As you may recall from Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller Blink, you should always trust your instantaneous assessment of any situation. Except when you are wrong. Or, when you are right but are politically incorrect. A big part of Blink was devoted to implicit association tests that determine if one is subconsciously more likely to associate words like "crime" with a picture of, say, OJ Simpson than of, say, Peyton Manning. Or something like that.
Oddly enough, Judge Robert Blink has been assigned a huge employment discrimination trial based on the Blink theory that whites can't help being subconsciously evil to blacks, as shown by implicit association tests (and by nothing else).
Denied jobs, blacks in Iowa test new bias theory
By RYAN J. FOLEY | Associated Press – 2 hrs 55 mins ago
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — In a case closely watched by civil rights activists, an Iowa judge will soon decide whether to grant thousands of black employees and job applicants monetary damages for hiring practices used by Iowa state government that they say have disadvantaged them.
Experts say the case is the largest class-action lawsuit of its kind against an entire state government's civil service system, and tests a legal theory that social science and statistics alone can prove widespread discrimination.
The plaintiffs — up to 6,000 African-Americans passed over for state jobs and promotions dating back to 2003 — do not say they faced overt racism or discriminatory hiring tests in Iowa, a state that is 91 percent white. Instead, their lawyers argue that managers subconsciously favored whites across state government, leaving blacks at a disadvantage in decisions over who got interviewed, hired and promoted.
Judge Robert Blink's decision, expected in coming weeks, could award damages and mandate changes in state personnel policies or dismiss a case that represents a growing front of discrimination litigation.
"Whenever there is a case like this that goes to trial, it's of interest to all of us," said Jocelyn Larkin, executive director of the Impact Fund, a Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit that supports employment discrimination lawsuits and has followed the case. ...
University of Washington psychology professor Anthony Greenwald, an expert on implicit bias who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the decision will be important nationally because similar cases against corporations have usually been dismissed or settled before trial.
Scholars and employment lawyers have shown a growing interest in implicit bias in the last several years, after Greenwald and other scientists developed the Implicit Association Test to test racial stereotypes. Their research found an inherent preference for whites over blacks — in up to 80 percent of test-takers and among many people who do not consider themselves racist.
The theory hit a legal obstacle last year when the U.S. Supreme Court disqualified a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart's pay and promotion practices for women. The court found the class was too broad and failed to challenge a specific hiring practice as discriminatory.
Lawyers defending the state have cited that decision in asking Blink to dismiss the case. But the high court's decision did not specifically reject the theory of implicit bias, and dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that such claims can be allowed.
Class attorney Thomas Newkirk said the science and other evidence that shows disadvantaged groups such as blacks face employment discrimination in subtle ways "is becoming overwhelming."
"Clearly, the problem is not in Iowa alone, but we believe Iowa is the exactly the right place to ask society to take control of this important issue fairly for all races, and to seek a better future for all as a result," said Newkirk, who was recently honored by the Des Moines chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for his work on the case.
During a monthlong trial last fall, experts called by the plaintiffs' lawyers testified that blacks are hired at lower rates than whites with similar qualifications and receive less favorable evaluations and lower starting salaries.
If Iowa is only hiring the cream of the crop of black applicants, shouldn't the black hires be performing better, not worse, than the white hires? Or maybe they are but their evaluations are worse because everybody is so unconsciously biased. After all, Science is the art of creating unfalsifiable theories. It's discrimination turtles all the way down.
In its most prominent recent exercise in hiring, the state of Iowa voted for Obama over McCain 54-45, but they were just doing that to cover up. We can tell.
By the way, seriously, Iowa has few but bad blacks. In 1997, Iowa had the highest black incarceration rate among the 50 states. Liberal north central states with strong safety nets like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, tended to attract the last and worst Southern blacks to leave.
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Wow. I'd been under the impression that there was a low percentage of blacks among Iowans. Or is they're disproportionately drawn to government jobs?
The real problem with this case is it requires mind reading to become a court recognized talent. Is this supposed bias expert a telepath? What if you fall into a group which telepaths have a natural antipathy for and will lie about your motives to bring you down?
Suppose I subconsciously think of murdering Judge Blink. Where should I send the check?
Now that 'subconscious' prejudice has been identified and outlawed, there is absolutely nothing left but to give blacks every job they apply for, since the gatekeeper or interviewer or whatever simply has no possible rational defence in not giving a black applicant the job.
This is truly insane - it resembles the worst excesses of a medieval oriental despot.This is what 'totalitarianism' means and what that great and brave prophet, George Orwell, railed and warned against.
Put simply it's tyranny.
I can't understand why claims of imaginary discrimination are gaining momentum of late or why Iowa has recently hosted other types of government weirdness: one of the cities requires business owners place a key to their business in a lockbox that can be opened by the fire department.
> In 1997, Iowa had the highest black incarceration rate among the 50 states.
That's damning evidence of overarching discrimination. Truly, Iowa is a Fukushima whose racism overtops even the loftiest efforts at blinking.
I only hope that you communicated these key findings to Class Attorney Thomas Newkirk (who was honored by the NAACP for work on this case). Victory is ours.
All of these sorts of things drive society to strict quotas and race-norming. However mixing of the races cuts against that since it gets harder and harder to classify people with each generation. What percentage of Negroid ancestry do you need to be black?
By the way, seriously, Iowa has few but bad blacks. In 1997, Iowa had the highest black incarceration rate among the 50 states. Liberal north central states with strong safety nets like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, tended to attract the last and worst Southern blacks to leave.
Wow - Komment Kontrol was on fire last night.
Smokin'.
This is truly insane - it resembles the worst excesses of a medieval oriental despot.This is what 'totalitarianism' means and what that great and brave prophet, George Orwell, railed and warned against. Put simply it's tyranny.
You're welcome.
Orientalistic tyranny & despotism - that's our bidness.
Glad to be of service.
The explicit racism here is that only White people exhibit implicit bias.
If this is going to become law then all the broad ethnic groups should be tested for their implicit bias to the other broad ethnic categories. This should include Jews as a separate group as the theory of implicit bias may lie behind the staggering pro-Jewish disparate impact in the mainstream media i.e. they don't consciously discriminate against non-Jews on a staggering scale but there's an implicit bias towards people who are similar.
"It's discrimination turtles all the way down."
LOL!
oh my my my. steve, this one is a classic.
"A big part of Blink was devoted to implicit association tests that determine if one is subconsciously more likely to associate words like 'crime' with a picture of, say, OJ Simpson than of, say, Peyton Manning."
Those 'implicit' associations are made because of social reality. Blacks commit more crime. The problem is not the white subconscious, which still has some capacity for truth, but the white consciousness that has been conditioned to think it is wrong to associate blacks with crime. It is the white consciousness that has problems with the truth.
Many people assume subconscious = irrational/crazy/dark. Sometimes, yes, but not always, as Freud demonstrated. Freud said social pressures/conventions force people to repress much that is true about themselves or their view of reality. Thus, the reality/truth they know become repressed into the subconscious. Consciousness becomes blinkered while the truth takes surges around in the subconscious, appearing in dreams, artistic expression, neurosis, 'Freudian slips', etc.
Similarly, black crime is something we know about but are not supposed to notice. So, many white people repress it into their subconscious.
If anything, white subconscious should be released and allowed to air its views instead of being treated as a dark illness of the mind. Of course, not every subconscious fear is true; but we need more honesty, not more psycorrectology.
If we were to do a test on Israelis, I'll bet many of them will associate Arabs with terrorism and barbarism. Why? Because many Israelis had to deal with Arab terrorist threat and Arab backwardness. Even 'progressive' Israelis who may be consciously more sympathetic to Arabs will likely have fearful feelings about Arabs.
So, what else is new?
And I'll bet many Jews associate 'Christian Whites' and 'Germans' with Nazis, genocide, and anti-semitism(due to the particularities of Jewish narratives and remembrance). Of course, this isn't merely subconscious but official policy. Anti-white hatred is promoted--and I wouldn't be surprised if this test was created by Jews for the purpose of being used to shame white people for their 'evil subconscious racism'. I don't fall for this shit, but so many whites are suckers, sheep-like guinea pigs to the Cass Sunsteins of the world.
Anyway, 'implicit association tests' revealed the psychological truth about race relations, but we are to believe they unearthed a mental illness, a delusion, among white folks.
Now, if blacks didn't commit lots of crime and if whites responded as they did in tests, 'scientists' would have a point. But given the truth about black crime, why would it be surprising to anyone that blacks are more associated with crime(not only by whites but by Hispanics, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans, gay Americans, etc). In fact, if you do this test on blacks, I'll bet even they are more likely to associate other blacks than Swedish-Americans with crime.
And women are more likely to associate men with crime than women with crime. Oh my, women must all be subconsciously 'sexist'.
And humans are more likely to associate pit bulls with danger than poodles. Wow, what a shocker.
Am I alone in smelling yet another thoughtcrime which, if this Blink case creates precedent, would be codified in law?
And how, just how, and ever, would the racial reverse - non-whites' inherent thought bias against whites - of this thoughtcrime be prosecuted? Don't hold your breath for that diverse eventuality.
A ruling for the plaintiffs will give a whole new meaning to “The other fellow just Blinked.”
Thus is the grievance industry enlarged, its appetites further whetted; thus is a nation atomized, dissolved and what remains of its Constitution - and even one of FDR’s Four Freedoms - debauched.
Almost makes me want to move to Duluth, where government (by consent of the governed?) has fixed all past, present, and future Racist guilt on whites by spending a pretty penny on an ad campaign that, well, SAYS SO - without so much as a single aggrieved plaintiff having had to file suit. Racism-guilt by diktat. Brilliant! Saves so much money!
And you can bet your bottom borrowed Chinese dollar that CAIR, ISNA, the MSA, ICNA, and all the other Moslem Brotherhood affiliates that have wormed or brazened their way into our nation's highest councils would let no grass grow under their feet as they make hay of this new thoughtcrime. Every grievance-monger who manages, by hook or crook, to make it inside what used to be our borders - Mexicans, Guatemalans, Communists, NAMBLA members and sympathizers, skinheads, Hugo Chavez apologists, Che-T-shirt-wearers, Occupy Movement nitwits, and the heavily and hideously tattooed - will seize on this throughtcrime, and lawyers will laugh all the way to the banks that hold the mortgages on their gated community properties.
Yep, in all of history white folks be the only race to have thought bad thoughts about other races, religions, cultures. So how, if you subscribe to the sanctimonious liberal nostrum that "we're really all alike," can all races. religions, cultures be "really all alike" if only one race is guilty of Racism?
I must go now, must get away from this keyboard; must try to not think further on this, for I fear that in my head a vessel is about to burst.
This Implicit Bias stuff deserves more criticism than it's gotten now that it's getting out of journals and starting to affect the real world. Unfortunately there isn't a big market for criticism of it. One long article that goes to town on it is from Phil Tetlock.
One interesting thing is that if you go to Project Implicit and look at the different tests, a lot of groups do even worse than Blacks. For instance there apparently is a much larger implicit bias against the elderly. This suggests another avenue of falsifiability: do new hires at the Iowa civil service tend to be young wippersnappers right out of college?
Together Implicit Bias and Stereotype Threat are the left and right hooks against Black job applicants. If there's an objective job evaluation like a civil service exam then disparate impact must be the fault of Stereotype Threat, and if it's subjective then it's all due to Implicit Bias. That's why Claude Steele and Anthony Greenwald are such celebrated social psychologists.
I think you mixed up your post headlines, Steve. Doesn't "Who are the truly insane?" belong over this one?
You guys are just made because white privelige es ending and now we have to compete as equals
Steve: Have you seen the new Pew study on interracial marriage? There is some nice data there.
One thing that jumped out at me (particularly from table a6, close to the end of the report) is the way this gives us some insight into assimilation by different racial groups. Hispanic/white couples had the hispanic spouse with a way higher rate of college education--this is consistent with the idea that hispanics who go off to college are much more likely to intermatry with whites, and their kids probably assimilate to white culture. (If your dad is bilingual and your mom only speaks English, you're pretty likely to end up not speaking Spanish all that well. OTOH, I think if your mom is bilingual, you are more likely to grow up bilingual as well.). I suspect this explains some of the data showing lousy school performance by nth generation hispanic immigrants--many of the smart ones leave. (Think of the opposite of the process among Eastern European Jews, where smarter members probably had more incentive to stay Jewish than dumber members of the group.)
They also have some interesting data on white/black and white/Asian intermarriage. Whites who marry Asians tend to be more educated than whites in general. Black men who marry white women are only very slightly more educated than black men who marry black women, but black women who marry white men are way more educated.
All this gives a picture of assortive mating, right? The smartest whites are more likely to marry Asians, the smartest hispanics and black women are more likely to marry whites--almost certainly,this is reflecting couples that meet in college or on the job, where there are lots of Asians in grad school and high-end educated professions, and lots of whites in college and educated professions.
Now that 'subconscious' prejudice has been identified and outlawed
There is some hope. The judge hasn't ruled yet. And even if he eventually rules favorably to claimants, the decision will be appealed and the case will probably end up in SCOTUS.
I see that the metastasizing equality juggernaut rolls on. Nothing encourages like the prospect of a painful societal death.
Is there such a thing as the "merits of a case" anymore? Or do we just make up things to justify taking money from one group and giving it to the other?
This must be the same legal cohort fresh from suing the Ag Department for not giving loans to people who could of gotten loans elsewhere like other people do.
In 1997, Iowa had the highest black incarceration rate among the 50 states. Liberal north central states with strong safety nets like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, tended to attract the last and worst Southern blacks to leave.
Dubious. I defy you to make a case for this statement. A more likely explanation is that Iowa is simply a better target rich environment for blacks who act the same as they do everywhere else.
I blinked and must've missed this story.
Steve:
"One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." (William of Ockham)
And it's amazingly serendipitous
that the "razor" actually appears at the head of La Griffe DuLion's
"Politics, Imprisonment, & Race," an essay (ostensibly issuing from Prodigy) that makes the supposed discrepancy entirely clear.
The more liberal the jurisdiction politically (and thus the more tolerant of antisocial behavior), the more preponderant will be their incarceration of blacks as compared to whites. It's not the "impact" that's disparate, it's the disparity in behaviors that led to the impact.
The problem can be "fixed" rather easily: lower the bar as to which criminal acts are given "time." In other words, get much tougher on crime. The prison population will increase drastically, of course, but the ratio of black to white among the inmates will be lower. (Rinse and repeat as necessary).
An Appendix (to the essay) is a list of the states and respective rates (by race). ALL of the highest (B/W) are liberal, mostly northern) jurisdictions; the lowest are to be found in the old "deep South."
Maybe someone ought to make copies of this essay available to judges (and other mentally-challenge folk)
dealing with such "problems."
I grew up in Iowa and recall a black job applicant who brought a lawsuit against the hiring employer when she did not get the job. She charged racial and gender discrimination. The person they had hired was also a black woman. Those darned Iowans. No matter what they do, they deserve to face a lawsuit.
The Nazis are coming from insane your brain!
Lets get some terms down. This lawsuit is not just a lawsuit, it is an accusation. They are accusing white people, nearly every white person in Iowa, of a crime. They are accusing White Americans of harming these Black Americans. This is an ACCUSATION and a DEFAMATION. Lets get the terms down. They are accusing and defaming White Americans. An entire ethnic group.
If Iowa is only hiring the cream of the crop of black applicants, shouldn't the black hires be performing better, not worse, than the white hires?
No, this doesn't follow. In the context of blacks and employment, "cream of the crop" would mean "willing to work without slowing down to show you're not Tommin'," or something like that. Notice how the legal system is completely non-fact based. It cannot accommodate a showing that it's rational to avoid blacks for the simple reason that they've internalized a political imperative of non-performance, to pay whites back for the crimes of yesteryear. This is why today's judges are jokes. Even if a modern Myrdal showed up to testify that most blacks today are Huey Newton clones, judges wouldn't admit the testimony.
After all, Science is the art of creating unfalsifiable theories. It's discrimination turtles all the way down.
What?
IATs may not be any good.
There is a difference between Science and Judeo-Protestant (philosphical) materalism.
If not for the exponential technological gains over the last few decades from Moore's Law, I suspect American society would probably have collapsed or drastically "changed" long ago, maybe by the early 1980s. It still seems to be keeping us afloat these days, but just barely.
Meanwhile, the average Chinese worker has been doubling his real income every decade. I really wonder how the Chinese will describe all these bizarre Occidental behaviors when they eventually write the surviving world histories of our era.
"You guys are just made because white privelige es ending and now we have to compete as equals"
Can I enjoy the 'equality' of Michelle Obama? I woulda gone much further in life.
The problem among whites is wimplicit disassociation tendency. All these wimpy whites will not associate with 'controversial' figures because they are afraid of political correctness.
>I wouldn't be surprised if this test was created by Jews for the purpose of being used to shame white people for their 'evil subconscious racism'.<
"Greenwald" sounds black or German or Scots-Irish to me. Doesn't it to you?
The commenter "blink the titanic" (at 2/18/12 6:22 AM) is right. Assuming the implicit theory is correct, it merely reveals repressed cognition. That cognition might be wrong or right. Greenwald and his fellow light-bearers assume the cognition is wrong, wrong, wrong - when even a cursory glance at crime stats would disabuse them. IA is not a scientific or factual theory: its purpose and structure is to uncover "crimethink," i.e., censoriousness based on pre-scientific assumptions is intrinsic to it and to the project.
If the Torquemada of legend had had access to IAT, then would we regard his activities as pro-science? After all, increased accuracy in the uncovering of heretics would have been a technical accomplishment and be quite valuable to the Powers of that day.
Oh yes its always the "Jews." Please -- this is more SWPL at its finest. You see this all the time in Nordic Countries, it is endemic. This is basically the SWPL tribe against NASCAR Nation, with Blacks/Hispanics as props.
The whole "anti-Racism" thing is such pure Calvinistic predestined saved without the troublesome Christianity, that it is pathetic. It is attractive, in that snobbery and looking down your noses as the wrong sort of White person is socially powerful (which is why you see so much of it) but Judge Blink is not moving to the Ghetto anytime soon. Nor is Bill Gates.
What is wrong with the Western World is what is right -- the inclusiveness, cooperation, communalism, the desire to level differences, taken to extremes produces ... this. It is not the Jews (or even Southern European Cathlicism). It is not even Christianity, it is basically Nordic/Germanic culture. You don't see Country Music stars worrying about how many Black people buy their albums -- they just don't care, one way or another.
Or put it another way -- when the Cherokee and other Indians were cleared out of the South, the Backwoods people stopped caring about them. Puritans wanted to "improve" them in the eternal missionary/uplift impulse.
Auntie Analogue - So how, if you subscribe to the sanctimonious liberal nostrum that "we're really all alike," can all races. religions, cultures be "really all alike" if only one race is guilty of Racism?
Absolutely dead on target.
If we are all alike how come whites are the only real racists?
If we accept that difference we must therefore accept others can exist too. Therefore we are not all alike.
The fatal flaw at the heart of the multicult.
You guys are just made because white privelige es ending and now we have to compete as equals
Oh, so AA has ended and disparate impact is now to be retired as well, I didnt know that, good news, Im surprised it hasnt received more MSM coverage though.
"The problem among whites is wimplicit disassociation tendency. All these wimpy whites will not associate with 'controversial' figures because they are afraid of political correctness."
Yes, people who care about their responsibilities as providers (for their children, their parents and themselves) and, by nature, consider the consequences before they act tend to shy away from controversies and comply with cultural norms of their day.
"If we accept that difference we must therefore accept others can exist too. Therefore we are not all alike.
The fatal flaw at the heart of the multicult."
Yeah, keep dreaming. If we could accept that even though the races evolved to look different on the outside, we are still completely the same on the inside, and that even though blacks are better at some sports, we are still completely the same intellectually and emotionally, we can accept or not accept anything we damn well please.
"Or put it another way -- when the Cherokee and other Indians were cleared out of the South, the Backwoods people stopped caring about them. Puritans wanted to "improve" them in the eternal missionary/uplift impulse."
Would you stop making things up?
Backwoods people focused on making a living not on saving those who weren't part of their immediate family and community.
I don't believe Puritans ever converted Indians.
LOL. The case is called "Linda Pippen, et. al., vs. State of Iowa".
In a comical turns of events, it turns out that Linda Pippen has been stealing from Iowans. On December 28th, 2011, she pled guilty to embezzling $43,582!
"If there's an objective job evaluation like a civil service exam"
Objective? The test be racist!
"if only one race is guilty of Racism?"
The women and minorities camp isn't stupid like white men that it'd share its victim industry complex with all and sundry. After thousands of years of laying low, they've finally accomplished something, the guilty party shall get none of it.
Let the good times roll!
You're very clever, young man, but it's horrible racists all the way down!
Galapagos Garry :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
"You guys are just made[sic] because white privelige[sic] es[sic] ending and now we have to compete as equals"
Cute.
Whether or not you're a troll, this is the sort of "thinking" that characterizes the left.
The end of white privilege does not signal the beginning of competition among equals.
Why, yes, that is what I implied. How clever of you to infer it.
"If there's an objective job evaluation like a civil service exam"
Objective? The test be racist!
The ancient Chinese had such an evaluation, and it was hardly racist, and indeed was a crude form of IQ testing.
Nanonymous wrote: "LOL. The case is called "Linda Pippen, et. al., vs. State of Iowa".
In a comical turns of events, it turns out that Linda Pippen has been stealing from Iowans. On December 28th, 2011, she pled guilty to embezzling $43,582!"
CLASSIC. Now please folks post this onto other blogs and newspaper comment sites. And remember, those making this lawsuit are accusing and stereotyping the White American community of Iowa. It is essentially hate speech - accusing, defaming, libeling and slandering an entire ethnic group.
The whole "anti-Racism" thing is such pure Calvinistic predestined saved without the troublesome Christianity, that it is pathetic. It is attractive, in that snobbery and looking down your noses as the wrong sort of White person is socially powerful....
Who made it attracive? Who made it socially powerful? Why? Cui bono?
The Calvinism thing makes no sense at all.
Those 'implicit' associations are made because of social reality. Blacks commit more crime.
Are you sure? I know the score regarding race, and I've come out perfectly neutral both times I took the IAT.
Has anyone compared IAT scores with the test-takers' knowledge of "social reality"? I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it *is* instinctual aversion or "prejudice".
"If we are all alike how come whites are the only real racists?"
Non-Whites and Whites are just alike, in every way, in every possible, conceivable way, except, that is, for the ways Whites are bad, see.
Yeah.
Sure.
I get it.
Anti-racist is just code for anti-White.
Does IAT control for real-life probabilities (potential for violence/ineptitude/bemusing buffoonery in encounters with some rather than others)?
Do non-whites show similar biases?
That is, does IAT control for Reality?
The post-judicial is now "prejudice" (like the news story fretting about an "outbreak of [white] prejudice" following the latest NAM racial assault).
How much more abasement and stupidity before something gives?
The Broadway musical 'Avenue Q' had a song, 'Everone's a little bit racist' with the chorus:
Both:
Everyone's a little bit racist
Sometimes.
Doesn't mean we go
Around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find
No one's really color blind.
Maybe it's a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgments
Based on race.
Perhaps this should be sung at the trial by a multi-hued choral group in defense of the state of Iowa?
>does IAT control for Reality?<
No.
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