#Implicit Bias

[saturnniidae]

I love Mel and I'm glad so many people agree on her beauty, she is a gorgeous, breathtakingly majestic black woman and I'm glad she's appreciated but istg mfs only ever talking about how attractive she is rather than her intelligence and complex morality.

Everyone wants a morally grey woman character until she's black suddenly it's crickets in the crowd. Ik it's not usually intentional but (typically white) people have such an inate unwillingness to discuss poc (Especially woc) characters beyond surface level and it's annoying asf

[guiltyidealist]

I just think we should start framing these things in the first person. I am not immune to propaganda. I have implicit biases, in spite of my explicit beliefs, which I need to keep in check.

[sophiaphile]

The Curse finale interpretation

Ash's ascent/death, parallels to pregnancy, and "lived experience" in The Curse

There was a parallel between the way nobody believed or understood Asher when he was stuck in the tree to the way that pregnant people are treated while they are in labor (or even how women are treated in medical settings in general)

Ash's ascent/death

Nobody would believe Ash (besides Whitney who witnessed him floating inside the house and Moses who saw Ash float up into the tree) that he couldn't come down. Everyone who sees him projects their own interpretation of Ash's experience and intentions.

Dougie thinks Ash is running from his responsibilities because Dougie's dad did the same, and (from Dougie's POV), some men panic or even run away from their responsibilities once their partner is in labor or gives birth.

The neighbors from the community think that Ash and Dougie must be filming something because that's is their experience with these outsiders; they are TV people and act strangely, which can be explained by assuming that any weird behavior is a part of making a TV show. This explanation is also the best that they have for how Ash could possibly defy physical law (because it really isn't reasonable to assume that he just is breaking physical law in some way).

Ash repeatedly tells them that he will fly up. He tries his best to explain what he is going through, and he isn't doing the best job, probably because he's extremely afraid that he might die. I repeatedly tells Dougie and the first responders what he needs from them, and nobody listens. They think that Ash is delusional and that everyone else has a better understanding of the situation and therefore know what to do.

Connection to pregnancy

I think some of Ash's experience can be seen as analogous to what pregnant women (and women in medical settings in general) experience. Historically, doctors have been male, and they obviously have never been pregnant or gone into labor, and studies show that even women healthcare providers dismiss women and minorities in medical settings (it has to do with socialized biases in everyone, which I will come back to).

These professionals often dismiss a pregnant person's self-report of needing help, and a CDC report shows that 1 in 5 women report medical mistreatment while giving birth:

Approximately one in five (20.4%) respondents reported experiencing at least one type of mistreatment. The most commonly reported experiences of mistreatment were being ignored by health care providers, having requests for help refused, or not responded to (9.7%); being shouted at or scolded by health care providers (6.7%); having their physical privacy violated (5.1%); and being threatened with withholding of treatment or being forced to accept treatment they did not want (4.6%).

The same report found that the poorer the woman or more marginalized her background, the more risk of facing mistreatment:

Overall, 28.9% of respondents reported experiencing at least one form of discrimination during maternity care (Table 3), with highest prevalences reported by Black (40.1%), multiracial (39.4%), and Hispanic (36.6%) respondents. Overall, the most commonly reported reasons for discrimination were age (10.1%), weight (9.7%), and income (6.5%); reasons varied by race and ethnicity.

Initially Whitney planned to go to what was implied to be a better hospital. It feels like the show maybe wanted the viewer to expect that Whitney would die due to being at a "poor" hospital (and maybe she did; the finale went no full magical realism, imo). Benny and Nathan probably expected that viewers would immediately think or even assume that this would happen (drawing from our own biases, even if they are informed by statistics), which makes me think that Ash's experience is analogous to pregnant peoples' medical mistreatment.

In these medical settings, doctors frequently ignore a pregnant person's self-reports or requests for help, and instead, the doctors and medical staff (regardless of gender) tend to think that they know better or that the pregnant person is delusional/hormonal/emotional/etc. They dismiss their lived experience. Doctors have historically been male, so they have NO experience being pregnant, but they think they know better than the pregnant person, and even women who have been pregnant cannot speak for every woman. It is not rational to take your own experiences and extrapolate them to everyone else (which has been a common theme in the show: making assumptions based off of limited experience or socialized biases).

Like pregnant people facing medical mistreatment, Ash was ignored by health care providers Dougie and First Responders, had requests for help refused, or not responded to; he was shouted at or scolded by health care providers Dougie for running from responsibilities of becoming a father; and had treatment withheld (the anchored net that he repeatedly begged for) and was forced to accept treatment they did not want (tree branch cut off, sending him to his death).

Lived experience, hermeneutical gaps, and epistemic injustice

OKAY. So this comes back to (what I have taken to be) the overall recurrent theme of The Curse: lived experience, hermeneutical gaps/injustice, and testimonial injustice (which are forms of epistemic injustice, for anyone who is interested in learning more about this).

Hermeneutical gaps occur when a person or group lacks the concepts or terminology to describe their experience. Such gaps lead to hermeneutical injustice; Miranda Fricker describes hermeneutical injustice as occurring

when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences. An example of the first might be that the police do not believe you because you are black; an example of the second might be that you suffer sexual harassment in a culture that still lacks that critical concept . . . hermeneutical injustice is caused by structural prejudice in the economy of collective hermeneutical resources.

Before the term 'sexual harassment' came to be, people impacted by such harassment didn't have the concepts or terminology to be able to describe their experience or what they were going through; they were often dismissed as just being flirted with or they didn't even discuss their experience because even though the felt like something was wrong, they didn't have the concepts to articulate their experience, particularly to groups who do not have such experiences.

Here, Fricker describes hermeneutical injustice as:

. . . someone has a significant area of their social experience obscured from understanding owing to prejudicial flaws in shared resources for social interpretation . . . The wrong is analysed in terms of a situated hermeneutical inequality: the prejudicial flaws in shared interpretive resources prevent the subject from making sense of an experience which it is strongly in her interests to render intelligible.

So hermeneutical gaps (lack of conceptual resources [words or formed concepts] to describe experience) lead to hermeneutical injustice (where a person's experience is misinterpreted in a way that leads to harm or testimonial injustice).

Testimonial injustice occurs when one party (person or group) dismisses the credibility of another group (basically treating the marginalized person as though they are not a true knower).

An example might be Fernando trying to be heard about his knowledge of the community violence. Whitney dismisses him, thinking that she knows more about systemic issues. Ash takes advantage of this kind of injustice when he tries to cover his lie that Abshir, Nala, and Hani live in transitional housing once they bought the property they live in. Whitney called out the inconsistency, and Ash decided to exploit the lack of credibility marginalized people are usually extended. He says something like "honestly I don't know with them they say one thing then another," implying that they are dishonest.

Connecting Ash's ascent/death and medical mistreatment of pregnant people with overall themes in The Curse

ANYWAY. Pregnant people in labor go through a unique experience, and sometimes they lack the concepts necessary to explain their experience in a way that medical professionals will "understand" or take seriously (hermeneutical gap leading to hermeneutical injustice). Further, medical professionals dismiss a pregnant person's testimony and treat them like they are not credible while the medical professionals work from their own assumptions or formal medical knowledge (testimonial injustice).

Asher does not have the concepts to describe what he's going through. Nobody has experienced what he experienced, and the experience is new to him, so he doesn't know how to convey what he experiences in a way that Dougie and First Responders will understand. Further, Dougie and the First Responders dismiss Ash's testimony and treats him like he's not credible while Dougie and the First Responders work from their own assumptions or ascriptions of Ash's intentions.

Throughout the show, our main characters have made assumptions about poor people, natives, and their own employees. Many of these assumptions arise out of dismissing or discrediting the experiences of others in favor of their own interpretation of events or others' intentions. Whitney (and Ash) thinks she knows what's best for Las Espanola, even though she lacks the lived experience or even the proper educational experience to understand the complex nature of amending systemic injustice. She is like the medical professionals and First Responders who do not listen to the lived experiences (self-reports) of what people want or need.

This behavior necessarily implies that the people she's helping don't know what's best for themselves, which implies that Whitney has some kind of expertise that qualifies her to intervene on their behalf. She actually doesn't; she has no qualification other than she happens to have rich parents, which doesn't really qualify a person for any kind of job, especially one as complicated as amending economic or social injustice.

I didn't expect there to be growth on behalf of the characters (largely because people have pointed out that Safdie brother projects rarely involve any kind of meaningful growth or resolution; they have bleak outcomes), but in the finale, I thought that Whitney (and Ash) had grown. She expresses jealousy and bitterness that Cara was receiving national attention for leaving the art scene while her and Ash's show wasn't even aired; it ended up being direct to app content. She uncharitably criticizes Cara for disliking exploitive collectors, and Whit says that she thinks that Cara quit because no one bought her work. Ash jokes that maybe if Whit quits her project to work in a massage parlor, maybe people will write about her too. Whit bitterly jokes back that she would need some kind of cultural sob story like saying she was making a statement on the Holocaust. Ash says he knows that she's making joke that selling her art retraumatized her but goes on to point out that native people have gone through a lot, which he says that he fully understands where Cara is coming from and that people process tragedy in their own way (discussing Mel Brooks), and Whitney finally concedes that she probably shouldn't be talking the way she is and that she doesn't have that lived experience. He assures her that he considers her Jewish (and that she can make such jokes), but I think the takeaway is that—on some level—Whitney has gained some self-awareness and realizes that her experiences shouldn't inform the way she interprets other peoples' choices and intentions.

The concepts I discussed here might also be connected to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the phenomenon that people (at any level of intelligence or education) learn something and think that they have a better understanding of what is going on than they actually do. When people (like Whitney) decide to act on such false assumptions of self-evaluation, they are likely to make mistakes or perpetuate injustice.

tldr; the real curse (imo) is the insidious implicit biases that are socialized into us and lead us to making assumptions about others' experiences and intentions. These assumptions ultimately create barriers that limit social understanding and social progress. If we all take a moment to examine why we reasoned as we do or where we get our ideas about people who don't share our ethnic, economic, gendered, religious, etc. background, we might find that we are missing the necessary lived experience (a hermeneutical gap) to understand where they might be coming from. Instead of assuming intent or competency or dismissing or being suspicious, we should all charitably interpret others to try to assume the best in and most of other people. It is what we would want others to do for us. Performing this kind of empathy will ultimately lead to developing the necessary empathy to overcome such biases by habit alone, which will create a more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding world, while also deepening and enriching our own lives and the lives of others by celebrating our plurality.

When we allow certain ideas into our head, they become very real to us, and when we act on those ideas without examining them carefully, those false beliefs can cause real harm.

[televisionlassie]

“I’m not including duke because I don’t know how to write him 🥺”

He was introduced a decade ago, how have you not learned how to write him? Jon Kent was introduced AFTER Duke yet he gets FAR more attention from writers and the fandom.

I noticed years ago that this fandom has a problem with their POC characters where they’re either ignored, whitewashed, or villainized.

Both Damian and Dick are POC characters but this is often ignored or forgotten despite the fact that their childhood is shown with them having a connection to their culture. Other times they are both villainized for their actions against the white male characters in the bat family (specifically Tim AND Jason).

Duke is RARELY featured in any fan works despite becoming an integral part of the Batfamily. He’s been in a Batman movie (batwheels) and he’s been a focal point in the Wayne Family Adventures series (I’d argue the main character but I can’t say that)

What really pisses me off is that Jason Todd is glorified in comparison to the POC characters. In the comics Jason is NOT a good person, he literally kills people with no regard for how that will affect other people. He continues to try and hurt or kill his “family” members. His trauma is an explanation for this behavior but NOT an excuse, yet the fandom treats it as exactly that. There’s a whole deeper rant for me to give about my issues with how Jason is treated but the main point I’m trying to make is that Jason (a canon white man) is forgiven for all his actions despite showing no change and clearly not learning from them, but characters like Dick and Damian are not given any grace for their actions in a comic series from the 90s.

Can someone explain to me why Tim Drake would forgive Jason Todd, who tried to brutally murder and ridicule him, but not Dick who suggested he get therapy?

I’m tried of how Dick and Damian are treated by the fans of Tim and Jason but I’m especially tired of how Duke is completely erased from the family even though he’s been there for 10 years.

It’s so frustrating because this isn’t just in the Batman fandom or even just the DC fandom but EVERYWHERE, take a look at any show, book, comic or whatever form of media. Now take a look at how fans treat the POC characters. A few that come to mind for me are, Lucas from stranger things, Jal in skins, Sam Wilson, and I know some people might find it ridiculous but Ravi from Jesse (honestly his treatment among the writers and audience set the Indian community back).

There is such a simple solution to this problem, take the time to reflect on yourself as a person, think about how you felt about that one POC character that you thought was so awful. Think about what they did that made you feel that way and think about how you would feel if your favorite character had done the exact same thing. Knowing your bias is the first step to eliminating it.

[wesleysniperking]

Usopp’s identity

I understand that some people disagree with the idea that Usopp is Black, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, I do believe there are those in the fandom who go out of their way to deny Usopp’s Black identity as a way to mask their unconscious bias. We all have biases to some extent—that’s inevitable. But to refer to people who argue for Usopp’s representation as a 'crying minority' is both insensitive and dismissive. It’s baffling how some can be so blunt and careless about race and stereotypes online, yet act differently in public. Now that Usopp’s skin tone seems to be getting lighter, the debate has become even more heated.

[adragonsfriend]

CinemaTherapy, Tone Policing, Mace Windu

The CinemaTherapy video on Palpatine contains, I will say it nicely, opinions about the Jedi in general that I disagree with, (I love most of their videos, and their advice on avoiding manipulation in this one is useful and good, I hope it helps people, etcetera) but what I want to talk about is the specific moment where they mention Mace Windu for literally half a second.

At 14:07-14:29, they say, (copying directly from the episode transcript):

Jono: But what Anakin is not mature enough or mindful enough or experienced enough to be aware of, is that he's being steered right, and that Palpatine is doing it deliberately to drive a wedge between Anakin and the people he cares about and who care about him. At least a few of them do. Um, not Mace. Mace. Come on...

Anakin [ROTS clip]: I must go, Master.

Mace [ROTS clip]: No.

Alan: Do better, man.

Jono: Do better, Mace.

I firmly don’t know what explanation there is for this other than tone policing of a black man. Whether it’s CinemaTherapy’s problem specifically, or if they’ve just been drinking the fandom koolaid I don’t know, but it’s a problem either way. Let me explain.

The casualness of the remarks is wild. There is a full eyeroll, and several *theatrically* shaken heads. The transcript does not fully convey how out of place it feels watching it. It's almost to the point where I really want to give the benefit of the doubt and believe it's sarcasm, but the rest of the video does really not support that assumption. (If this is my failure of interpreting other humans, and it was sarcasm, then forgive me, I suppose).

I’m not even sure what aspect of Mace's behavior toward Anakin they’re addressing? The ROTS clip they choose to play of him—presumably an attempt to highlight whatever they’re talking about—is from Mace telling Anakin to stay behind when he's going to face Palpatine.

Of all the moments, if I was ever going to try and construct a “Mace is mean to Anakin specifically narrative,” I would not pick that one? It’s quite literally the chillest interaction they have in all three movies? If I was them, and trying to actually showcase an “Anakin’s doesn’t get enough affirmation or connection from the Jedi,” narrative, I would choose a scene like when Mace says Anakin won’t be trained. At least there you could make a argument that the council’s decision could’ve been explained a bit less bluntly, and that there’s something of a “conversations that adults should be having privately are instead occurring in front of a child” situation.

The casualness of the remark, the “Do better, Mace” and the knowing head shakes, those matter. The way they’re just tossed in, as if every audience member will instantly agree and chuckle at how of course Mace Windu is being mean and rude, they tell the casual Star Wars viewer that this is a universally accepted position, when it is not.

It also supposes the idea that Mace owes Anakin special emotional labor. A relationship therapist might, I don’t know, consider the relationship between Anakin, Mace, and the very relevant context of the interaction before making this judgement? Mace is not one of Anakin’s friends, confidants, or even a member of his lineage. He is, especially in the moment they chose to highlight, the leader of the Jedi Order. Anakin’s boss, to oversimplify, and the leader of Anakin’s people, to say the truth. He’s worried about the fate of the entire galaxy at that specific moment!

And guess what? He’s not even being rude, at all. He’s being direct, that’s it.

If they had chosen to highlight the line, "If what you have told me is true, you will have gained my trust," and talked about Mace not trusting Anakin, I might have been willing to humor this argument out of respect for the relevant textual evidence and for the sake of having some peace. But no, in their own words, this is about, "Anakin and the people he cares about and who care about him." This remark is about care, not trust.

And guess what again? Despite all of the other things he has to think about, Mace is considering Anakin’s feelings here. He isn’t telling Anakin to stay behind because he doesn’t want Anakin to be allowed to participate is the cool fun lethal lightsaber duel. He does it because Anakin is emotionally compromised. Even if you think of the the Jedi as flawed, you cannot think taking Anakin to fight Sidious would be a good, safe, or healthy idea? Would you take the person who you’re just figuring out has probably been groomed for years into a violent confrontation with their abuser?

Mace Windu is doing everything, thinking of everything, and caring about everything in this scene, and yet fans still find fault with him. They still find him insufficient and mean.

Opinions like these are not subtle, they are not cute, and they are deeply influenced by what Mace looks like in relationship to what to what Anakin looks like.

Step back, examine scenes for what actually occurs in them, rather than what larger fandom and larger society tells you is happening in them. This is the core of analyzing and creating art. What do you see in the world that others do not? I beg of you, see Mace Windu for once.

(If I was going harder, I would talk about how I think their very lame opinions of the Jedi are causing them to actually miss some of the depth of Sidious’ manipulation (including leaving out so much as a mention of the scene where Obi-Wan very explicitly tells Anakin he’s proud of him), but again, for the interpretation they’ve decided on their advice seems good, so I’ll leave it alone.)

[shrinkrants]

In 2017, a young Black woman of Togolese descent, TG, visited the emergency department due to distress and panic attacks related to previous sexual assaults. She was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit and diagnosed with psychosis. Upon discharge, she was prescribed perphenazine, a first-generation antipsychotic with greater side effect risks. Despite her symptoms being primarily related to mood and trauma, her dosage was increased by subsequent providers. In 2021, a team at Yale Department of Psychiatry determined that she had been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia due to racial bias. After a thorough review of her medical records and social history, TG received a re-diagnosis of major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Adjusting her medication led to a significant improvement in her depression, anxiety, and panic attacks.

In an article published in Harvard Review of Psychiatry, physicians at the Yale Department of Psychiatry present the case of TG to explore the mechanisms behind what they call “psychiatry’s longest-standing inequities born of real-time clinician racial bias” and its iatrogenic harm to patients who come to seek their help for other mood or trauma-related disorders. They write:

“For TG, she had consistently been telling providers about her sexual trauma for years only to have ED and outpatient providers doubt her report of abuse as a possible ‘delusion.’ During her second ED encounter in August 2018, documentation depicts her testimony using appallingly insensitive language, including ‘increasingly bizarre statements about supposed rape.’” Here, we can see how “biased perceptions of dishonesty intersect with bias against believing sexual assault survivors.”

[thoughtportal]

why are we looking? and why aren't we looking?

the most important time to check is when you are least likely to check

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Mahzarin Banaji and Frank Dobbin

Published: Sep 17, 2023

At least 30 states are considering legislation to defund DEI initiatives in public universities and state agencies. At the same time, conservative activists, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, are suing companies to stop DEI initiatives. These challenges come on the heels of the growth of corporate DEI programs after the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020.  

Meanwhile, advocates for DEI—which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion—have bemoaned the fact that after decades of diversity training, many university faculties, state agencies and corporations have made little progress on diversifying the workforce.

Are the right and the left on the same page here—is diversity training a hopeless cause?

We are a psychologist and a sociologist who have been studying bias and organizational diversity programs, respectively, for decades. The research makes it clear that Americans desperately need education about bias, because even people who value fairness and equality hold biases—without being aware of it. They need to understand that bias operates systemically and must be addressed at the individual, institutional and societal levels.

Education offered on these matters is very much in the national spirit. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted in “Democracy in America” in 1835: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”

What research shows

The social and behavioral sciences have developed strong evidence about conscious prejudice and implicit bias. Three lines of research, together, are pertinent. One provides good news. As our colleague Larry Bobo has documented, conscious unabashed racial prejudice has fallen consistently since the 1960s. White Americans today largely believe in racial equality.

This isn’t to say that explicit expressions of prejudice have evaporated; in fact they pop up with surprising regularity. The pandemic witnessed precipitous increases in anti-Asian hatred, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, instances of antisemitism are at a record high. 

A second line of research shows that less conscious, or implicit, bias has declined more slowly. Bias against some groups has barely budged. If only explicit values and biases drove discrimination, unfair treatment of, say, Black workers would be low. But implicit bias taints employer behavior and decisions. Our colleague Mandy Palais and collaborators find, for instance, that implicit racial bias in grocery-store managers still influences worker performance.

A third line of research uses audit studies, in which matched Black and white people, for instance, apply to the same job. Who gets called in for an interview, or hired? Scores of studies show discrimination by race, ethnicity, gender and disability. These studies show, among other things, that white applicants are about 50% more likely than identical Black applicants to be called back for an interview or offered a job. Other audit studies show discrimination in real-world access to financial resources, healthcare and treatment by the law and law enforcement.    

Research by Lincoln Quillian and colleagues compares the results of audit studies over time, finding that discrimination against Black job applicants is virtually unchanged from a generation ago. And the economist Raj Chetty and colleagues not only show a shocking drop in American upward mobility over time, but also show that in regions with high levels of implicit bias, Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to move up the economic ladder.

Research by Lincoln Quillian and colleagues compares the results of audit studies over time, finding that discrimination against Black job applicants is virtually unchanged from a generation ago. And the economist Raj Chetty and colleagues not only show a shocking drop in American upward mobility over time, but also show that in regions with high levels of implicit bias, Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to move up the economic ladder. 

Research from one of us, Frank Dobbin (with Alexandra Kalev), meanwhile, shows how likely a worker in a U.S. firm is to have a management job, by group. Women and people of color see increases until the mid-1980s. But progress stalls for Black and Hispanic workers after that. Men from those groups make no progress between then and 2021, and women make almost no progress. We clearly have more work to do to equalize opportunity.

Falling short

It’s not hard to conclude from all these studies that we are not the land of opportunity for everyone we claim to be. An enlightened society should see that education about the prevalence of discrimination is imperative. In fact, it would be downright dumb not to educate people. 

But, as Dobbin and Kalev have shown, the typical DEI training doesn’t educate people about bias and may even do harm.

Most training programs fall short on two fronts. First, they use implicit-bias education to shame trainees for holding stereotypes. Trainers play gotcha, sending trainees to take an online test co-developed by one of us, Mahzarin Banaji, for education and research. Instead of training people about research that finds that bias is pervasive, trainers use the test to prove to trainees that they are morally flawed. People leave feeling guilty for holding biases that conflict with American values.

“Gotcha” isn’t going to win people over. The approach is disrespectful, and misses the main takeaway from implicit bias research: Everyone holds biases they don’t control as a consequence of a lifetime of exposure to societal inequality, the media and the arts. Trainers should introduce these ideas with humility, for trainers themselves can’t help but hold these very biases. They could easily educate themselves about the implicit bias research with resources at outsmartingimplicitbias.org.

The second problem with most trainings is that they seek to solve the problem of bias by invoking the law to scare people about the risk of letting bias go unchecked. Trainers recount stories of big companies brought to their heels by discrimination suits. They detail rigid do’s and don’ts for hiring, disciplining and firing people. They require trainees to pass tests on what the law forbids. All of this makes it clear that the CEO approved the training solely to avoid litigation. Trainees leave scared that they will be punished for a simple mistake that may land their company in court.  

Trainings with this one-two punch—you are biased and the law will get you—backfire. The research shows that this kind of training leads to reductions in women and people of color in management.

Why would diversity training actually make things worse? Making people feel ashamed can lead them to reject the message. Thus people often leave diversity training feeling angry and with greater animosity toward other groups (“There’s no way I’m biased!”). And threats of punishment, by the law in this case, typically lead to psychological “reactance” whereby people reject the desired behavior (“Nobody’s telling me what I can’t say!”). This kind of training can turn off even supporters of equal-opportunity programs. 

A better way

It doesn’t have to be this way, and Dobbin and Kalev’s research on training points to a better alternative. Instead of using legal scare tactics, training programs should give managers a way to counter biases—namely, training in strategies for cultural inclusion. This kind of training teaches skills in listening, observation and intervention. It thus helps managers to hear employee concerns, notice when workers are feeling shunned or dissed, and intervene. It also offers skills for starting tough conversations about how to treat colleagues at work.

Those are skills from Management 101, but managers often don’t want to hear bad news, so they don’t ask employees about troubles, watch teams for signs of bullying, or speak up when they sense a problem. Reminding managers that they can use these tools to suss out problems and nip them in the bud helps them to feel capable of managing biases and microaggressions. When managers use these skills, they retain women and people of color for long enough to come up for promotion. That’s how good diversity training can boost diversity. Unfortunately, only about a quarter of diversity trainings emphasize cultural inclusion. 

Moreover, if training succeeds in conveying the findings from bias research—that bias is unseen but pervasive—it can build support for wider systemic changes designed to tear down obstacles to equal opportunity. In that sense, training isn’t designed to blame people for their moral failings. Instead, it’s galvanizing them to support organizational change by arming them with knowledge.

In the end, DEI training can’t squelch implicit bias; nothing short of changing people’s life experiences can do that. But when done right, implicit-bias education can alert students to the fact that people committed to equality nonetheless hold biases. And that knowledge can, in turn, motivate them to reshape their workplaces to counter discrimination by democratizing key parts of the career system.

That means extending recruitment visits from Harvard to Howard; offering mentors to each and every worker; and inviting all employees to nominate themselves for skill and management training programs. It means offering work-life supports to people up and down the ladder. Each of these changes has been shown to produce significant increases in managerial diversity.

The lesson here, the one that should be at the core of DEI training, is that implicit bias resides in individuals, but it resides in organizational career systems as well. And fixing those systems is as simple as democratizing them.

Mahzarin Banaji is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and co-author of “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.” Frank Dobbin is a professor of sociology at Harvard University and co-author of “Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t.” They can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

[ Via: https://archive.is/0D4kV ]

==

[eelhound]

"No one ever says dismissively of a potential CEO candidate that he's too short. This is quite clearly the kind of unconscious bias that the IAT [Implicit Association Test] picks up on. Most of us, in ways that we are not entirely aware of, automatically associate leadership ability with imposing physical stature. We have a sense of what a leader is supposed to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations.

And this isn't confined to the executive suite. Not long ago, researchers who analyzed the data from four large research studies that had followed thousands of people from birth to adulthood calculated that when corrected for such variables as age and gender and weight, an inch of height is worth $789 a year in salary. That means that a person who is six feet tall but otherwise identical to someone who is five foot five will make on average $5,525 more per year. As Timothy Judge, one of the authors of the height-salary study, points out: 'If you take this over the course of a 30-year career and compound it, we're talking about a tall person enjoying literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings advantage.'"

- Malcolm Gladwell, from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005.

[alwaysbewoke]

There was/is a study by Joshua Correll that tested how skin color affected a police officer's decision to shoot. In the study, when the threat was white, the cops were so reluctant to shoot that they allowed the threat to harm them or others. When the threat was Black, they were much quicker to shoot. However they were so quick to shoot when the race was Black that they would shoot innocent Black ppl during the test. The study was/is called "Police Officer Dilemma." This "training" in this video is how it happens because we are a deeply deeply racist country.

[saturnniidae]

Worst thing ever is when a tv show has a racially diverse cast of main characters, but the fandom favorite is The White One.

[sophiaphile]

"Like The New York Times, CNN and network news programs, it [PowerPoint] appears to be neutral, unbiased and free of any leanings one way or another. Just as a hammer does not tell you what kind of house to build, Microsoft would like us to think...that their product is merely a neutral tool. It is faceless, and it is what you put into it that counts.

However, every piece of software comes with its own set of biases and tendencies. The most obvious bias and the easiest to see in PowerPoint, is the Auto Content Wizard, a feature that makes outlines of presentations with bullet points for those who feel they don't know how to make a presentation themselves...

However, there are more subtle sets of biases at work. The way the PowerPoint is structured and the various options provided have not only been limited...but they have been designed assuming, a priori, a specific world view. The software, by making certain directions and actions easier and more convenient than others, tells you how to think as it helps you accomplish your task. Not in an obvious way or in an obnoxious way or even in a scheming way. The biases are almost unintentional, they are so natural and well-integrated. It is possible that the engineers and designers have no intention of guiding and straightening out your thinking; they simply feel that the assumptions upon which they base their design decisions are the most natural and practical. You are thus subtly indoctrinated into a manner of being and behaving, assuming and acting, that grows on you as you use the program."

—David Byrne, "Exegesis," Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information

[odinsblog]

Inviting Iowa was disrespectful, and the way she said, "...so we'll have them come" was the giveaway. Having the LSU Tigers come to the White House was little more than a perfunctory afterthought in her mind. The important thing was having the white team from Iowa visit. And you cannot convince me that Jill’s comment about “good sportsmanship” wasn’t aimed at Angel Reese. Foul.

[lichenart]

I have implicit biases and you probably do too! The important thing is I do my best to recognize and work on them. I have an online friend who I chat with on discord. I turned on voice chat and realized they do not have an American accent. I then realized I would probably had thought differently of them if I had heard their voice first. Now I can fix that and go on as a better person. It is better to recognize you are not perfect. I believe it is more virtuous to start out imperfect and have to work to be a better person than start out golden, because working to being better shows you really care. AND DON’T YOU DARE TRY AND SAY YOU DON’T HAVE BIASES WHEN THE PERSON YOU ARE BIASED TOWARDS POINTS IT OUT. Refusing to acknowledge and work on faults is immature and shows you won’t fix it when you hurt people. “But I’m neurodivergent, or gay, or *insert marginalized identity here*” That doesn’t make you immune to bias and propaganda. Just be mature and accept you make mistakes and so you don’t hurt someone next time!!!!

[sharknado-three]

I have a diagnosed girlboss-malewife bias.