Defining your bias is common ground

AS training video

Parents, do your children have implicit biases they’ve learned from you? Well, if so, the radical left professors can reeducate them. In one of the ASU employee training videos, we are told that we must overcome implicit bias. In order to do this, we are told that we must start with common ground. According to the video, common ground is found by defining four keywords: implicit bias, stereotype, institutional bias, and discrimination. As a philosopher, I agree that we must start by defining our terms. But this video goes further than that and imports a theory about bias that we must all accept to have common ground.

This is the fallacy of begging the question or assuming as true what must be proven to be true. Here is the circularity of it: you have implicit bias due to your race, gender, etc., and implicit bias is when we make assumptions about a person due to their race, gender, etc. It is a self-defeating system.

Here is how their reasoning works: differences in society are due to implicit bias, and implicit bias is structured into institutions, which then discriminate against people, thus producing differences in society. There is no doubt there has been discrimination, and federal and state laws provide the means for prosecuting it. But this theory says that this only catches some discrimination while “implicit” or “unconscious” bias remains.

What is their proof? That differences exist between people. They will point to statistics as support. But the problem with statics is that they can be explained more than one way, and what we want to do is figure out the correct way to understand them. By forcing this one theory on their employees and students, this program prevents such debate and critical thinking from happening.

Parents, are you sending your children to a university that says they have implicit bias just because of who they are and without ever having met them?