In the wake of the recent hanging-out-at-Starbucks-while-black incident, you’ve probably heard the phrase “implicit bias” mentioned a few times. The idea is that implicit bias is an involuntary, subconscious emotional response toward people from various social/ethnic/racial groups that subtly influences your outward actions toward such people, and that most people have implicit biases toward or against other groups; holding implicit biases does NOT, in itself, mean you are a bad person or deserve to be fired, ostracized, or shunned.
There seems to be a lot of emphasis lately on implicit bias training, with the hope that if you are aware of your own biases, you may be able to compensate in your daily life to offset them. In the case of the Starbucks incident, the manager who called the cops probably wasn’t an overtly hostile KKK racist thinking “ima get these darkies out of my coffee shop”; far more likely that an implicit bias led him to feel more uncomfortable with a couple of black non-customers hanging around than white non-customers, and his outward response toward them was different because of that. If the manager had been aware of his own biases, maybe he would have stayed his hand and given these black gentlemen the same treatment he gave other folks.
Maybe you’re still thinking to yourself “the manager is a racist asshole, 'nuff said.” You believe in equal rights for all, maybe you’ve even taken the time to participate in a protest or two. But you might still be surprised at your own implicit biases. Want to find out? Now’s your chance:
Harvard University: Project Implicit
Each test takes about ten minutes and is divided into parts. Suppose you’re taking the test for implicit bias against black people. For one part of the test, you respond to the display of positive words/images (“happy,” “achievement,” “safe,” etc.) OR black people/terms by tapping the “E” key with your left hand, and you respond to the display of negative words/images (“sad,” “failure,” “dangerous,” etc.) OR non-black people/terms by tapping the “I” key with your right hand. The speed of your reponses is recorded. For other parts of the test, you change which hand responds to positive/negative and black/non-black, so they can compensate for your left/right hand biases.
If you hold an implicit bias against black people, you will have have difficulty putting black/positive concepts in the same category. This will manifest as slower response times when black people/terms and positive image/terms are assigned to the same hand than when they are assigned to different hands. Note that it’s also possible to have an implicit bias toward black people (or other groups).
There’s a bit of variation in the results, but if you take any given test a couple of times, you’ll get some idea of where you stand. And yes, based on my test results, it appears I’ve got my own biases. Most interestingly, despite being married to a Japanese woman, the test indicates that I have a slight implicit bias against Asians. Go figure. 