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December 16, 2020 - 3:23pm
I had a phone call from a government minister, not long ago, which is not something that happens to me very often. Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, wanted to talk to me about unconscious bias training, because she’d read the two articles (1, 2) I’d written for UnHerd on the topic.
The short version of those articles is that while unconscious bias is probably a real thing, the training that is given to reduce it does not seem to work, by any reasonable definition of the word “work”. There is no standard of what counts as UBT, and what training exists doesn’t seem to make people behave in less prejudiced ways; what’s more, it has “potential for back-firing effects”. (Not my words, Lynn. The words of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.)
The UK Civil Service used to undergo unconscious bias training; now, following a review of the evidence commissioned by Badenoch, that training has been scrapped. I’d love to claim that my powerful writing has swayed government policy, but all I really did was put the minister in touch with some scientists who’ve researched the topic, and point to a few studies like the EHRC review above. There’s a good roundup of the evidence in this post by the scientist Patrick Forscher.
What makes me nervous is that this will fall into culture-war territory. It’s very hard to argue against measures to combat racism, even if those measures are ineffective. But I think this is a good thing. UBT is both an expensive waste of money and a cheap sticking plaster: you can spend millions on it without it having a real effect on prejudice; but it’s a damn sight less costly than the concrete steps which might actually improve minority representation in the workplace. It reminds me of what Helen Lewis (among others) calls “woke capitalism”.
Companies (or political parties, or civil service departments) can hold training sessions, fire employees for bad opinions on social media, light up their offices in rainbow flags. These are all cheap things that get good PR and help the bottom line. But it doesn’t achieve the stated goals. For example, “the only question I want to ask big companies who claim to be ‘empowering the female leaders of the future’,” says Lewis, “is this one: Do you have on-site child care? You can have all the summits and power breakfasts you want, but unless you address the real problems holding working parents back, then it’s all window dressing.”
That’s how I feel about UBT. It makes for good PR for companies (or political parties, or civil service departments). But it doesn’t improve outcomes for the people it’s supposed to help. The things that would help might be on-site creches and generous shared parental leave policies, or apprenticeships and training for underprivileged people, or preferential hiring for minority groups.
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SubscribeWhat makes me nervous is that this will fall into culture-war territory.
Oh, you can be certain that this is exactly where it will fall. That’s the whole point of it. Because that’s how activism works, no matter the cause.
There is never an end game in mind or a solution to seek; activism exists largely for the benefit of the activist(s). Benefits include money, notoriety, the ear of policy makers, and so forth. At no point will anyone hear of the issue, whatever it is, having been solved. Ever. Activism is a self-perpetuating exercise.
“Preferential hiring of minority groups” breeds resentment, bitterness, and opens up a whole can of competing interests to be exploited and used to divide one Interest group, aided and abetted by their cheerleaders, against others. It probably also acts directly and proportionately in opposition to the stated aim of ending “bias”, even if cause and effect aren’t always direct or obvious.
How do they propose to prioritise between the minority groups. The whole intersectionality belief essentially entails people accumulating points for their various ‘minority’ attributes. Who determines the relative weightings of each minority attribute. For race we already see this manifesting in some BAME minorities being less worthy than others. And there is conflict between trans and women’s rights. Who determines the most deserving minority?
Women aren’t a “minority”, of course!
How can preferential hiring end bias when it is predicated in bias? The people pushing these ideas either cannot connect their own dots or do not believe the rest of us capable of doing so.
This is the same Kemi Badenoch who dared speak out on critical race theory in parliament. See here:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Good on her in questioning the use of UBT and using actual proper research to do so! She is in danger of coming across as an intelligent politician with principles at this rate…
Nigerian immigrants, which includes Ms Badenoch, have a much higher education outcome than Caribbean immigrants. How do we know this is not merely her being biased against other Black groups who do less well than her particular one?
I spent a lot of time riding with migrant taxi drivers in London, mostly Islamic, but from a wide spectrum. After we talk about my times living in Muslim countries they often begin telling me of how much they dislike some other groups as customers. They seem to hold very strong biases, as experience has taught me, nothing as racist as a Non-Western as racism is the Normal in virtually every non-white nation in the world.
For Racism in UK nothing is more than Indian migrants for holding racist views. Cast alone is a huge cultural and religious reality. Then the many different kinds of people who live there with wide ranges of outcomes. I would guess not many Indians would think a Brahmin the same as a Dalit in UK, in fact the India/Africa Diaspora kept caste and racism very much alive, and those coming to UK have been exceptionally successful, as Priti Patel and Sunak and a great many others have. I very much doubt they can uncouple their ‘unconscious bias’ from their past and culture lineage, and from just noticing how well their group has done, and the difference between groups outcomes.
White people in UK are the absolutely least racist on the islands, but get all the fingers pointed at them.
Jealousy, because we are simply the best as someone said.
With regards to Ms Badenoch – I really don’t see how a scientific approach to UBT and questioning Critical Race Theory would suggest she is secretly doing it to advance her own group. Quite the opposite one might suggest.
Either way I think a lot of the problem is that people attach hidden agendas to people based on no evidence. We should take what she says in good faith unless something directly comes up to question that.
As for the racism of other nations/countries – completely agreed. Racism most certainly exists in this country, but is the minority view and not socially acceptable. I have been lucky to be able to live and travel in many parts of the world and the same cannot be said of many other countries.
People who think the UK is racist have either been very unfortunate in their experiences or have never lived or worked in another country. I suggest it’s more the latter.
You’re confusing the issue.
Yes some non white ethnic groups do really well
Some do really badly.
And yes many non white people are extremely racist.
But it’s all the fault of empire, or slavery or the patriacrhy or somefink init.
My question is not if this training works but if there is actually any hard evidence of systematic discrimination based on race in this country?
We all know there are disparities across racial groups but we also know that these are explainable by non racial factors, primarily parents wealth and educational status. This explains why middle class Indians out perform working class migrants from Pakistan, despite that fact they should both have the same outcomes if race was the deciding factor in their life chances.
Is there any analysis which shows that this is incorrect and race is the key factor in deciding someone’s life chances in the UK or is systematic racism the Emperor that has no clothes on?
The fact that your parents were wealthy or not wealthy is a racial factor. Unless you are adopted at least one of your parents is going to be the same race as you. If most rich people are white (in UK) and children of rich people are more likely to be rich then children of white people are more likely to be rich. It’s the perfect example of one aspect of systemic racism. Class, education etc are also factors.
You seem to be describing wealth inheritance. Where does systemic racism come into it?
The fact that your parents were wealthy or not wealthy is a racial factor.
What? Is there some British law that prevents certain racial groups from achieving wealth? No such law exists in the States, where there is a far larger black middle class than many want to acknowledge.
Maybe most rich people in the UK are white because its history is one of white majorities, and by quite a margin for most of that time. That’s not racism; it’s demographics.
That explains why immigrant groups like Indians or Koreans are the highest achieving, highest earning groups in US and UK.
Must be all that systemic racism favouring people forced to flee from Africa by people who were not quite white or brought up in an Indian town in lower real income than what black people in UK get if they were on benefits
It’s only a racial factor if wealth and race were 100% correlated. They’re not. There are rich and poor people of all racial backgrounds. The question is, does race cause these differences.
Regression analysis looks to determine if all other factors were equal then would two individuals have statistically significantly different outcomes based on race being their only difference. I’m not aware of any such evidence which shows this.
Your point that there are more wealthy white people is irrelevant. It would only have any relevance if a wealthy white person had different outcomes to a wealthy person of a different race. Equally there’s no evidence that working class white children have any greater success in life than the working class children of different races.
Your simply repeating the usual argument that difference in outcome is discrimination without taking into account any other factors which explain the difference.
Unless race can be shown to affect your life chances to a more significant extent that any other factors, systematic racism does not exist.
Well put. And one of the key books about this is Thomas Sowell’s ‘Discrimination and Disparities’ . I would also recommend his book: Black Rednecks and White Liberals – quite an eye opener…..
The majority of Black immigrants to this country arrived poor, they mainly came from commonwealth countries in search of a better life than they had at home and came to do menial jobs in the post war years.
There are a lot of poor white people in this country too. It has become increasingly more difficult to climb up from the bottom for all, regardless of skin colour. To build a fairer society requires giving a helping hand to all those who are prepared to work hard to better themselves. Those who think society owes them something without them having to give something back are sorely mistaken. Those who scream systemic racism are sorely mistaken and are doing more harm than good.
Kemi seems to be one of the very few MPs with anything useful to say.
Already happening. There have been various statements from (IIRC mostly) union leaders to the effect that “you can’t just scrap this without coming up with a replacement!”
Where the research shows us you can and you really should, because replacement or no it’s a waste of time and money. We’re firmly in the territory of emotion over fact. Again.
It is teaching flatearthism.
You would have to be crazy not to form thoughts on groups of people after a lifetime of observation. Virtually any group of people have qualities which differentiate them from other groups. A Black Mayor of Atlanta once said when he hears footsteps behind him at night he feels relief when he looks back and sees it is a White man.
He bravely said this to illustrate it is not always unconscious bias, it may be just how it really is, and that the community has to face some realities and not just say racism.
Just another way to divide people and society.
Kemi Badenoch ” one of the all-too-few British politicians who is aware that such things need to be addressed via ideas, so that purposes and policies can be rooted in solid ground. Her speeches in the House of Commons mark her out as someone who understands that bad concepts (or evil concepts) are most powerfully countered via good concepts, from which flow good actions.
A white male politician could do and say exactly the same, but would be denounced as a misogynist bigot.
Sadly, that is all too true!
A modest proposal.
Arrange a large conference, and send all the diversity-mongers, telling them all that they are not allowed back to work until they have agreed a stable victimhood hierarchy that is unanimously supported by all of them.
Then the useful people can get on with real work.
For such a nasty, systemically racist country, apparently one of the most racist countries in the world, The Guardian would have us believe, there appears to be a hell of a lot of BAME people who are trying to get here.
So what does that say about France?
.
The problem with ‘unconscious bias’ is that it is philosophically absurd. Are we biased in our sleep? It’s really lefty code-think for ‘coming to a different conclusion from me, as a result of being a vehicle of illegitimate class power’.
Unconscious bias is that thing that has to be provoked with a good dog-whistle, which only trained racist-hunters can hear. Thank goodness they are there to point out the sounds for the rest of us.
“preferential hiring for minority groups.”
You’re a genius. Fixing racism by establishing a program that mandates racism.
Idiot.
Most concerning re. the English and Scottish Hate Speech Bills is that intent does not have to be proved and that ‘offences’ may have taken place in your own home.
The Alan Partridge reference in the article is appreciated but is wrong. He refers to his ex wife Carol in that quote not Lynn his assistant.
Sub editors must issue a full page correction.
Spot getting partridge wrong l!!
If UBT does not work, then how can it make for “good PR”?
I am not being flippant here. That is a serious question, and it is something I puzzle about.
But, yes, there is abundant evidence that UBT merely does not work but can be destructive. Here’s a nice piece that catalogues a lot of the research out there:
https://www.realclearscienc…
“Research Shows Diversity Training is Typically Ineffective”
By Musa al-Gharbi
December 05, 2020
A partial answer to my question may derive from Vaclav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless”. Havel observes that individuals may find themselves compelled to go along with nonsense. But, it seems that the oppressive system becomes unstable when everyone knows that the system is a joke, *and* when it everyone knows that everyone knows that the system is a joke. So, say it loud so that others may be encouraged also to speak up: The System is a Joke. It’s going to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Let’s hasten its collapse.
“If UBT does not work, then how can it make for “good PR”?
I am not being flippant here. That is a serious question, and it is something I puzzle about.
But, yes, there is abundant evidence that UBT merely does not work but can be destructive.”
It makes for good PR – for now – because it entails signaling that you are a ‘good’ company. And, remember, the majority of the wokerati are innumerate and blind to science.
Crappy and dimwitted ideas can grab hold of an organisation and do great damage. Look at the idiocy that is the “gender gap” reporting law.
“Unconscious bias” is by definition – unconscious.
Therefore it can’t be effected by activities directed at conscious thoughts, beliefs, behaviours, etc.
I suppose some people became quiite rich pretending this nonsense would be effective in eliminating all sorts of “bad” human behaviour,
So let’s see what the con artists gravitate to next.
I used to joust with you when you were Science editor at the DT. Great to find you again in good form. I’m glad politicians are reading from such excellent publications as Unherd. Maybe we can influence them after all.
Mr. Chivers mentioned bottom line of companies. He’s right. Bosses are interested in bottom line. And if they get opportunity to hire someone that will improve their bottom line, they will do it. Regardless of them being black, white or yellow, male, female or something else, tall or short. Bosses want results. Yes bosses discriminate. But results are the most important criteria. Only with institutions that get their revenue from budget, performance of employees is not important. And that is where real discrimination is.
But this article, laudable though its points are, does not address the fundamental ethical assumption upon which UBT is applied – that by force of employment punishment others can determine whether employees have incorrect unconscious thoughts or ‘biases’ and then through coercion have those incorrect thoughts re educated according to various ideological standards and methods.
Expressed attitudes and behaviours in the workplace are the relevant phenomena to be addressed, not accepting that someone can forcibly attempt to know someone else’s private thoughts and beliefs.