as individuals and as a community respond to troubling events that are complicated by the racial identities of the people involved.

Confirmation bias, or the selective collection of evidence, is our subconscious tendency to seek and interpret information and other evidence in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas, expectations, and/or hypotheses. Therefore, confirmation bias is both affected by and feeds our implicit biases. It can be most entrenched around beliefs and ideas that we are strongly attached to or that provoke a strong emotional response.

While confirmation bias is a bias toward a belief we already hold, desirability bias is a bias toward a belief we want to be true. When people display desirability bias, they find information more credible when it pleases them – even if it fails to confirm their pre-existing beliefs.

Source: Facing history and ourselves. Confirmation and other biases. https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/facing-ferguson-news-literacy-digital-age/confirmation-and-other-biases