In Response to Occy's "Slate Article" Post
I would like to attach to one phrase and take it completely out of context, analyze it, because I think its important that it be drawn out more. I am sure nobody will be surprised that I have chosen to parse words, but who can blame me, I am in the process of being trained as a professional sophist. I want to focus my attention on the phrase "unconscious bias."
As Occy knows, because we have shared a classroom where this issue was discussed, one of our classmates took exception with the use of the phrase "unconscious bias," because it tends to remove the burden from the individual into some netherland of the mind. He suggested we refer to it as "subconscious bias." I find myself averse to either denomination, although I feel we may have a sort of sensus communis agreement on the substance. I think we ought to work though to clear up the term to better convey what is meant.
I agree with our former classmate that there are certain problems that inhere when the bias in society is deemed "unconscious." First of all, it suggests that one cannot work on, or with, the tools of the conscious mind to create change, this is a sad kind of fatalism...what would we leave ourselves. I think that a lot of biases are conceptual, hence of the reasoning mind. They have to do with the images that are subsumed under a given concept and the way we then use that concept as part of a logico-linguistic chisel to sculpt the world. They also have to do with the way our ready made conceptual tools work within the current power orderings of a society, which I caution are immensely complex. These biases are not wholly material nor wholly creations of the mind, but they live in the realm of praxis, where theoretical and practical considerations collide to reinforce each other.
I also urge that the root of biases cannot be a located in a single realm of the mind or the world. The biases men have against women and those of one race against another do not originate from the same "prime mover" of bias. Its near inconcievable that the universality of gender subordination is present, with such expansive scope, at birth when many of us men come to associate our very sustenance with our mothers. Gender bias must intensify or arise at some point later in intellectual/social development.
On the other hand, it is wholly possible that we begin to sow the field of our mind for racial bias in the dawn of our infancy. Many of us are raised in families where our experience of others is wholly of one race. As we begin to attach mental images with concepts those images reflect our experience, for some of us "person" is "white person" quite early on. Later in life when we begin to experience other races we have to figure out why this person is so different from the conceptual "person" we have used to crawl our way through experience, its a sort of ready-made conceptual alienation. Unfortunately, at this point there is a mass of media images, biased ideology, and socio-economic interest that are all too ready to mischaracterize this state. How to expand the substance of a concept to make it deal better with particularity, this is a chief task of the reasoning human mind, and it will not get a pass in this instance.
These are just speculations, hypotheticals, and are by no means fact; but the point is that it is possible that our biases come from various directions, vary with respect to each of their different objects, and arise differently in each of the different biased subjects. This does little I think to help with the immensity of the task to alleviate bias in society, but it does bring it out of the deep, dark recesses of the "unconscious" or "subconscious" mind and out into light of the reasoning mind. So what to call this bias? Well, that is to be debated. I only urge that there is much in a name so we ought be very careful when naming a phenomenon because the end result may be the linguistic equivalent of creating an axe to do the work of a hammer.
Some suggestions to guide the discussion. We should keep in mind the psychological/philosophical traditions we are leaning on when we chose to refer to this phenomenon as one thing or another, because we are inadvertantly accepting a wealth of epistemological and metaphysical assumptions. For instance, a discussion of the "unconscious" or "subconscious" cannot ignore Freud and psychoanalytics without being vastly inadequate...many of these debates have already been begun by exceptional minds. Second, I urge that we start all over, work from the ground up. Begin with the phenomenon as it exists and then work toward a conceptualization that is both descriptive and instrumental in achieving our end, which I assume is the elimination of bias in society and particularly in social institutions. Finally, I again caution that this task is not one that will find a paradigmatic solution, one of its very problems may be that it defies easy theoretical conceptualizations, we have to keep our minds open to a near infinite expanse of complexity behind this issue. Bias is very often as varied as the minds that carry it.
As Occy knows, because we have shared a classroom where this issue was discussed, one of our classmates took exception with the use of the phrase "unconscious bias," because it tends to remove the burden from the individual into some netherland of the mind. He suggested we refer to it as "subconscious bias." I find myself averse to either denomination, although I feel we may have a sort of sensus communis agreement on the substance. I think we ought to work though to clear up the term to better convey what is meant.
I agree with our former classmate that there are certain problems that inhere when the bias in society is deemed "unconscious." First of all, it suggests that one cannot work on, or with, the tools of the conscious mind to create change, this is a sad kind of fatalism...what would we leave ourselves. I think that a lot of biases are conceptual, hence of the reasoning mind. They have to do with the images that are subsumed under a given concept and the way we then use that concept as part of a logico-linguistic chisel to sculpt the world. They also have to do with the way our ready made conceptual tools work within the current power orderings of a society, which I caution are immensely complex. These biases are not wholly material nor wholly creations of the mind, but they live in the realm of praxis, where theoretical and practical considerations collide to reinforce each other.
I also urge that the root of biases cannot be a located in a single realm of the mind or the world. The biases men have against women and those of one race against another do not originate from the same "prime mover" of bias. Its near inconcievable that the universality of gender subordination is present, with such expansive scope, at birth when many of us men come to associate our very sustenance with our mothers. Gender bias must intensify or arise at some point later in intellectual/social development.
On the other hand, it is wholly possible that we begin to sow the field of our mind for racial bias in the dawn of our infancy. Many of us are raised in families where our experience of others is wholly of one race. As we begin to attach mental images with concepts those images reflect our experience, for some of us "person" is "white person" quite early on. Later in life when we begin to experience other races we have to figure out why this person is so different from the conceptual "person" we have used to crawl our way through experience, its a sort of ready-made conceptual alienation. Unfortunately, at this point there is a mass of media images, biased ideology, and socio-economic interest that are all too ready to mischaracterize this state. How to expand the substance of a concept to make it deal better with particularity, this is a chief task of the reasoning human mind, and it will not get a pass in this instance.
These are just speculations, hypotheticals, and are by no means fact; but the point is that it is possible that our biases come from various directions, vary with respect to each of their different objects, and arise differently in each of the different biased subjects. This does little I think to help with the immensity of the task to alleviate bias in society, but it does bring it out of the deep, dark recesses of the "unconscious" or "subconscious" mind and out into light of the reasoning mind. So what to call this bias? Well, that is to be debated. I only urge that there is much in a name so we ought be very careful when naming a phenomenon because the end result may be the linguistic equivalent of creating an axe to do the work of a hammer.
Some suggestions to guide the discussion. We should keep in mind the psychological/philosophical traditions we are leaning on when we chose to refer to this phenomenon as one thing or another, because we are inadvertantly accepting a wealth of epistemological and metaphysical assumptions. For instance, a discussion of the "unconscious" or "subconscious" cannot ignore Freud and psychoanalytics without being vastly inadequate...many of these debates have already been begun by exceptional minds. Second, I urge that we start all over, work from the ground up. Begin with the phenomenon as it exists and then work toward a conceptualization that is both descriptive and instrumental in achieving our end, which I assume is the elimination of bias in society and particularly in social institutions. Finally, I again caution that this task is not one that will find a paradigmatic solution, one of its very problems may be that it defies easy theoretical conceptualizations, we have to keep our minds open to a near infinite expanse of complexity behind this issue. Bias is very often as varied as the minds that carry it.
2 Comments:
Initially, you are right to criticize me for taking this into a more esoteric realm. This is a personal weakness of mine that needs to be constantly checked in order for me to be effective (and I admit that on one level I approached this as a purely intellectual task). I think you should have posted on the page because you raise some interesting points. I will try to clarify my concerns, because they still exist...I would like to put this post on the page but I will wait until you put yours up to provide some balance and context...this could be a good debate.
I can see what you mean from a pragmatic perspective, we can all agree there is something there, call it "x," that needs to be dealt with. I am never one to intentionally fall into the trap of forgoing action to deal with the niceties of the language (in fact, a few years ago I would be disgusted with my current self!). My concern is that the term "unconscious bias," as a conceptual tool for action, is not as effective as it ought to be. Especially if this fight is to be fought in academic and/or legal circles (or led from these circles as many social revolutions are), the wording at this point is the means to the end.
Insofar as people are "unconscious" of the substance of their thought process I see the challenge of academics to open the window and shine some light on these shadowy aspects of the conscious mind. A being without consciousness would likely be incapable of creating the complex web of debilitating ideologies of alienation that we not only make, but then use to help shape/reinforce our material world. We ought not give people a pass when it comes to the very active role they play in creating discrimination.
I am deeply concerned with moving the discourse out of the range of the average person. You can see how that would be a complete failure to my task of demonstrating the unstable and unnatural nature of things we assume to be otherwise. The value of a good theory, from my point of view, and borrowing from American pragmatism, is its ability to create real change in accord with its ends. So there has to be a kind of theoretical "sweet-spot" where conceptual precision and real-world applicability can meet to create a kind of "perfect storm" of enlightened activism. Hannah Arendt argues that people will follow bad theory if its inner-consistency creates a hypnotic effect and puts the common sense to sleep...thats what we face, we must awaken the "common sense" of people (I use this term specifically to denote the Kantian idea of the sensus communis, how we, as real people, deal with the particular world...this is where the whole reasoning process begins to confuse itself with respect to bias I think).
I ask, what is the course of action to be set out upon when dealing with the spectre of "unconscious bias?" It is too nebulous and imprecise to open a route to change in my opinion, and I also think it is open to being co-opted by dominant ideology. There is a phenomenon today that has almost reached the level of cultural fad for "passing the buck." I fear that unconscious bias will be received as an excuse to blame our discriminating mothers and fathers and do nothing ourselves. I know this is not what you propose, and I align myself wholly with your intentions, but how can you alleviate my fear that "unconscious bias" will wiggle its way into the fairy-tale land of psycho-babble and away from the world of social activism?
Change in this realm will require a massive, directed and concerted effort by "people"...I think the conceptual framework should fairly characterize the immensity of this task, it should be free of inclinations toward passive response, and it should be a call to action of sort. I want people to know that a lot of discrimination, whatever its subject may be, is the direct result of the way they are "being" in the world. Certainly much of it is institutionalized at this point by past beings, this is sort of "capitalized bias," but bias is the activity of conscious beings. Its almost like saying that "unconscious labor" is producing bad commodities, what can be done?
It should be a two-fold task...first, an assault on what i have called "capitalized bias." This "capitalized bias" is the bias of past generations that has been made into the "means of institutional discrimination" by crystallizing itself in the law, government, and various sectors of civil society and then attaining a kind of "fetishized" transcendent existence. The second front in the war against alienation is what i will call "labouring bias" (to keep my Marxist paradigm). "Labouring bias" is living bias as it operates in conscious beings at a given time who are in the process of crystallyzing the next generation's "capital bias" through the exertion of their biased "labor." This second front will be difficult because it will require making people aware of the contents of their assumed conceptual tools, and making them aware that this content is not an actual reflection of things in their particularity. Finally, the aforementioned task is constantly at risk of being undermined by the existing "capital biases" that try to urge people otherwise, because bias in both forms act to reinforce one another (its a dialectic of bias production).
This discussion is already going in the right direction I think though...because we are asking the right questions. I was wrong to state unequivically that the existing theoretic framework should be scrapped, and you were right to challenge me on that. I am guilty of inhabiting a rather insulated academic world and I am always at risk of "academizing" issues and taking them away from the world of action. I will stick to my point here though and say that I am concerned with the practical nature of a theory that identifies one dominant kind of bias and I am wary of the effect of names, especially in the age we live in where the world is experienced rapidly through commercial images and soundbytes. When people take to the streets they will adopt whatever word they feel best suits them, but now we are in the laboratory creating possible tools for them.
An article called "All is fair in politics of skin hue" was in the Denver Post's Style section on August 29, 2004- I tried to find it online- but failed :(
If you can find it- it matches the issue of early biases.
The opinion of a Latino magazine (Morales) writer says that social class plays a large role in whether or not a child developes biases. Also, the article refers to the opinion of a young man with a white mother and black father as evidence that some escape "color drama" - because the young man claimed to see 'no difference' between the two races.
I think that society would affect a child's development regardless of his parents skin colors. And I am not sure how much social class may affect an individual's level of bias- I am obviously still unsure about the issue... but I wish I could have found that article.
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