Author says bias is inevitable, but it can be faced, uprooted
Tuesday, Starbucks will close more than 8,000 stores in the USA to conduct employee training “to address implicit bias” and “prevent discrimination” after two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia store in April.
From multinational corporations to police departments, organizations hired consultants to lead diversity training in an attempt to tackle implicit bias, a term used to describe unconscious prejudice. The science behind the approach has been a matter of debate: A 2016 analysis of 494 studies on the topic found little evidence that reducing implicit bias affects behavior.
White people are bad at admitting implicit bias and good at denying the realities of racism, says Robin DiAngelo, who conducts workshops on race, including implicit bias, and provided Starbucks with feedback.
“I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to be free of bias,” DiAngelo says, but she does believe we can work on it.
Eight in 10 blacks say racism is a big problem in society, and about half of whites say the same, according to the Pew Research Center. Fifty-five percent of whites say whites are discriminated against in America, according to a poll from Harvard, NPR and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Addressing racism makes many white people feel anger, fear and guilt, which leads to denial, minimization and defensiveness, DiAngelo says, even though racism touches everyone.
“No one — no one — can escape the messages of white superiority,” she says, adding that the reflex to shut down conversations about racism helps keep it alive.
USA TODAY spoke with DiAngelo about racism and her forthcoming book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism:
(Questions edited for clarity; answers edited for length.)
Question: You say the main- stream definition of racism is problematic. Why?
Robin DiAngelo: (The mainstream definition of ) a racist is always an individual who consciously (must be conscious) does not like people based on race and intentionally (must be intentional) seeks to hurt them. As long as that is our definition of a racist, virtually every white person is exempt from the system we are in. I think that reductive definition is the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic, because if I think that’s what a racist is, and you suggest that anything I’ve said or done is racist, you’ve just put me in the category of immoral person. And now I’m going to have to defend my moral character.
Q: How should we define racism? DiAngelo: A group’s collective bias backed by legal authority and institutional control.
Q: Is everyone racist?
DiAngelo: While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word “racist” to describe the bias that white people have — our collective bias is backed by institutional power.
Q: “White privilege” has become a commonly used term, but what about white people who have suffered hardships?
DiAngelo: It’s not that white people don’t face barriers. What I’m saying is you have not faced this one (racism). And not facing this one has helped you navigate your other ones.
Q: How does a white person being defensive affect a person of color?
DiAngelo: I often ask people of color in my workshops the simple question: How often have you tried to give white people feedback on our inevitable and often unaware racism and have that go well for you? They laugh. They roll their eyes. Never. Rarely. We’re so difficult about this. And that, of course, functions beautifully to kind of police people of color into not giving us feedback, because they risk even more punishment with our defensiveness, our hurt feelings, our minimization, our explaining away. It’s like this loop that keeps everyone in their place, but of course, ultimately who does that benefit? Trust me, people of color bring home way more racism every single day than they bother talking to us about.
Q: Where do we go from here? DiAngelo: I think the goal is to try to identify your biases, try to uproot them. ... Our efforts need to be lifelong and ongoing.