Study: Black boys raised in wealthy households don't become wealthy adults but white boys do

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Not sure your point either Canuckguy. Are you suggesting there is not bias, or simply that the bias is not due to implicit racism? The article you linked to discussed the need to look at explicit racism, it does not dismiss the finding that such racism exists. The article points to working on changing behavior as the key.

I just heard one of the authors on the radio. I didn’t listen to the entire story, but she was sure that the findings in the study that started this thread would be evaluated as suggesting a problem. But she is somewhat disheartened to find that many are quick to dismiss the findings as reflective of nothing more than reflecting cultural differences, not pointing to the need to change the educational or criminal justice systems. She said that data alone, even very clear data as they found, did not seem to change too many minds.

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Implicit bias exist(s) as an opinion or a concept. I would not call it a science just yet. There is not even a test for it that has sufficient reliability and consistency even by social science standards.

Is Implicit bias a singular or plural? Is yours substantially the same as mine? Does it differs by race, ethnicity or cultural? Is it a composite of different variables? We know nothing about any of these and will continue to operate in the dark until we have better measurements.

I notice a lot of folks have trouble with standardized testing even though they are both reliable and consistent. So for implicit bias to satisfy our skepticism the tests must be even better. Yes? I am not holding my breath, btw.

Social science needs to spend more time perfecting their measurements instead of their theorizing . Calling itself science does not make it so. Capable of making accurate predictions is where rubber meets the road, imho.

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Yes, the studies on implicit bias are flawed, but the article you posted did not suggest that there is NO bias, but that it is rather explicit. And that the work needed is to change behavior, not worry about the source.

You seem to be concerned about the flawed studies, but that doesn’t invalidate the research posted by the OP.

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You throw ten coins in the air and seven come up heads - meaningless. You throw a thousand coins in the air and 700 come up heads is a very meaningful result and an indicator there is a bias in the system.

Reducing it to the behavior of a single coin and saying that you can’t predict its outcome in every instance does not refute the validity of a thousand coin test.

There are steps that can be taken and have been implemented, like scrubbing resumes and applications of names and addresses before getting to the hiring managers, similar to the blind auditions for the symphony.

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[qyite]Implicit bias exist(s) as an opinion or a concept. I would not call it a science just yet. There is not even a test for it that has sufficient reliability and consistency even by social science standards.

[/quote]

I can’t make sense of this comment. Implicit bias is not a science, because it is not the kind of thing that could be a science, any more than the flu, high tide, caribou migration, telekenesis or precognition are science. They are all the subject of science.

I don’t know what you’re saying when you say there is no test for implicit bias. Here is a test for implicit bias: give people who say they are not biased a chance to be biased, and see if they turn out to be biased. And we have done that over and over and over and over and over in scientific studies, and discovered that people who say they are not biased are biased. Why are you denying these clear, repeated results? These results are called “implicit bias.” Implicit bias is the name of what has been repeatedly discovered by academic researchers.

Orchestra auditioners say they weren’t biased against women, but they were.

Academics in a position to hire lab managers say they weren’t biased against women, but they were.

Here’s another for you. Low level government officials swear not to be biased against black people in the performance of their job, but they are. Researchers sent letters to librarians, sheriffs, and other local officials, asking mundane questions like “Could you please tell me what your opening hours are?” These letters were signed by a black-sounding name like Tyrone Washington or a white-sounding name like Jake Mueller. Surprise! The black-sounding emails got fewer and curter responses.

In the second round of the study, the researchers repeated the emails, but this time they added a signature line identifying the sender as a real estate agent, so that the recipient wouldn’t be guessing that the “white” email was from a richer person than the “black” email. This did not make any difference.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/economy/racial-discrimination-government-officials.html

You can pretend that implicit bias does not exist, but in order to do so, you have to ignore the clear evidence. Why would you want to do this?

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What would a better study have looked like if they were testing for bias? They would have matched people with as nearly identical qualifications as possible(ex. how do black HLS/YLS grads compare to their white counterparts in terms of outcomes).

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That doesn’t make sense. They wanted to know what happened to babies as they grew up. They tried to compare children who were, as far as they could determine, similar: the same neighborhood, the same parental income, the same parental marital status. They couldn’t compare Harvard graduates, because nobody is born a graduate of Harvard.

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Moreover, this study (the Chetty et al study from Stanford, that followed millions of Americas) was not testing for bias. Rather, this study was looking at the life trajectory of children, given various facts about their parents. It didn’t look for bias. It USED measured bias of different areas, and compared how otherwise similar black children did in neighborhoods with more or less measured bias.

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To illustrate my point, here is a comment from the Quartz’s article I posted:

That tells me there is a problem with the concept and it needs work. If they don’t have a proper measure for it, I don’t know how they can proceed. Doing workshops on something you don’t know or understand is pretty audacious, in my view.

But how do we change behaviour? When I was young, Japanese goods were known to be of poor quality. That changed when I grew older. I suspect attitude will change when URMs start having higher academic performance and lower crime rate than the dominant group. It will be a long hard battle, winning people over one person at a time until a critical mass can be developed.

If URMs manage to do so, they will be ORMs, won’t they? And they will be treated as such.

You really can not win.

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@Canuckguy, let’s let go of the Implicit Association Test, and see what we can agree on. (BTW, are you “Canuck” because you are a fan of the West Coast hockey team that is famous for choking up to/in the playoffs and is not the San Jose Sharks? Or just because you live in the Great White North?)

Do you agree that some people are racially biased (not committing to whether this is explicit or implicit)? Do you agree that this racial bias is greater in some areas of the US than in other areas of the US?

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I grew up in downtown Toronto and used to bleed Maple Leaf blue. I still live not far from where I grew up.

I suspect all of us are biased, racially or otherwise. Where I am now the people are more racially “biased” than where I grew up. I am sure it must be the same in the US.

An elderly teacher told me once that for every mile we are away from Toronto, we are going back a year in time. There is some truth to that, from the Province of Ontario perspective anyway.

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@Canuckguy, Former Leafs fan, eh? So we still may be able to bond over playoff futility, then. (Sharks fan here.)

It sounds like you are objecting to the Implicit Association Test, rather than the concept that some people are biased. Can we agree on this: Many of us have biases that make us treat some people differently that others based on categories that are irrelevant to the situation (eg a black-sounding or female name on the resume of a qualified candidate, a black face in a Starbucks or knocking at one’s front door midday). Many of us do not admit these biases to ourselves or others.

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That’s kinda bad. Isn’t Ontario like 1000 miles wide? It goes from New York to Minnesota.

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Is there a team in any sport that can match the Leafs for cup futility? They last won in 1967 when I was still in my teens.

Ontario is five times the size of France with Toronto in the southern end. I once took the train through the north and found little there. If you enjoy roughing it in the wilds, it is the place for you.

I never would say implicit bias does not exist. I experience a lot of it to this very day. I am not as negative about it as people here are though. I see it as a mechanism to allow us to function efficiently as human beings. Can you imagine if we have to mentally do a statistical analysis every time a decision of any sort has to be made?

I learned a lot about how recruiters operate here on CC. They told me that they choose certain schools over others because of the “thickness” of talent. Is this what people are objecting to? That they do not give everyone an equal chance? We must remember they are hired to get the numbers needed in the most efficient way possible, not to give everyone an equal chance however long it takes.

The science of implicit bias is simply not ready for prime time, imho.

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I don’t think anyone in this thread was objecting to recruiters choosing a school to recruit at. But we would object to those recruiters recruiting white students at that school but not black students, when the black students are equally qualified on paper. And this is the problem: Jamal from School X doesn’t get called back, but Chad from that same School X does get called back.

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Implicit bias is absolutely normal, it’s a way humans are making decisions in the absence of any information about an individual besides a group they belong to and what we know about that group. We do have to make these decisions sometimes. If I find myself in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and all people on the street are black, this tells me the area is more likely to be poor and have a high crime rate, and maybe I shouldn’t linger here at night. Nothing wrong with this.

However, we need to make conscious decisions to disregard this subconscious evaluation when other information is available. It’s quite hard in fact, and having diverse life experiences helps a lot here. Implicit bias is, of course, not only about skin color. I had a (white) student once who was covered with tattoos and piercings and basically looked like he was going to be stoned all the time - he turned out to be the best student in the class. I met tiny fragile-looking women who were martial arts teachers. My own nephew who is about to graduate from one of the top medical schools looks like a dangerous criminal when he doesn’t shave. I think there’s a fine line here to walk between disregarding the minorities’ various challenges/discrimination and overemphasizing the group characteristics to the detriment of individual approach.

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^ Very true. One of the world’s leading authorities on stereotyping said pretty much the same thing:

https://aeon.co/essays/truth-lies-and-stereotypes-when-scientists-ignore-evidence

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Here’s the relevant excerpt from the Aeon article:

This is correct, and it’s also obvious.

But then the author goes on to say:

This is not so correct. We have ample evidence that when someone is perceived as black, rational thinking often goes out the window.

Jamal gets fewer callbacks than Greg, even though the recruiter has plenty of definitive information about Jamal because the recruiter is holding Jamal’s resume in her hands.

Two black men get arrested for sitting in Starbucks, even though the manager can see with her own eyes that the men are doing nothing different than what tens of thousands of white people do every day in Starbucks without harassment.

Baby-faced black 14-year-old Brennan Walker finds himself fleeing for his life as his neighbor is shooting at him, even though all he did was knock on the door of a Neighborhood Watch house because he missed his bus and wanted directions to walk to school.

In all of these cases, the person discriminating against the black person has definitive information, but they ignore it, paying attention only to race. Black people just trying to exist in the world, doing normal things like applying for jobs, waiting in coffeeshops and knocking on neighbors’ doors, get different treatment because of their race. This is pervasive, and whoever believes there is a level playing field is lying to themselves.

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I agree with what you are saying as well. I simply doubt it will happen any time soon. When it comes to self-interest, we are downright tribal.

I do think it is possible to set up a screening system that reduces bias. It would be a win-win situation; candidates of comparable ability would be given a more equal chance, and companies would get a better quality of workers. This article in the Harvard Business Review is spot on, sad to say:

http://hbr.org/2014/05/in-hiring-algorithms-beat-instinct

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I was thinking of what Starbucks could do, to prevent another case like the Philadelphia case. They need to set up a specific set of rules for when someone should be asked to leave: eg, if they’re harassing other customers or if they haven’t bought anything and paying customers have no place to sit. They need a part that specifically says, Think about whether you are doing this because these people are black. Have there been other people here today that also were <doing whatever="" the="" black="" person="" you’re="" ejecting="" is="" doing=""> but who you did not ask to leave?

Even then, though, people are good at rationalizing. If Greg’s resume is stronger on experience and weaker on credentials than Jamal’s, we fool ourselves that we’re not racist, we’re picking Greg because work experience is more important than grades. But if their resumes were switched, we’d fool ourselves that we’re not racist, we’re picking Greg because GPA is more important than work experience. We make the decision first, then our brain rationalizes it.