BIAS: THE HUMAN CONDITION

All white men will unconsciously discriminate against women and visible minorities! Just ask sociologist William. T. Bielby, according to his theory of ‘unconscious bias’ white men have unconscious reactions towards women and visible minorities. And if you’re perceived as a member of one of these groups you can expect your male Caucasian home-sapient to unconsciously, and many times consciously, think of you as inferior to their fellow white-skinned primates.
Convinced yet? Mr. Bielby’s ‘unconscious bias’ theory has recently been convincing many U.S. judicial-icons of the validity of ’unconscious bias’ in the corporate world of today. The legal decisions handed down from the U.S. legal-pulpit concerning cases citing ’unconscious bias’ have in the last few years resulted in multi-million dollar payments by Fortune 500 companies Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Home Depot to disgruntled employees complaining of managerial bias, and who just happen to be women or perceived as being a member of a visible minority.
Just how does this sociologist turned magician pull this legal rabbit out of the judicial hat, a tough act indeed considering the diversity training, equal opportunity policies and anti-discrimination groups vying to uncover bias and prejudice in the work place. By convincing judges no proof of overt bias — no bloody memo, for instance — is required to validate claims of discrimination, as Allen. B. King, labor defense lawyer at the Dallas office of Littler Mendelson, points out: “I just have to leave you to your own devices, and because you are a white male, your natural bias will manifest.”
Mr. Bielby’s ‘unconscious bias’ theory has become the cornerstone in many high-profile, extremely lucrative, benchmark discrimination cases of late. In fact, if an employer today is standing before a federal judge defending itself against massive claims of discrimination on the basis of gender or perceived minority status, there is at least a 50% chance that plaintiffs will cite Mr. Bielby’s ‘unconscious bias’ theory to prove their assertions of discrimination. Mr. King sums it up, “If you can’t go in and say how you’re going to deal with an expert like Bielby, you won’t get hired to handle the case.
The main stumbling block Bielby finds with the procedures in the corporations he gives evidence against is that corporations give far too much discretion to managers, allowing managers to implement too many subjective criteria in pay, promotion, and hiring. In an undefined environment all humans, not only white men, unconsciously fall back on stereotypes in resolving choices. The human mind categorizes the world when it is undefined on previous definitions of what it thinks is a related subject, leading to generalizations about individuals.” The tendency to invoke gender stereotypes in making judgments about people is rapid and automatic,” Bielby says in court papers filed in a landmark discrimination case against Wal-Mart in 2003. “As a result, people are often unaware of how stereotypes affect their perceptions and behavior, including individuals whose personal beliefs are relatively free of prejudice.”
Social scientists today accept stereotyping as an action, both conscious and unconscious, all humans undertake as modus operandi under undefined environmental pressure, and this idea is beginning to spill over the sociology-rim onto a bigger stage. Case in point, writer Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 book Blink, talks about the effects of stereotyping on nano-second choices police officers make during shooting incidents. Corporations like BP PLC and Becton Dickinson & Company have been watching and learning. The recent incorporation of ‘The Implicit Assumption Test’, a test used to quantify unconscious bias; into company diversity training for managers is a sign of acknowledgement of the new legal landscape on the employment horizon. A landscape highlighted in HR magazine, published by the Society of Human Resource Management, February cover story entitled “Detecting Hidden Bias”.
Mr. Bielby and ‘unconscious bias’ certainly has opponents wanting to burst his bubble, and in a limited sense you can add me to the list of opponents. Limited to believing the range of humanity used is far to narrow a parameter to be comprehensive enough to allow for a meaningful conclusion in the class action suits resolved so far. Limiting the scope to the Caucasian is hypocritical and a tool for abuse of the truth, depending on the original intentions of Mr. Bielby of course, and far to narrow a spectrum of the human race to be helpful in determining hidden bias in the employment world of today.
Total detection and elimination of human bias is an impossible task for the present, the elimination will only come when humans evolve beyond the animalistic tendencies inherent in our inherited, subconscious, reactions to the unknown factors of life. For all animals react to environmental pressures with instinctive, unconscious, behaviors and humans still hear the call of nature beating within their souls. Certainly human bias plays a commanding role on the stage of human interactions within the corporate workplace of today and all days. However, the innate fear of the new, the unknown quality, and the perceptively different or perceived difference is animalistic behavior normal to all primates.
Humans are emotional in nature! Just ask Mr. Spook? Millions of years of environmental pressure conditioned the human nervous system to react to environmental stimulus with nervous reactions, nervous reactions ultimately leading to emotional responses by the Captain of the human body, the human brain. Responses designed to protect from environmental dangers, provide food and shelter from the elements, allow for sexual stimulation to provide additional incentive to produce progeny, other than emotional love which isn’t standard in all human models, a fact many discarded humans can testify too.
The high intensity, complicated, corporate world of today is still a relatively new environment to homo-sapiens. From an evolutionary point-of-view humans have dwelt within the corporate environment for the blink of an eye in terms of evolutionary time frames. Making it understandable why humans are often like fish-out-of-water when it comes to swimming efficiently in the corporate ocean. Considering the evolutionary, emotional, baggage humans still carry around from our primitive past, is it surprising human bias plays a significant role in the employment world of today? Hardly!
The success of Mr. Bielby’s ‘unconscious bias’ theory aside; recent successes within the judicial arena certainly includes many innocent defendants within the blanket class action suits brought before the courts. And while it is true that many thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of claimants have genuine discrimination cases. It is also inevitably true that many individuals are taking advantage of an opportunity put before them and were never discriminated against. Short cuts like class action suits certainly reduce overall court costs in terms of money, time and manpower, but as with human generalizations leading to discrimination, they are a result of the human minds desire to categorize data into predefined categories. The cost of human generalization is the truth and this cost is a hallmark upon which the judicial system was built?
While applauding the audacity of the scope Mr. Bielby’s ‘unconscious bias’ theory attempts to encompass., the blanket statement, “All Caucasian men will unconsciously discriminate against women and visible minorities,” is too general to be of a meaningful tool to root out bias and discrimination in the workplace. The elimination of discrimination will come as mankind continues to evolve together; the death of discrimination is an even larger goal requiring the control of basic instincts, and the evolution of humankind. The only positive aspect to the success of ‘unconscious bias’ theory is the recognition of the existence of bias in the workplace, the correction of many wrongs, and for Mr. Bielby at least the obtaining of a very nice living his theory has afforded him. The negative aspect of blanket class action suits unfairly assuming discrimination against all certainly is harmful to a small extent, but is a small price to pay for the truth.
You may not agree with the conclusions reached here, and this is necessity for us to reach the truth, but remember these are conclusions reached by a person considered a visible minority to all my Caucasian friends and brothers.

By “Warren Hayashi”