Yes, I’m biased. I have a conscious bias against the very idea, or at least the uses of the idea, of “unconscious bias,” a faddish notion lovingly surveyed and endorsed in this New York Times piece in which Charles M. Blow writes that he “take[s] exception to Holder’s language, but not his line of reasoning” in his “A Nation of Cowards” speech (discussed here ).
Blow begins by attempting to give us what he regards as “a better understanding of the breadth and nature of racial bias.”
According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last month, twice as many blacks as whites thought racism was a big problem in this country, while twice as many whites as blacks thought that blacks had achieved racial equality.
Furthermore, according to a 2003 Gallup poll, two in five of blacks said that they felt discriminated against at least once a month, and one in five felt discriminated against every day. But, a CNN poll from last January found that 72 percent of whites thought that blacks overestimated the amount of discrimination against them, while 82 percent of blacks thought that whites underestimated the amount of discrimination against blacks.
Now, before moving on to the Blow by blow analysis of these data, I think it’s important to note that they prove nothing, nothing, about the extent of racial discrimination. All they indicate is what Blow, accurately, notes is a “wide discrepancy” between the beliefs of blacks and whites over that extent. But that’s not what Blow himself concludes. Asking “[w]hat explains the wide discrepancy,” Blow answers:
One factor could be that most whites harbor a hidden racial bias that many are unaware of and don’t consciously agree with.
He then proceeds to point to a bunch of sites and studies that purport to demonstrate whites’ “hidden racial bias.” Look at them if you want, make of them what you will, and decide for yourself how much, if any, “hidden racial bias” really exists and how much it influences behavior. But either before or after you do that, reconsider Blow’s comment quoted above and ask yourself whether it makes any sense at all to say that “most whites harbor a hidden racial bias that many are unaware of and don’t consciously agree with.” If “most whites harbor a hidden racial bias” but only “many” whites are unaware of it and don’t consciously agree with it, that must mean that some whites are aware of their “hidden” bias and in fact agree with it. Or unconsciously agree with it, or something equally nonsensical. But how can one either agree or disagree with a bias that’s unconscious and hidden? (If a bias is hidden in the forest and no one’s there to agree with it or act on it, is it there at all?)
Next, consider the convoluted, twisted double-bind (“A dilemma in which someone receives contradictory instructions and cannot act on either”) that inescapably results from taking the idea of hidden racial bias seriously. Even Blow notes an example, without seeming to appreciate its irony:
First, white people don’t want to be labeled as prejudiced, so they work hard around blacks not to appear so. A study conducted by researchers at Tufts University and Harvard Business School and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that many whites — including those as young as 10 years old — are so worried about appearing prejudiced that they act colorblind around blacks, avoiding “talking about race, or even acknowledging racial difference,” even when race is germane. Interestingly, blacks thought that whites who did this were more prejudiced than those who didn’t.
Second, that work is exhausting. A 2007 study by researchers at Northwestern and Princeton that was published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science found that interracial interactions leave whites both “cognitively and emotionally” drained because they are trying not to be perceived as prejudiced.
I wonder how many blacks in the surveys quoted above counted being treated in a colorblind manner as examples of discrimination. Since many of their spokesmen in the “civil rights” community, i.e., liberals, Democrats, editorial writers, etc., regard advocates of colorblind equality as racists, it would be surprising if they didn’t.
But Blow, generously, is willing to let “‘cognitively and emotionally’ drained” whites off the hook, acknowledging that “[t]he fear of offending isn’t necessarily cowardice, nor is a failure to acknowledge a bias that you don’t know that you have” — at least up to a point, since he can’t help adding “but they are impediments.”
So, is there any hope for us “cognitively and emotionally” impaired whites? Are there no re-education centers to which we could be sent? Blow does note one possible way to “eradicate this implicit bias”:
According to a Brown University and University of Victoria study that was published last month in the online journal PLoS One, researchers were able to ameliorate white’s racial biases by teaching them to distinguish black peoples’ faces from one another. Basically, seeing black people as individuals diminished white peoples’ discrimination. Imagine that.
Let’s not pause over the subtle but momentous transition Blow slips in here in passing from discussions of “bias” that is “hidden” and “implicit” and “unconscious” to the easy assertion of “white peoples’ discrimination.” The only thing here that is hard to imagine is Blow and friends taking this remedy seriously.
Whenever anyone, black or white, is presumptious or foolish enough to suggest that blacks should not only be seen but treated “as individuals,” not as fungible representatives of their race, they are immediately and vociferously branded as racists.
