If you buy into the thinking behind this Twitter scam ad from Creative Circus, you could also argue that unconscious bias is still bias—and the advertising agencies and companies using unconscious bias to excuse discriminatory practices are simply full of shit.
"Unconscious bias training" is the new scam training that ad agencies are going through. They bring in highly paid (white, always) consultants from the (white, always) tech world to talk about being more thoughtful about who they hire.
ReplyDeleteThey call it "unconscious bias" because it's more gentle and less direct than saying the truth, which is "racism."
Then everyone at the agency who goes through Unconscious Bias Training puts a diversity feather in their cap, their managers put out a press release about how they're Diversity Champions, the agency thoughtfully hires more white women than usual, and goes back to doing business like they always have.
The best opportunities, jobs, resources, inside information and full time paychecks go to white friends of white people already in that agency. But now there's more white women than before.
Don't forget the ever popular Diversity of Thought.
ReplyDeleteI swear to God it's like a catch all phrase agencies use these days to mean "Everyone Who Has A Pulse Is Diverse in 2016! So Our All White Agency Is Totally Diverse! We're The Diversity-ist Of Them All!"