There is nothing wrong with unconscious bias Don't let them control your thoughts!

The woke crusade against unconscious bias aims to make you conform to their outlook on the world. They aim to colonise your internal life!

Almost imperceptibly the policing of language and of censorship has expanded into the domain of the unconscious. Public and private organisations do not merely seek to regulate words that you can and cannot say but also what goes on in your mind! Not even babies and toddlers are immune from being targeted by the thought police. The targeting of children is justified on the ground that babies as young as 6 months show racial preferences and therefore, they need to cured of their biases[i]. According to a teaching guide produced by the campaign group #Disrupt Texts, in association with Penguin Random House, babies need to be educated to overcome their biases and become little anti-racists.

In recent years a growing number of people are cancelled, attacked and condemned not for what they actually said or did but for what is supposedly lurking in their unconscious. The main target of this form of therapeutic censorship is what it calls unconscious bias. Unconscious bias can mean just about any attitude, inclination or temperament that an individual possesses. They embrace preferences and likes and dislikes as well the spontaneous assumptions which underpin our actions.

As it happens being biased is unavoidable. Some of our biases are personal ones – such as not liking certain smells or preferring certain colours. Other biases are based on the experience of our community and transmitted though the medium of culture- such as having an aversion towards eating certain types of animals or being attracted to certain types of people. Our biases based on individual and community experience often guide our attitudes and behaviour.

Supporters of Cancel Culture have turned their guns on our biases. They claim that we are not supposed to have them because they are not inclusive. Since biases pivot around individual preferences, they are definitely not inclusive since they involve both the act of acceptance and rejection. Common sense dictates that biases are a normal part of life and there is nothing inherently wrong with them. But common sense on this score is conspicuously absent in Anglo-American cultural institutions and corporations

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has embraced unconscious bias training to prevent the supposed victimisation of staff. The BBC promotes the absurd proposition that its staff must watch out for 170 different forms of unconscious biases![ii] The BBC’s preposterous list of biases to be avoided includes discrimination based on a colleague’s hobbies. Obviously if my hobby is bird watching I would rather talk to those who share my hobby at lunch time rather than sit with a group of stamp collectors. If we can no longer show preference towards those who share our hobbies than our very freedom to join an exclusive organisation like a religious or political group is called into question

The BBC’s training guidelines also warns staff about discriminating on the ground of relationship and parental status, appearance, including tattoos, education, personality, communication style and personal interest. That’s right, personal interest! The idea that if you allow your personal interest to influence your behaviour towards someone who has totally different interest is an unacceptable form of discrimination, speaks to an obsessive focus on inclusion.

From their perspective, there is something wrong when on a Monday, a group of football supporters chat about the weekend’s games with one another and implicitly exclude colleagues who are not interested in the game from the conversation.

The campaign against unconscious bias represents an attack on personal preference, choice, judgment and thought. But then we are not supposed to think for ourselves. And that’s the whole point of targeting the unconscious! Therapeutic censorship aims to colonise our internal life to gain control over what we think.

Unconscious bias serves as the functional equivalent of original sin within woke ideology. And whether you like it or not, a salvationist industry of therapeutic censors and trainers stand ready to cure of your bias. As far they are concerned, the undertaking of unconscious bias training is not an option. It is mandatory for anyone who in their language wants to be ‘on the right side of history’.  For example, KPMG, the multinational consultancy corporation has decided to make unconscious bias training compulsory for its 15,900 staff. That means the future career of KPMG staff depends on subjecting themselves to this training scheme[iii].

Those who refuse to abase themselves to an unconscious bias trainer face excommunication.

Activists who advocate the cause of challenging unconscious bias assert that many men are unconsciously misogynist or that white people are unconsciously racist. Consequently, unless you can prove otherwise, you are presumed to be racist. The main way you can demonstrate that you have dealt with your unconscious bias is through subjecting yourself to training. That is why the leader of the British Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, announced that he was going to introduce unconscious bias training for all the officials in his party. And just to demonstrate that he meant business, Starmer declared, ‘I’m going to lead from the top on this and do that training first’[iv].

Undertaking ‘unconscious bias training’ has become a therapy of salvation widely promoted by leading members of the Anglo-American establishment. It is a quasi-religious form of purification that is mandatory for people like Starmer, who want to demonstrate that they are fully signed members of the woke brigade. Those who embrace being ‘trained’ indicate that they are willing to accept the language and code of behaviour associated with the ascendant woke etiquette. However, unconscious bias training is more than just an exercise in being debriefed about your biases. It is a form of indoctrination that aims to regulate behaviour. The reason why organisations like the BBC and KPMG wish to intrude into their employees unconscious is to influence their conduct.

Unconscious bias training is an intrusive instrument for regulating thought.

Frank Furedi @Furedibyte

Of course the one bias that the BBC does not engage with is its own bias against the kind of people and ideals that contradict its woke norms. BBC tells its staff to watch out for 170 forms of 'unconscious bias' mol.im/a/11153049 via @MailOnline

mol.imBBC tells its staff to watch out for 170 forms of ‘unconscious bias’The BBC has told its staff to be on the lookout for ’170 different forms of unconscious bias’ including discrimination against a colleague based on their hobbies.

Original sin

One reason why unconscious bias has become gained such prominence amongst woke cultural entrepreneurs is because it helps to normalise the claim that most of us – especially white people- are at the very least unconscious racist. That’s another way of saying that we are racist, whether we know it or not.

The cause of representing racism as an original sin is most grotesquely pursued through a project that targets toddlers and children. The project of policing the thought of toddlers is advocated Labour-run Islington Council, who claim that children as young as three months old can be racially biased[v]. Afflicted by an irrational form of racially obsessed magical thinking, this council has produced a poster that declares that babies as young as three months old are racially biased.

The poster informs readers that ‘'at three months, babies look more at faces that match the race of their caregivers'. There is no doubt that babies look for faces that match those of their mothers and fathers. But associating children’s identification with the face of their parents with a form of racial bias smacks of an irrational commitment to interpret every human gesture through a prism of racism.

Islington Council is not the only public body committed to targeting babies for its project of indoctrination. Nottingham City Council and the Welsh Government have also signed up to a programme designed to ‘decolonise’ nursery staff. The training programme devised by the Black Nursery Manager, who are critical of the ‘violence of white supremacy’, aims to rid the nursery of any hint of racial bias.

Can you see his unconscious bias?

According to one expert, Sarah Ezri, ‘research shows that it’s never too early to teach our kids about race’[vi]. She claims, that a ‘a 2017 study found that infants from 0 to 3 months old can already recognize race differences in faces and they more readily recognize faces of their own race’. Whatever this study found has little to do with racism. It is entirely normal that babies readily recognize faces of their own race. That babies are more likely to relate to people that look like them is a normal and natural feature of infant development. To interpret children’s affinity to their parent as a marker for racism is to empty racism of its meaning.

Bias - conscious or unconscious – is not the source of racism, misogyny or any attitude that can lead to oppressive or exploitative behaviour. Racism or misogyny are not rooted in the soul or the psyche. They express inequalities and relations of domination that prevail at a specific historical moment in society.

No one has the right to intrude into our unconscious.  And certainly no one has the right to control our thoughts. In a civilised community people are judged, criticised and in some cases punished for their actions and never for their thoughts.

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[i] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://storage.googleapis.com/classroom-portal-production/uploads/2020/11/47136c91-disrupt-texts-guide.pdf

[ii] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11153049/BBC-tells-staff-watch-170-different-forms-unconscious-bias.html

[iii] https://www.cityam.com/kpmg-to-make-unconscious-bias-training-compulsory-for-uk-staff/

[iv] https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/keir-starmer-promises-to-take-unconscious-bias-training

[v] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10841415/Labour-run-Islington-Council-say-children-young-three-months-old-racially-biased.html

[vi] https://www.healthline.com/health/parenting/it-is-never-too-early-to-teach-our-babies-about-race