Unconscious Bias Training a.k.a Bigotfinder General (1968)

[Theremin]

My workplace has just announced that all managers are to undergo an anti-racial bias course courtesy of a local company.

Anyone else had to do this?

My knee-jerk reaction, based on having read about some American courses in this field, is that it's mostly a way to squeeze money out of anxious liberals (and in the case of big firms, a lawsuit-proofer) and doesn't have any real substance or long term positive effect.

Also, we're a small arts firm of 14-odd bigots honkeys under the age of 35, so I can't really imagine what racial tensions are likely to come up.

Maybe someone's been throwing the 'Gyppo' word around the tea room.

Also, this is a nice excuse to post a picture of Vincent Price looking really bloody sexy just like a cool guy.

[bgmnts]

I realised I possibly liked the Sopranos more than the Wire due to some unconscious racial bias. I've now come to the conclusion its a much better and more important show.

Although we still say gyp with pretty reckless abandon so maybe we need a bit more training.

[Theremin]

I realised I possibly liked the Sopranos more than the Wire due to some unconscious racial bias. I've now come to the conclusion its a much better and more important show.

Although we still say gyp with pretty reckless abandon so maybe we need a bit more training.

"My MOM was I-talian, and my DAD was Idris Elba...

So I eat my gabaGOOL while dressed as James Bond."

[dissolute ocelot]

Well if you knew you were worse than Hitler, you wouldn't need *unconscious* bias training. Smiley.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission produced a report on whether Unconscious Bias Training (UBT) works. The conclusion was that on its own UBT isn't much good: it may reveal that you are prejudiced but may not change behaviour, and the result may be that people just give up and accept they're bigots (this is possibly how Laurence Fox reacted when he heard about Black Lives Matter).

● UBT is effective for awareness raising by using an IAT[nb]Implicit Association Test (google it)[/nb] (followed by a debrief) or more advanced training designs such as interactive workshops.
● UBT can be effective for reducing implicit bias, but it is unlikely to eliminate it.
● UBT interventions are not generally designed to reduce explicit bias and those that do aim to do so have yielded mixed results.
● Using the IAT and educating participants on unconscious bias theory is likely to increase awareness of and reduce implicit bias.
● The evidence for UBT's ability effectively to change behaviour is limited. Most of the evidence reviewed did not use valid measures of behaviour change.
● There is potential for back-firing effects when UBT participants are exposed to information that suggests stereotypes and biases are unchangeable.
● Evidence from the perspective of the subjects of bias, such as those with protected characteristics, is limited. This evidence could provide additional information on potential back-firing effects.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Keir Starmer's had one of them.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

RACISM

[touchingcloth]

My workplace has just announced that all managers are to undergo an anti-racial bias course courtesy of a local company.

Anyone else had to do this?

My knee-jerk reaction, based on having read about some American courses in this field, is that it's mostly a way to squeeze money out of anxious liberals (and in the case of big firms, a lawsuit-proofer) and doesn't have any real substance or long term positive effect.

Also, we're a small arts firm of 14-odd bigots honkeys under the age of 35, so I can't really imagine what racial tensions are likely to come up.

Maybe someone's been throwing the 'Gyppo' word around the tea room.

Also, this is a nice excuse to post a picture of Vincent Price looking really bloody sexy just like a cool guy.

These courses are really useful in my experience, and you'll be surprised by the kinds of issues which get raised.

You won't come away thinking you're an awful racist because you're probably not, but you might start thinking whether the ways you advertise jobs rule out certain people (e.g. requiring previous experience in a management role might rule out otherwise competent women given that men are overrepresented in those positions), or look at CVs (e.g. evidence suggests that people tend to hire people who were educated at a red brick university if they were themselves, and also that all other things being equal an "ethnic" name on a CV makes it less likely for someone to be invited to interview), or conduct interviews (e.g. when the New York philharmonic started to audition musicians blind by putting them behind a screen they ended up hiring their first female musicians in their history).

It's all fascinating stuff, and I think most reasonable people would come away from this sort of training feeling a little uncomfortable about the biases they never realised they had, and also knowing what sort of simple steps they can take to overcome them.

Like if your team is 14 white people under 35, do you think there's a chance you might be carrying on in a way which makes it disproportionately likely that the next person who gets hired is a white person under 35, or that a talented black person of 50 either doesn't see the job advert or does see it and decides they're not qualified?

[thugler]

These courses are really useful in my experience, and you'll be surprised by the kinds of issues which get raised.

You won't come away thinking you're an awful racist because you're probably not, but you might start thinking whether the ways you advertise jobs rule out certain people (e.g. requiring previous experience in a management role might rule out otherwise competent women given that men are overrepresented in those positions), or look at CVs (e.g. evidence suggests that people tend to hire people who were educated at a red brick university if they were themselves, and also that all other things being equal an "ethnic" name on a CV makes it less likely for someone to be invited to interview), or conduct interviews (e.g. when the New York philharmonic started to audition musicians blind by putting them behind a screen they ended up hiring their first female musicians in their history).

It's all fascinating stuff, and I think most reasonable people would come away from this sort of training feeling a little uncomfortable about the biases they never realised they had, and also knowing what sort of simple steps they can take to overcome them.

Like if your team is 14 white people under 35, do you think there's a chance you might be carrying on in a way which makes it disproportionately likely that the next person who gets hired is a white person under 35, or that a talented black person of 50 either doesn't see the job advert or does see it and decides they're not qualified?

Agree with this. It's not a huge difficult thing to go through either.

[Theremin]

These courses are really useful in my experience, and you'll be surprised by the kinds of issues which get raised.

I'll certainly do my best to go in with an open mind - after all, it is impossible to know what you dont know.

Like if your team is 14 white people under 35, do you think there's a chance you might be carrying on in a way which makes it disproportionately likely that the next person who gets hired is a white person under 35, or that a talented black person of 50 either doesn't see the job advert or does see it and decides they're not qualified?

Totally see what you're getting at here (and the job descriptions point is one that I find worth chewing over a bit more specifically), but it our case I think the current makeup of the team is more due to this being a little arts org with piddling pay (in terms of age demographics), in a country with a pretty small non-white population (in terms of race demo).

Economic barriers also nonwithstanding - but that's more a reason why someone (someone non-white or someone from a poorer background) wouldn't be in the arts job pool in the first place.

[touchingcloth]

I'll certainly do my best to go in with an open mind - after all, it is impossible to know what you dont know.

Totally see what you're getting at here (and the job descriptions point is one that I find worth chewing over a bit more specifically), but it our case I think the current makeup of the team is more due to this being a little arts org with piddling pay (in terms of age demographics), in a country with a pretty small non-white population (in terms of race demo).

Economic barriers also nonwithstanding - but that's more a reason why someone (someone non-white or someone from a poorer background) wouldn't be in the arts job pool in the first place.

We're going through similar stuff at the moment as a company which makes software for the arts. Our ~100 staff are largely people who once worked in the arts, and our diversity reflects that. Gays and women and people with disabilities are well-represented, but we're extremely white and are thinking about what we can do to change that.

There's no simple way to do it and we may yet fail, but unconscious bias training has been useful for, as you say, finding out some of the things we don't know we don't know.

[Zetetic]

when the New York philharmonic started to audition musicians blind by putting them behind a screen they ended up hiring their first female musicians in their history

These sorts of actual system changes are worth learning from[nb]Although if, for example, your approach to recruitment shows you names at any point during shortlisting or doesn't involve an anonymous job-relevant assessment, in 2020, you're clearly a massive fuck-up of an organisation.[/nb] but I get the impression that "UBT" per-se doesn't necessarily get groups of people to that point.

UBT got specifically dragged into the "Is the BPS institutionally racist?" discussions a short while back. Trying to find some links...

[touchingcloth]

These sorts of actual system changes are worth learning from[nb]Although if, for example, your approach to recruitment shows you names at any point during shortlisting or doesn't involve an anonymous job-relevant assessment, in 2020, you're clearly a massive fuck-up of an organisation.[/nb] but I get the impression that "UBT" per-se doesn't necessarily get groups of people to that point.

UBT got specifically dragged into the "Is the BPS institutionally racist?" discussions a short while back. Trying to find some links...

Yeah, the purpose of UBT in my experience hasn't been to give specific instructions about how hiring ought to be carried out, but they often include those sorts of examples to give people some idea of why the training is worthwhile.

[Alberon]

A year or so back my uni made us all do a 30 minutes online course about Unconcious Bias (narrated by Nick Knowles for no apparent reason). It just covered the basics, like your unconcious is necessary for interpreting the world around us at lightning speed, but it can only do that by making assumptions.

For isntance, you walk in a room and see a table. You don't deduce it is a table or even look at it and go "its a table", you just register it below your concious level. The story used in the training module to show how you can be trapped by unconcious bias worked quite well and I've tried it out on others and no one has got it so far.

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

[touchingcloth]

A year or so back my uni made us all do a 30 minutes online course about Unconcious Bias (narrated by Nick Knowles for no apparent reason). It just covered the basics, like your unconcious is necessary for interpreting the world around us at lightning speed, but it can only do that by making assumptions.

For isntance, you walk in a room and see a table. You don't deduce it is a table or even look at it and go "its a table", you just register it below your concious level. The story used in the training module to show how you can be trapped by unconcious bias worked quite well and I've tried it out on others and no one has got it so far.

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

How old are you? I only ask because I first heard that question when I was about ten (I was born in '86) and got the answer immediately and had to have it explained to me why people's assumptions can make it difficult to answer.

That's not to say huzzah I am the most woke, just that the assumptions it relies on weren't as baked-in by the mid-90s - I think most ten year olds then and certainly now wouldn't struggle with the answer.

[confettiinmyhair]

Two Dads.

[touchingcloth]

Two Dads.

...makes it even easier for the current generation to easily get to a valid answer. Adding information to the question which ruled out the two dads answer would mean hardly anyone would still make the assumptions it tries to highlight.

[Bazooka]

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

It's a David Lynch film.

[paruses]

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

Did the dad have amnesia from the accident?

[Cold Meat Platter]

Stepson
Adopted
Surgeon is mental
Surgeon is god

[Cuellar]

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

Son = Edmonds

[machotrouts]

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

He's Pagliacci

[NoSleep]

This will be the new Y2K scam. In a year's time, all the people that went to the training will be thoroughly racist.

[machotrouts]

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

Bitches too incompetent to operate on they own damn son

[flotemysost]

These courses are really useful in my experience, and you'll be surprised by the kinds of issues which get raised.

You won't come away thinking you're an awful racist because you're probably not, but you might start thinking whether the ways you advertise jobs rule out certain people (e.g. requiring previous experience in a management role might rule out otherwise competent women given that men are overrepresented in those positions), or look at CVs (e.g. evidence suggests that people tend to hire people who were educated at a red brick university if they were themselves, and also that all other things being equal an "ethnic" name on a CV makes it less likely for someone to be invited to interview), or conduct interviews (e.g. when the New York philharmonic started to audition musicians blind by putting them behind a screen they ended up hiring their first female musicians in their history).

It's all fascinating stuff, and I think most reasonable people would come away from this sort of training feeling a little uncomfortable about the biases they never realised they had, and also knowing what sort of simple steps they can take to overcome them.

Like if your team is 14 white people under 35, do you think there's a chance you might be carrying on in a way which makes it disproportionately likely that the next person who gets hired is a white person under 35, or that a talented black person of 50 either doesn't see the job advert or does see it and decides they're not qualified?

Really clear explanation there.

I think as well as improving diversity around the initial hiring process, this type of training also has a responsibility in questioning whether your workplace is actually an appealing, welcoming place for everyone to stick around at. My employer (yet another media company with a massive diversity problem), having recognised that it has a massive problem, has been holding training and seminars and the like on this subject for the past couple of years, and I do think staff retention is something that often gets overlooked in favour of hiring inclusively (which is of course hugely important too).

For example, if pretty much every work social event, team bonding type stuff, Christmas party etc. revolves around drinking booze or going to the pub, as was the case for my and doubtless many other workplaces pre-COVID, that doesn't exactly send out a welcoming message to anyone who doesn't drink. (Obviously there are plenty of reasons why someone might not drink other than cultural or religious, but it's not just about that - lots of people I know just aren't into that UK pub culture as it can be overwhelmingly white and male depending on where you are, and being forced to spend time somewhere you feel uncomfortable and pretend you're enjoying it isn't exactly appealing.)

I think the real value of this type of training is that, if effective, it hopefully encourages individuals to examine their own thought process and realise how that can have a direct effect on the bigger picture. My company have introduced a few rules which sound good on paper, like removing the requirement to have a university degree from any job ad, but I think literally the same week that was introduced, I overheard a conversation in the staff canteen where two managers were going through CVs and making impressed noises about the fact that several applicants were Russell Group uni grads.

[idunnosomename]

A man and his son are out for a drive in a car. They get in a road accident and while the man is not badly hurt the boy requires surgery. So the boy is rushed to the hospital but upon seeing the patient the surgeon remarks "I can't operate on him because he's my son." How is that possible?

it's amazing how often this catches people out. try it yourself!

[Cold Meat Platter]

Real answer? It's his mum.

EDIT: sorry Machotrouts you'd already already said this. In a way.

[idunnosomename]

a woman doctor???? what if she menstruates all over the patient!

[Bernice]

Oh cant operate on me is it mum, nice one yeah, I'll just keep this steering column lodged in my spleen. Nah don't worry, totally get that you are squeamish about this situation, it's not like you made me out of spunk like some creampie Golem and then squeezed me out your cunt.

[Better Midlands]

a woman doctor???? what if she menstruates all over the patient!

She wouldn't get a chance to, they'd be too many bears in the operating theatre.

[Zetetic]

It is a woman doctor, but she's a racist and thinks "they" (including her adopted son, who was not involved in the RTA) all look the same.

If you don't like that answer, then you probably think women professionals can't be racists or some other protective nonsense.