Commenting on a book about behavioral considerations in public policy, Jason Collins writes,
The opening substantive chapter by Curtis Hardin and Mahzarin Banaji is on bias – and particularly implicit bias. Implicit biases are unconscious negative (or positive) attitudes towards a person or group. Most people who claim (and believe) they are not biased because they don’t show explicit bias will nevertheless have implicit bias that affects their actions.
I think that thinking in terms of the oppressor-oppressed axis is an example of implicit bias. For example, labor policies, such as the minimum wage, are based on an implicit bias that workers are oppressed. I was reminded of this by a recent Tyler Cowen post.
I am often struck by the conflict between one supposition and one fact. First, employers are supposed to be reaping some big surplus from hiring unskilled labor. Second, when a downturn comes, it is unskilled labor who are laid off.
The three-axes model would explain the supposition as a form of implicit bias.
This is all well and good, but when confronted with evidence of their own implicit biases, I think many (most?) people, regardless of axis will tell you, ‘I may be biased, but that doesn’t make me wrong.’ That is, if I happen to have a bias towards virtue, so much the better!
(I often find myself feeling this way. It is hard to come to terms with.)
We should, for the sake of our souls, admit we would have the freedom-v-coercion bias. Although as Rush Limbaugh says, we ARE equal time.
I listen to NPR and I can’t much stand it anymore. For example, they were discussing the Ferguson Justice report. The reporter went through the preface that the officer did not legally deprive the deceased of his civil rights (although, a lot of good civil rights do you if you are dead). The newscaster could barely wait to get through that information before hurriedly prompting the reporter in essence, “get to the part where they made off-color racial jokes and what Holder is going to do to Ferguson.” This is repeated on nearly every NPR political story (and most of their national news stories are political) where their bias is showing.
Point being, I don’t think the left feels remiss for pointing out their own implicit biases.
I heard part of that report too. It was frustrating to witness the moving of the goalposts, at least when they won’t admit it. (If they did, we could have THAT conversation.). In this case the evidence for Wilson’s guilt was shifted to evidence for the “structural racism” the left believes is at work everywhere in American society.
I like your “3-axes” model, but in this post you seem to be writing off one whole axis as nonsense. Surely it is wrong to view the whole world through the oppressor-oppressed axis, but isn’t that a different argument from saying that that axis is just implicit bias?
I think you could level the same charge (implicit bias) at the other axes.
Civilization-barbarism? Views on immigration, the prison-industrial complex, military intervention, US role in the world. A lot of these policies assume that we are civilzed and they are barbarians.
Freedom-coercion? Some people want to have it both ways – reduce the size and scope of government without touching (or noticing) their own government benefits. “Hands off my Medicare”, regulatory capture, patent trolling, laws that prohibit work, zoning.