Other Biases We Have - Is Now The Time To Talk About Them?

I'm reacting to two things I've seen recently.  One is this opinion piece from yesterday by Michael J. Sandel, Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice. The other, is a cartoon a friend in Facebook shared a couple of days ago. The upshot is that for White liberals, who mean well but are guilt laden by their prior lack of sensitivity, they must actively eliminate prior prejudice in themselves that they can now identify.  An alternative view is that for the time being the focus should remain squarely on BlackLivesMatter and excessive use of force against young Black men.  Other biases should remain in the background for now. In this piece I'm going to argue for the alternative view, but first do so indirectly.

I will begin with some examples of bias/prejudice that the reader can use to reflect on the broader question.  This list is by no means exhaustive, but I hope it is illustrative.   

Is it true blondes have more fun?  This TV commercial aired frequently when I was a kid.  I'm guessing that most people my age will remember this line, even now.  If you watched a fair amount of TV, then it was drummed into you.  I thought the comments that follow the video were pretty amusing, so worth reading.  That an individual has a preference for one type of hair color over another is no big deal.  That there is a systematic such preference is quite another thing.  What would be the source of that?

The Marlboro Man, the image of masculinity. We who did watch a lot of TV learned that the cowboy was the good guy and a tough character.  I'm pretty sure that having a cowboy smoking a cigarette was not part of the picture for the kid shows we watched.  (I Googled - Roy Rogers smoking a cigarette - but didn't find any images which showed that).  Further, the linkage of the cigarette dangling out of the mouth of the actor to the actor being cool certainly goes beyond the cowboy image. (I also Googled - James Dean smoking a cigarette - there were many images readily available.)  But all of this eventually consolidated in the image of the Marlboro Man.

In case it's not obvious, these first two examples had the image manufactured by Madison Avenue types for selling some product.  Creating a stereotype is effective as a marketing device.  Many of the biases we do have is because somebody else created them and thus was advantaged by us holding these biases.

Tall people are paid more. Sometimes I mention this in the economics class I teach, with the caveat that we're not talking about NBA players here (where height might correlate well with productivity).  The point of the research in this area is that height and productivity at work should have zero correlation, so height shouldn't matter for what people are paid, but it does.  The book Moneyball illustrated a similar type of bias in how professional scouts evaluated talent (so the wrong players were considered shoo-ins, getting drafted highly, but then under performing).

Ageism.  There are many dimensions to this and in the economy that will exist after the pandemic is over, many of those other dimensions should be considered.  Here I just want to consider one of these.  Imagine you are trying to fill a position and most of the people who are applying for the job are in their 20s or 30s, but there is one candidate who is in their mid 50s.  Will age matter for who gets the job offer, regardless of the other credentials people bring to the work?   As I retired early and looked for some alternative things to do the first couple of years after retirement, I experienced this sort of thing.  I don't think it matters, at least in higher education, for people already working, though even there it might impact promotion decisions.  (Conceivably, in the promotion case, there is a seniority bias that works in reverse.)

Students who skip class frequently.  This one I'm including here because it brings front and center my own biases.  Through most of my teaching (all except fall 2017) I have not required students to attend, but my syllabus said that they were encouraged to attend.  I then used attendance as a proxy for those who were serious about the course versus those who were goofing off.  For many years I thought this was sensible.  But then I learned that student physical or mental health can be a reason for missing class, so it was wrong of me to attribute that to lack of effort.  I want to help students who are struggling in my class, but who are putting in some effort.  Once in a while, I was getting it wrong.

I now want to generalize from the examples but do this very briefly, relying on the approach taken in Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Our intuitive selves think fast, so reach conclusions quickly. Stereotyping is a product of our intuitive selves. In contrast, our thoughtful selves think slow, more carefully examine the evidence, and can identify situations where the stereotype produces the wrong answer.  You might then regard advice to look at our own biases as tantamount to urging us to be more thoughtful.  As a retired university professor, I must say I find that attractive.  But Kahneman's theory includes an additional wrinkle.  Our thoughtful selves get tired and can become overworked, at which point our intuitive selves take over.  If that's true, then one might wonder what the best use of our thoughtful selves is.  For those of us who are time abundant because we are retired, one answer might prevail.  For those who are working full time and are already extremely busy, adding to the cognitive load is a blunder.  Most people nowadays, especially those who are working from home, need to find ways to offload work.  Examining all your biases every day is piling on work and will almost certainly get a quick once over each day, nothing more. This will be a waste of time that simply creates more stress.

* * * * *

I now want to switch gears and make a different argument, along political lines.  The Democratic coalition now will hold through the election, because beating Trump is on everyone's radar.  There is total agreement in that objective.

What will happen after the election?  Will the Democratic coalition continue to hold then?  So many voters going into November have a grievance of one sort or another or a key issue that they want to see get addressed.  I wrote about this in my previous post.  The coalition will hold if these voters are patient and understand their pet issue will get addressed eventually, but perhaps not immediately.  The coalition will fall apart otherwise, with this caveat.  Perhaps there can be one designated subgroup that is allowed to be impatient and to expect its issue to be addressed immediately. In my opinion, that one subgroup is African-Americans who fully expect racial justice to be at the top of the agenda in a Biden administration. And, I fear, that implementing a real plan to manage the pandemic will still come first, and for a while might crowd out doing anything on the racial justice front. I hope the Democratic coalition can hold that long and not fracture then and there.

In this sense our politics is like ourselves in our thinking.  The sensible approach can proceed if it is focused, but it will become overwhelmed if it has to do everything at once.  White liberals should recognize this and not try to elevate their other pet issues now (e.g., the $15 minimum wage), but to make sure that those issues remain on the radar of the Democratic party.  Those issues will be addressed when there is sufficient bandwidth to deal with them.