Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Employee training targets bias
Insight can lead to understanding, advocates say
Starbucks, and other corporations, are looking at ways to address prejudices people may not be aware of.
Five women calling themselves the Sisters in the Fairway, new members of the Grandview Golf Club in York, Pa., were playing the first holes April 21 when they were accused of moving too slowly, and urged to leave and give up their memberships.
Three teens shopping at a Nordstrom Rack in Brentwood, Mo., earlier this month were followed by employees and confronted by an elderly woman who reportedly asked them, “Would your parents and grandparents be proud of what you’re doing?”
After receiving diplomas during a ceremony May 5 at the University of Florida’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a number of graduates were hustled off the stage for busting some dance moves.
These incidents and others, all involving African-Americans, have happened since the news-grabbing arrests April 12 of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. The men were early for a meeting, didn’t order anything and were accused of trespassing.
The charges were dropped, and the men agreed the city could donate $200,000 to support young entrepreneurs to settle the matter. Officers were called to the golf course and to Nordstrom Rack but concluded the situations were not police matters. The University of Florida president has said a marshal acted “inappropriately aggressive in rushing students across the stage.”
Starbucks officials, mindful that the arrests flew in the face of the coffee shops’ carefully cultivated culture of being a gathering space, quickly apologized and announced 8,000 U.S. stores would close today for employee training.
Few details of that training are known, other than that it involves “implicit bias,” is being shaped by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and will be the basis of a curriculum Starbucks plans to make available to other corporations.
Implicit bias is embedded in the way people process information and interactions based on what they’ve been exposed to in life. While always commonplace, bias is drawing heightened reactions now because of the hyper-sensitive environment created by questionable shootings of black men by law enforcement around the country, experts say.
“Implicit is not code for racism,” said Seth Gershenson, a professor of public policy at American University who has studied anti-bias training and is writing a book on diversity in education. “A person acting with bias is unaware in real time and maybe afterwards.”
Matthew Kincaid, founder of New Orleans-based Overcoming Racism, consultants on eliminating racial bias in schools and other institutions, said, “Bias is something we all have and live with. It’s the lens on how we receive messages and leads to how we treat people.”
The training he conducts involves role-playing and scenarios in which he tries to show how society is marginalizing some people, and to provoke thought on what it takes to level the playing field, he said.
The graduation incident at the University of Florida indicates a lack of cultural competence, Kincaid said, because stepping and strolling are typical celebratory actions for African-Americans.
“The implicit bias is that they were trying to be disruptive. What is appropriate in a certain culture can be different than with a dominant culture.”
He believes training, however brief, can lead to new insights.
He cites research in which teachers were asked to watch kindergartners in a classroom for signs of misbehavior. While there weren’t any such signs, the teachers universally kept closer tabs on black kids than white kids.
“What does this do to a kid’s psyche if he’s thought to be a problem to be overcome? How does that affect (his future)?” Kincaid said.
“We see long-term impacts of racism, but we only talk about it when there are flashpoints,” he said, which tends to desensitize instead of inspire change.
The cascade of recent events led Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, to advocate in a recent op-ed piece in USA Today for testing of everyone for implicit bias. “It’s just a matter of time before another black person is abused, arrested or shot dead for flying, golfing, driving, walking or drinking coffee ‘while black,’ ” he wrote.
Companies are scrambling because they don’t want to be the next Starbucks, said the Rev. Bryant T. Marks, associate professor of psychology at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he’s also lead trainer at the National Training Institute on Race and Equity. He’s trained the entire Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement personnel using such interactive methods as posing this question: When Americans think of young African-American males, what words come to mind?
Participants punch “thug,” “dangerous,” “athlete,” among others, he said, into their laptops, launching them onto a big screen. He then asks them to imagine that this “brand” is what they carry in life.
“They pause, mentally inhale in an ‘aha’ moment,” Marks said. “I force audiences to reflect. I don’t blame them. I don’t call them biased. We are all biased based on how our minds function. I ask how this advantages or disadvantages people.”
Gershenson believes training can be good, bad or very bad. Bad would waste time and not be useful, while very bad would make things worse as trainees exhaust themselves trying not to be biased and revert to their old ways.
Good training does not blame or shame, defines implicit bias in psychological and neurological terms rather than purposeful decisions, urges the evaluation of individuals instead of as part of groups, and encourages more frequent interactions with diverse populations and the development of empathy, he said.
“If training is a box checked off a to-do list, there’s less impact than if it’s part of an organization’s culture,” Gershenson said.
Long term, America would benefit from making implicit bias training part of public education, he said.
“What matters most — is this a one-off event, or will (Starbucks) make antiracism a part of its DNA?” Kincaid said.