Unconscious Racism
& Its Relation to Unconscious Bias, Implicit Bias & the Implicit Association Test
This is part of the Culture War Encyclopedia.
UNCONSCIOUS RACISM
Contents
Preface
Intro
Historic Background
Doctrine of Unconscious Racism in CRT
Doctrine of Unconscious Racism in Wider Society
‘Unconscious Racism’ Means That Even When They Fight for Social Justice, Whites are as Bad as Nazis & the KKK?
Society is Racist & the Supreme Court Lies About it?
IAT (Implicit Association Test) & Implicit Bias
Comment
Preface
It seems that black Americans make up roughly 12% of the population of the USA and that roughly 72% of National Basketball Association players are black. I would imagine that the NBA chooses the best from a pool of men who play basketball and who are interested in being NBA players. Maybe it’s not that simple, but it’s something like that, I hope.
Compare the blue portion above (black Americans) to the blue portion below (black NBA players).
Imagine the government ruled that racial disparities like this were proof of racist polices and furthermore dictated that if 12% of the US population is black then the pool of NBA players had better be no more or less than 12% black. Imagine it was argued that players were chosen by ability and that skin color was not a factor. Imagine that the Supreme Court ruled that whatever the policy, practice or law states, if there is a racial disparity, it is unconstitutional (and racist).
Does that seem fair? Would that be just?
Intro
The idea of unconscious racism (also see implicit bias) is a concern in progressive politics and in critical race theory particular. In Critical Race Theory - An Introduction, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic define unconscious racism1 as
racism that operates at an unconscious or subtle level.
By definition, this would be unintentional. Nonetheless, as we will see, critical race theory argues that even when something is not consciously intended to be racist, it is unconsciously intended to be racist. Even if you do not have racist thoughts or feelings, you’re still racist, just unconsciously so, but only if you have privilege (which, of course, depends on your skin color).
The authors of the research paper Best research practices for using the Implicit Association Test indicate that in research, the term/concept of unconscious bias is associated with “implicit bias”, “implicit association”, “unintended discrimination”, “indirect attitude”, “implicit social cognition” and “implicit attitudes and stereotypes”.2 We will touch upon the IAT (Implicit Association Test) below, but for the most part, this piece will focus on the term/concept of unconscious racism in critical race theory and leave implicit bias and the IAT (Implicit Association Test) to it’s own section (here) in the Culture War Encyclopedia.
Historic Background
The 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution constrains the government from infringing upon your right to a fair trial and it secures your right to life, liberty and property. This includes due process of law.3 This is known as the Due Process Clause. As Cornell Law School puts it,
The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause requires the United States government to practice equal protection. The Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause requires states to practice equal protection.
Equal protection forces a state to govern impartially—not draw distinctions between individuals solely on differences that are irrelevant to a legitimate governmental objective. Thus, the equal protection clause is crucial to the protection of civil rights.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed with the intent of ending discrimination of Americans based on skin color, national origin or religion. As part of the Civil Rights Act,
Title VII bans discrimination by trade unions, schools, or employers involved in interstate commerce or doing business with the federal government. . . The act also calls for the desegregation of public schools (Title IV)…
In the 1971 case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the Supreme Court ruled that employment practices that had a racially disparate effect, even if not racist in intent, were in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically Title VII which, as we saw, prohibits racial discrimination in employment.
In the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Washington v. Davis, it was ruled that a law or official act that results in a racially disproportionate outcome is in violation of the 5th Amendment, specifically the Equal Protection component only if it has a “racially discriminatory purpose”. As the Supreme Court decided,
Though the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment contains an equal protection component prohibiting the Government from invidious discrimination, it does not follow that a law or other official act is unconstitutional Solely because it has a racially disproportionate impact regardless of whether it reflects a racially discriminatory purpose.
This is known as the Doctrine of Discriminatory Purpose. It’s about the intent, not the results as far as the Supreme Court is concerned.
Unconscious Racism in CRT
In 1987, Standford Law Review published The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning With Unconscious Racism by Charles R. Lawrence III.4 Twenty years later, this author would write5 (about his own article) that it
is considered a foundational document of Critical Race Theory and is one of the most influential and widely cited law review articles.
Also,6
My life’s work is writing and teaching about constitutional law and critical race theory. . .
About his own 1987 essay, he writes,7
This work is heavily cited in judicial opinions and scholarly writing. See Ian Ayres & Fredrick E. Vars, Interpreting Legal Citations: Determinants of Citations to Articles in Elite Law Reviews . . . listing The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection as the first or second most-cited law review article of all-time); Fred R. Shapiro, The Most-Cited Legal Articles Revisited . . . listing The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection as the sixty-first most cited law review article of all-time…
It would be included in Critical Race Theory – the Key Writings That Formed the Movement8 in 1995 in which the editors9 seem to imply that the interest in unconscious racism (at least in CRT) stems from this piece by Lawrence in 1987. In this piece, Lawrence argues against the the Doctrine of Discriminatory Purpose from the Washington v. Davis decision (1976 ) which, Lawrence wrote,10
requires plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of a facially neutral law to prove a racially discriminatory purpose on the part of those responsible for the law’s enactment or administration.
Note the inclusion of “purpose”. We’re talking about a consciousness motive here, intent. It’s the thought that counts. In Unconscious Racism Revisited (2008), he writes11 about his own article from 20 years earlier that it
argued that the purposeful intent requirement found in Supreme Court equal protection doctrine and in the Court’s interpretation of antidiscrimination laws disserved the value of equal citizenship expressed in those laws because many forms of racial bias are unconscious. Professor Lawrence suggested that rather than look for discriminatory motive, the Court should examine the cultural meaning of laws to determine the presence of collective, unconscious racism.
This is a good summation of his 1987 essay in which he also wrote, by the way,12
Racism continues to be aided and abetted by self-conscious bigots and well-meaning liberals alike.
You see, CRT is openly against liberalism (see CRT in the Culture War Encyclopedia).
Doctrine of Unconscious Racism in Wider Society
At any rate, Lawrence wrote about himself and his 1987 essay13 that
an important body of research and scholarship has emerged to substantiate his assertion concerning the ubiquity of unconscious racial bias.
To that point, let us note that according to Unconscious racism: A concept in pursuit of a measure published in Annual Review of Sociology in 2008,14
It is common in scientific and popular discussions to claim that unconscious racism is both prevalent and potent in modern societies. We review the theoretical models that posit different forms of unconscious racism and evaluate the empirical evidence for them. Our analysis suggests that people may sometimes lack knowledge of and control over the causes and consequences of their racial biases. However, there is little evidence to support the more provocative claim: that people possess unconscious racist attitudes. Many of the arguments to the contrary rest on strong interpretations of response patterns on implicit attitude measures. Although advances in implicit measurement can improve our understanding of racial bias, at present their use as tools for rooting out unconscious racism is limited.
At any rate, Lawrence wrote in 2008,15
Cognitive psychologists have employed carefully constructed research and sound scientific methodology to substantiate my article’s assertion that we are all influenced by racial bias, much of which we are unaware. Legal scholars, including Linda Krieger, Jerry Kang, Devon Carbado, and others have drawn on this social science and made the work accessible to lawyers and civil rights activists who have, in turn, used it well to do the important political work of educating the courts and the public about the role of the unconscious in discrimination.
I am not well versed in the research literature regarding that question but it does seem as if it is not a settled matter, as we will see. According to Google Scholar in 2023, The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection has been cited in over 4,000 papers. Now the terms unconscious bias, implicit bias and the Implicit Association Test are common in our culture despite the lack of validity of these pursuits as we will see.
‘Unconscious Racism’ Means That Even When They Fight for Social Justice, Whites are as Bad as Nazis & the KKK?
In his 2008 retrospective, Lawrence objects to such questions as16
“Why should ‘innocent’ whites pay the costs for remedying racial discrimination for which they were not responsible?”
which, he writes, are found in17
sophisticated anti-affirmative action arguments, in stories about a son who didn’t get into Harvard of immigrant ancestors who had never owned slaves, and in less refined outbursts like, “Some of my best friends are black,”
and his response is18
but I always heard the question’s meaning loud and clear. My friends were saying, “Why me? I’m not a racist.”
Imagine having him as your ally in the struggle against racism. He complains19 about the
white liberal friends
he had in the 1960s and 1970s in20
a newly militant civil rights movement
who objected being labeled21
with the same pejorative label I would use to describe a Nazi or KKK member
and he writes22 that he
always felt conflicted at this point in the conversation
when they asked him to not label them so because, on the one hand, they were his allies in the fight against racism, but on the other hand, they were white and subject to23
collective racism
and because they had24
white privilege
that25
implicated them in the structures and conditions of racial inequality
and therefore he could not, as they requested26
exempt them from responsibility for America’s racism.
The way he sees it,27
When my friends said they didn’t want to be called racist, they were also saying they didn’t want to be held responsible for society’s institutional and structural racism.
He then makes it clear that in his mind (and this seems to be his whole point)28
The defendant in Washington v. Davis had asked the Supreme Court for the same free pass on racism as my friends had asked of me. And, of course, the Court gave the defendants that free “good guy” pass on both questions. Only intentional racists were deemed to violate the constitutional value of racial equality. . .
My goal in The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection was to expose and challenge the way that the Court had . . . given my friends and colleagues the exoneration they were seeking from me. I wrote The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection to say to my friends, “Just because the Court gave you the answer you wanted to hear doesn’t mean it’s a good answer. Just because the Court’s answer has let you off the hook, do not think that you can claim allegiance to the struggle against racism.”
Well, then, it would seem his motives and methods may have been less than objective and, well, biased. He writes furthermore,29
My reference to the “collective unconscious” rather than the individual actor’s unconscious was meant to convey my belief that the harm resided in the continued existence of a widely shared belief in white supremacy and not in the motivation of the individual actor or actors charged with discrimination. So long as this shared ideology remains we must assume that the affirmative command of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause to abolish white supremacy has not been accomplished.
Society is Racist & the Supreme Court Lies About it?
Sir Lawence III, ever rational, writes in his 2008 retrospective that30
Although I argue in The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection that we are often unaware of the racism that motivates our actions, the Supreme Court majority’s refusal to see society’s racism is quite intentional.
He goes on to argue that the Supreme Court ruled on the McCleskey v. Kemp case a few months after his 1987 paper and that they did not accept his argument that it does not matter if any given case involves racism because collective racism exists and unconscious racism exists and therefore racism is always a factor. He complains that the Supreme Court insisted on adhering to their 1976 ruling that racist intent must be demonstrated.31 It seems a bit naive of Lawrence to think the Supreme Court would simply reverse their ruling on racist intent simply because he asserted in his 1987 paper, does it not?
IAT (Implicit Association Test) & Implicit Bias
There’s a section in the Culture War Encyclopedia dedicated to this particular area. We begin by defining implicit bias and proceed to discuss the IAT according to standard references, critical race theorists, Jonathan Haidt, Douglas Murray and look at criticisms of the IAT from the designers themselves. See here.
Comment
To say that someone or something is unconsciously racist is to make what is known as an unfalsifiable claim. An unfalsifiable claim is a claim that can not be verified by empirical observation. In other words, it is an invalid claim. It comes down to an article of faith in critical race theory. It’s about belief, not fact or justice, just so-called social justice.
Whether or not it is a fact that many or most people have unconscious racism is beside the point here. The point of Lawrence's argument is that the Supreme Court ruling in Washington v. Davis (1976) was wrong. He confirmed this in his 2008 retrospective.32 This is consistent with the general argument from critical race theory that everyone they say has power and privilege (white people, especially the males, especially the straight ones and the cisgender ones) is racist and that all policies or laws that have racially disparate outcomes are inherently racist despite what rational analysis may find to the contrary.
In the end, it is just an other cultural Marxist strategy to undermine Western civilization.
The idea of unconscious racism overlaps with that of implicit association, implicit bias and the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
Also see critical race theory (coming soon) as unconscious racism is one of the main concerns of CRT.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(multiple authors and editors) Critical Race Theory – the Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995) The New Press
(multiple authors) Best research practices for using the Implicit Association Test doi: 10.3758/s13428-021-01624-3 (published online September 13, 2021) NIH National Library of Medicine
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic - Critical Race Theory - an Introduction (3rd edition, 2017) New York University Press
Haidt, Jonathan - The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (copyright Jonathan Haidt, 2012; 1st edition, 2013) Vintage Books, Random House
Lawrence III, Charles R. - The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection Reckoning With Unconscious Racism originally published in Standford Law Review - Vol. 39, No. 2, (1987), pages 317-388, reprinted in Critical Race Theory – the Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995) The New Press, pages 235-257
Lawrence III, Charles R. - Unconscious Racism Revisited: Reflections on the Impact and Origins of “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection” - Connecticut Law Review Vol.40, No. 4, (May, 2008) (abstract here at Georgetown Law University)
Murray, Douglas - The Madness of Crowds - Gender Race and Identity (USA edition, 2021 (First published Great Britain, 2019) Bloombury Publishing
Murray, Douglas - The War on the West (1st edition, 2022) Harper Collins Publishers
Project Implicit (Dr. Banaji, Mahzarin, Dr. Tony Greenwald and Dr. Brian Nosek) - Implicit Association Test (IAT) hosted by Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (OEDIB) Harvard University, Harvard University (
Reber, Arthur S., Rhianon Allen and Emily S. Reber - The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology - Peguin Reference Library (4th edition, 2009)
FOOTNOTES
Page 185 in Critical Race Theory - an Introduction (see bibliography)
Best research practices for using the Implicit Association Test by multiple authors for NIH National Library of Medicine, doi: 10.3758/s13428-021-01624-3 (published online September 13, 2021)
Amendment V to the U.S. Constitution reads
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Lawrence III, Charles R. The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection Reckoning With Unconscious Racism originally published in Standford Law Review Vol. 39, No. 2, (1987), pages 317-388, reprinted in Critical Race Theory – the Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995, the New Press), pages 235-257
Page 931 in Connecticut Law Review Vol. 40, No. 4, May 2008 (abstract here at Georgetown Law University): Lawrence III, Charles R. - Unconscious Racism Revisited: Reflections on the Impact and Origins of “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection”
Page 935, footnote 7
Page 935, footnote 7
Pages 235-257 in Critical Race Theory – the Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995, the New Press)
Page 202 in Critical Race Theory – the Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995, the New Press
Page 318
Page 931 in Connecticut Law Review Vol. 40, No. 4, May 2008 (abstract here at Georgetown Law University): Lawrence III, Charles R. - Unconscious Racism Revisited: Reflections on the Impact and Origins of “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection”
Page 387
Page 931 in Connecticut Law Review Vol. 40, No. 4, May 2008 (abstract here at Georgetown Law University): Lawrence III, Charles R. - Unconscious Racism Revisited: Reflections on the Impact and Origins of “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection”
Unconscious racism: A concept in pursuit of a measure - edited by Karen Cook and Douglas Massey, pages 277-297 in Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 34, 2008
Page 941-942
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