I’m guessing the answer to the “Are you a racist” question is no. I don’t doubt some people are racist, however, I am pretty sure it is a very small number. On the other hand, the mainstream media and grifters would have you believe otherwise. The grifters are here to tell you that
Because the nature of the problem is unconscious, we can’t trust our own minds to determine our biases. - unconscious bias project
Because of all these biases, schools across America have adopted anti-bias curriculums where self-righteous unions feel like it is their duty to show children their biases. More on this later.
While this sounds well and good, however, if you dig deeper into these roots, you will find what is being described is “unconscious” a.k.a “implicit” (these two terms are interchangeable) bias is entirely based on “The Implicit Association Test (IAT)” authored by Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji which is considered an IQ test for bias. There are links at the end of this post if you would like to read more about it.
Before we get into the IAT, we have to understand why unconscious/implicit bias is problematic. There is a great summary by Glen Shuld on his blog at https://thecolorofcharacter.com/division/implicit-bias-real-or-not/ here is an excerpt.
If it [implicit bias] really exists, and cannot be overcome, as the proponents of this idea claim, then Dr. King’s speech can never become reality. According to those who believe implicit bias is proven science, we can never truly judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. … What makes it tragic is that this probable fallacy has altered American life, perhaps irrevocably, and in ways that have done little to improve race relations or the lives of black Americans.
Here is a description of how the IAT test works:
The race IAT (there are non-race varieties) displays a series of black faces and white faces on a computer; the test subject must sort them quickly by race into two categories, represented by the “i” and “e” keys. Next, the subject sorts “good” or “positive” words like “pleasant,” and “bad” or “negative” words like “death,” into good and bad categories. The sorting tasks are then intermingled: faces and words appear at random on the screen, and the test-taker has to sort them with the same keys. Next, the sorting protocol is reversed. If, before, a black face was to be sorted using the same key as the key for a “bad” word, now a black face is sorted with the same key as a “good” word and a white face sorted with the reverse key. If a subject takes longer sorting black faces using the computer key associated with a “good” word than he does sorting white faces using the computer key associated with a “good” word, the IAT deems the subject a bearer of implicit bias… at the end of the test, he finds out whether he has a strong, moderate, or weak “preference” for blacks or for whites. A majority of test-takers (including many blacks) are rated as showing a preference for white faces.- excerpt from: https://www.city-journal.org/html/are-we-all-unconscious-racists-15487.html
A few problems with the test include:
- There’s not a single aspect of the test that is not vulnerable to a rigorous methodological critique.
- Any individual test-taker’s scores on the implicit bias test can vary wildly from one taking to the next, so the test fails what is known in the social psychology literature as the measure of reliability.
- What counts as discriminatory behavior is completely artificial and trivial.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Harvard, and the University of Virginia examined 499 studies over 20 years involving 80,859 participants that used the IAT and other, similar measures. They discovered two things: One is that the correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior appears weaker than previously thought. They also conclude that there is very little evidence that changes in implicit bias have anything to do with changes in a person’s behavior. These findings, they write, “produce a challenge for this area of research.” - https://www.chronicle.com/article/can-we-really-measure-implicit-bias-maybe-not/
Please know that I in no way nor do the data suggest that discrimination doesn’t exist.
What I AM saying is, schools, and society writ large are basing anti-bias curriculum and its use on a test that has overestimated the degree of people’s implicit racial prejudice.
One-in-seven U.S. infants (14%) were multiracial or multiethnic in 2015, nearly triple the share in 1980, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. - pew research
So, if implicit bias is really true, that means that for each of these multiethnic children one-half of the child is biased towards the other half. Not sure how you square that circle.
All kidding aside, children have zero context for race when it comes to other children and their families. The only context they care about is whether or not there is someone to play with regardless of age, sex, religion and most importantly color.
My issue with teachers feeling like they need to teach anti-bias curriculum comes down to:
- If implicit/unconscious bias exists, it seems hypocritical that if everyone is biased, someone who is in fact a prisoner to these same biases would be teaching young children to push against them. It is a version of the blind leading the blind.
- If implicit/unconscious bias exists, how can we be assured these same “biased” teachers will not impart their opinions or their own “implicit/unconscious” biases” to our children?
Here is a list of articles I dug up to help you get more familiar with this topic if you are so inclined.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/are-we-all-unconscious-racists-15487.html
https://www.chronicle.com/article/can-we-really-measure-implicit-bias-maybe-not/
https://www.city-journal.org/html/science-behind-implicit-bias-15527.html
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3059&context=articles