Are You Racially Biased?

That’s a question asked by lawyers in race discrimination cases. It’s a question asked during the recent presidential campaign. To find out, all you have to do is take the Implicit Association Test, or I.A.T. You’ll get a rating of “slight,” “moderate,” or “strong,” and you’ll be given advice on dealing with your bias, like attending sensitivity workshops.

If you’re inclined to think this sounds like something that would generate controversy, the New York Times says you’re right. Last year, a team of researchers at Harvard used the test to show unconscious bias in hospitals. Doctors were shown the picture of a 50-year-old-man, sometimes black and sometimes white, and asked how they would treat him if he arrived at the emergency room with chest pains indicating a possible heart attack.

According to the original results, doctors who scored higher on the bias test were less likely than other doctors to give clot-busting drugs to black patients. Believing these results to be a bit too neat, other researchers reviewed the test data and found that, on the whole, the doctors in the study prescribed clot-busting drugs to blacks just as often as to whites. In fact, the more “biased” doctors treated blacks and whites more equally than doctors scoring low on bias.

Critics of the I.A.T. say that the test is flawed. People who take the test are given only a split second to react to pictures. Arbitrary classifications of bias are used by I.A.T. methodology. Only a small group of researchers look at a distribution of test scores to make a bias determination.

Test takers are asked to associate words like “joy” or “awful” with either blacks or whites. Try this yourself. Look at a picture of Willie Horton. Then look at a group of African-Americans enjoying a picnic. Look at a picture of Charles Manson. Then look at a picture of the Brady Bunch. (Well, maybe not the Brady Bunch. How about the original cast of Lassie?)

Proponents of the I.A.T. and its critics are asking each other to agree to a third group of researchers to mediate joint experiments. So far, nothing has happened, and each side blames the other. And these people are going to help us with racial bias?

It seems to me that while the I.A.T. could be marginally helpful in dealing with bias, it’s far from something that will lead us to the promised land of racial harmony. Biases of all kinds are complex. A test requiring spit-second reactions will only scratch the surface. I continue to believe that we’re at a place and time when we can discuss bias, particularly racial bias, in a more meaningful and honest way than perhaps ever before. Employers interested in lessening or eliminating bias in the workplace (which can be, it should be remembered, illegal) will engage their employees in these discussions.