YourBrainIsAJerk

Well our official definition is "the attitudes or stereotypes that impact our actions and decisions in an unconscious manner". But really it just means the automatic evaluations and stereotypes humans make about someone based on race, gender, age, etc.. People do this without trying to. Having bias doesn't make us bad, it makes us human. These biases instead reflect how our minds internalize our culture rather than personal intent to be biased, racist, sextist.. etc.

Absolutely! Two of the most prominent researchers in the field in the field calls it a "blindspots"--they have a book with that title about how implicit biases help explain why so much disparities happen in a world where most people have good intentions.

Hi and thanks for your question! First, I apologize if I misinterpret any aspects of your question. I think that saying that someone has an implicit bias and is more likely to shoot unarmed Black teen does not mean the same thing as saying someone is racist and violent-- I think that the racist and violent language implies intent to do harm where implicit biases can influence behavior even when someone is trying not to. Unfortunately, implicit bias shooter studies are well documented (e.g. the tendency to shoot an unarmed black target vs and unarmed white target). This goes back to the general association between Blackness and criminality, many folks harbor this bias (regardless of race) because it is a reflection of the stereotypes we all see on TV. I am in no position to interpret Sec Clinton, but i think that pointing out the implicit biases that influence officers and all of us to are the result of a flawed system, and not big bad racists that want to cause harm (even though those types of people do exist too). Some of our partners at Fair and Impartial Policing do a good job of talking about these shooter tasks and implicit bias in policing, their website can be found here http://www.fairimpartialpolicing.com/bias/ Again, great question.

Wellll I could say that the lovely trainers at the Kirwan Institute would neverrrr shame anyone!! (haha just a little shameless plug ;) ) . But one of the core assumptions of all of our trainings is that everyone in the audience has good intentions. Thus, the trainings are helpful for allowing organizations to create bias-thoughtful policies to discourage the expression of discrimination before it starts. As I referred to earlier, a goal of an implicit bias training at an HR firm could be implementing blind reviews to curb gender bias in hiring. The purpose for training should always be solution driven and focus on practices rather than just identifying bias purely for the sake of doing so. I am sorry that you had to sit through that and feel uncomfortable during the training!

You're right, I only used the example to illustrate more of a skin-tone place of origin expectation, purely anecdotal.

Regarding the IQ tests, these are very historically biased against other background and cultures--even to the point that some states won't allow them in their assessment of disability process. This happens because the normative sample for many of these tests were biased in the first place or weighted moral/etiquette decisions as a measure of intelligence. One example (I believe it was the WISC) included a question about what you would do if you found a wallet-- this question purportedly assesses raw intelligence, but it's easy to see how contextual factors like poverty could influence this measure.

I definitely do believe that IQ, temperament, or physical ability are very environmentally driven and not an accurate measure of genetic differences, especially as they pertain to race (but also gender). One thing that we've learned from implicit bias research is that seemingly unbiased ratings (such as the quality of a memo) can be influenced by race or gender, even if all other factors are identical (e.g. exact same memo but written race of the author was changed).

To get at the genetic vs social construction of race, here's a really good article in Science mag http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6273/564

I'm not sure I understand your last paragraph, could you explain further?

Finally, I don't think this disagreement means that dialogue should be hindered. And I appreciate your openness in discussing the issue