The New Original Sin: "Unconscious Bias" and the Courts
Many academics are creatively using the courts for similar goals by testifying as legal experts on"unconscious bias." They are showing that whole new careers can be built by trying to prove a negative. Here is the latest from Business Week on this disturbing trend:
Hat tip King Banaian at SCSU Scholars.
Winning a big employment lawsuit these days often requires a bit of magic. After all, companies are awash in diversity training, equal opportunity policies, and 800 numbers aimed at rooting out bias. Managers have been well trained to keep their discriminatory thoughts to themselves, edit all hints of racism and sexism out of e-mail, and couch pay and promotion decisions in legally defensible language. So how do plaintiffs' lawyers prove their cases?
Enter the magician. Sociologist William T. Bielby is the leading courtroom proponent of a simple but powerful theory:"unconscious bias." He contends that white men will inevitably slight women and minorities because they just can't help themselves. So he tries to convince judges that no evidence of overt discrimination -- no smoking gun memo, for instance -- is needed to prove a case. As Allen G. King, an employment defense attorney at the Dallas office of Littler Mendelson, puts it:"I just have to leave you to your own devices, and because you are a white male," you will discriminate.