#implicit bias test

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Mahzarin Banaji and Frank Dobbin

Published: Sep 17, 2023

At least 30 states are considering legislation to defund DEI initiatives in public universities and state agencies. At the same time, conservative activists, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, are suing companies to stop DEI initiatives. These challenges come on the heels of the growth of corporate DEI programs after the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020.  

Meanwhile, advocates for DEI—which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion—have bemoaned the fact that after decades of diversity training, many university faculties, state agencies and corporations have made little progress on diversifying the workforce.

Are the right and the left on the same page here—is diversity training a hopeless cause?

We are a psychologist and a sociologist who have been studying bias and organizational diversity programs, respectively, for decades. The research makes it clear that Americans desperately need education about bias, because even people who value fairness and equality hold biases—without being aware of it. They need to understand that bias operates systemically and must be addressed at the individual, institutional and societal levels.

Education offered on these matters is very much in the national spirit. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted in “Democracy in America” in 1835: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”

What research shows

The social and behavioral sciences have developed strong evidence about conscious prejudice and implicit bias. Three lines of research, together, are pertinent. One provides good news. As our colleague Larry Bobo has documented, conscious unabashed racial prejudice has fallen consistently since the 1960s. White Americans today largely believe in racial equality.

This isn’t to say that explicit expressions of prejudice have evaporated; in fact they pop up with surprising regularity. The pandemic witnessed precipitous increases in anti-Asian hatred, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, instances of antisemitism are at a record high. 

A second line of research shows that less conscious, or implicit, bias has declined more slowly. Bias against some groups has barely budged. If only explicit values and biases drove discrimination, unfair treatment of, say, Black workers would be low. But implicit bias taints employer behavior and decisions. Our colleague Mandy Palais and collaborators find, for instance, that implicit racial bias in grocery-store managers still influences worker performance.

A third line of research uses audit studies, in which matched Black and white people, for instance, apply to the same job. Who gets called in for an interview, or hired? Scores of studies show discrimination by race, ethnicity, gender and disability. These studies show, among other things, that white applicants are about 50% more likely than identical Black applicants to be called back for an interview or offered a job. Other audit studies show discrimination in real-world access to financial resources, healthcare and treatment by the law and law enforcement.    

Research by Lincoln Quillian and colleagues compares the results of audit studies over time, finding that discrimination against Black job applicants is virtually unchanged from a generation ago. And the economist Raj Chetty and colleagues not only show a shocking drop in American upward mobility over time, but also show that in regions with high levels of implicit bias, Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to move up the economic ladder.

Research by Lincoln Quillian and colleagues compares the results of audit studies over time, finding that discrimination against Black job applicants is virtually unchanged from a generation ago. And the economist Raj Chetty and colleagues not only show a shocking drop in American upward mobility over time, but also show that in regions with high levels of implicit bias, Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to move up the economic ladder. 

Research from one of us, Frank Dobbin (with Alexandra Kalev), meanwhile, shows how likely a worker in a U.S. firm is to have a management job, by group. Women and people of color see increases until the mid-1980s. But progress stalls for Black and Hispanic workers after that. Men from those groups make no progress between then and 2021, and women make almost no progress. We clearly have more work to do to equalize opportunity.

Falling short

It’s not hard to conclude from all these studies that we are not the land of opportunity for everyone we claim to be. An enlightened society should see that education about the prevalence of discrimination is imperative. In fact, it would be downright dumb not to educate people. 

But, as Dobbin and Kalev have shown, the typical DEI training doesn’t educate people about bias and may even do harm.

Most training programs fall short on two fronts. First, they use implicit-bias education to shame trainees for holding stereotypes. Trainers play gotcha, sending trainees to take an online test co-developed by one of us, Mahzarin Banaji, for education and research. Instead of training people about research that finds that bias is pervasive, trainers use the test to prove to trainees that they are morally flawed. People leave feeling guilty for holding biases that conflict with American values.

“Gotcha” isn’t going to win people over. The approach is disrespectful, and misses the main takeaway from implicit bias research: Everyone holds biases they don’t control as a consequence of a lifetime of exposure to societal inequality, the media and the arts. Trainers should introduce these ideas with humility, for trainers themselves can’t help but hold these very biases. They could easily educate themselves about the implicit bias research with resources at outsmartingimplicitbias.org.

The second problem with most trainings is that they seek to solve the problem of bias by invoking the law to scare people about the risk of letting bias go unchecked. Trainers recount stories of big companies brought to their heels by discrimination suits. They detail rigid do’s and don’ts for hiring, disciplining and firing people. They require trainees to pass tests on what the law forbids. All of this makes it clear that the CEO approved the training solely to avoid litigation. Trainees leave scared that they will be punished for a simple mistake that may land their company in court.  

Trainings with this one-two punch—you are biased and the law will get you—backfire. The research shows that this kind of training leads to reductions in women and people of color in management.

Why would diversity training actually make things worse? Making people feel ashamed can lead them to reject the message. Thus people often leave diversity training feeling angry and with greater animosity toward other groups (“There’s no way I’m biased!”). And threats of punishment, by the law in this case, typically lead to psychological “reactance” whereby people reject the desired behavior (“Nobody’s telling me what I can’t say!”). This kind of training can turn off even supporters of equal-opportunity programs. 

A better way

It doesn’t have to be this way, and Dobbin and Kalev’s research on training points to a better alternative. Instead of using legal scare tactics, training programs should give managers a way to counter biases—namely, training in strategies for cultural inclusion. This kind of training teaches skills in listening, observation and intervention. It thus helps managers to hear employee concerns, notice when workers are feeling shunned or dissed, and intervene. It also offers skills for starting tough conversations about how to treat colleagues at work.

Those are skills from Management 101, but managers often don’t want to hear bad news, so they don’t ask employees about troubles, watch teams for signs of bullying, or speak up when they sense a problem. Reminding managers that they can use these tools to suss out problems and nip them in the bud helps them to feel capable of managing biases and microaggressions. When managers use these skills, they retain women and people of color for long enough to come up for promotion. That’s how good diversity training can boost diversity. Unfortunately, only about a quarter of diversity trainings emphasize cultural inclusion. 

Moreover, if training succeeds in conveying the findings from bias research—that bias is unseen but pervasive—it can build support for wider systemic changes designed to tear down obstacles to equal opportunity. In that sense, training isn’t designed to blame people for their moral failings. Instead, it’s galvanizing them to support organizational change by arming them with knowledge.

In the end, DEI training can’t squelch implicit bias; nothing short of changing people’s life experiences can do that. But when done right, implicit-bias education can alert students to the fact that people committed to equality nonetheless hold biases. And that knowledge can, in turn, motivate them to reshape their workplaces to counter discrimination by democratizing key parts of the career system.

That means extending recruitment visits from Harvard to Howard; offering mentors to each and every worker; and inviting all employees to nominate themselves for skill and management training programs. It means offering work-life supports to people up and down the ladder. Each of these changes has been shown to produce significant increases in managerial diversity.

The lesson here, the one that should be at the core of DEI training, is that implicit bias resides in individuals, but it resides in organizational career systems as well. And fixing those systems is as simple as democratizing them.

Mahzarin Banaji is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and co-author of “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.” Frank Dobbin is a professor of sociology at Harvard University and co-author of “Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t.” They can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

[ Via: https://archive.is/0D4kV ]

==

[moonshynecybin]

anon talking about objective truth three posts after u reblogged that ontological truth is non-existent post... seems like some callie fans need to brush up on their rashomon...

every anon must review akira kurosawa's complete filmography before submitting any thought or oprinion into my askbox including ones about marc's hole getting blasted im always saying this

[sharknado-three]

I have a diagnosed girlboss-malewife bias.

[sepublic]

            The Owl House’s first episode really is a litmus test for people who claim to support Problem Kids who act out but ultimately need support by their community instead of punishment by the system, because jeezus.

            The way so many people were clutching their pearls over Luz bringing fireworks to school, treating her like some domestic terrorist in the making who needed to be carted away, and not just… An eager kid who got in over her head trying to bring fun with something associated with fun, especially in her country!!! Like this was so obviously a well-meaning child who just needed to be sat down and explained the dangers of fireworks, who was clearly willing to listen!

            And yeah, Luz DID become a domestic terrorist. But you know what I mean, and really that just proves my point that Luz can be a rebel in a fantastical sense, but when you apply it to a real-world context, suddenly she’s a menace that needs to be stopped. Because it’s easy to root for the metaphor until you have to uncomfortably apply it your own life. Why else would Belos be an actual colonizer from IRL history, and not just a space alien or demon?

            It’s the way people saw this cartoonishly-evil system that the show was so unambiguous about, and because they thought they were being clever by being uncritically contrarian (when really they were just affirming their own latent biases), they argued that Oh yeah maybe the system IS good for Luz, maybe this is what she needs! The way people were so ready to take the camp’s promises at face value, that See it’s going to teach her how to do taxes and listen to the news!

            People were just so insistent that actually, the Troubled Teen Industry means well and will do well in taking this brown child away from her struggling brown mother, without a choice for either of them. They just ignored the obvious bit about Principal Hal sending Luz to the camp as a punishment, out of spite, after breaking his promise to give her another chance as soon as he ran into the aftereffect of Luz’s prior chance. Luz even brings it up, “That doesn’t count, right?” And he still went through with it because he doesn’t actually care about what Luz needs, he just wants to punish her!!!

            It’s Be Gay, Do Crimes until the protagonist performs actual crimes and suddenly she has to be arrested. Nobody questioned how at least half the incidents Luz was sent to the office over were clear overreactions by the school; Things that didn’t harm anyone! It’s almost as if, gee, maybe sometimes kids DO cause problems, but there’s a particular bias and double-standard regarding certain demographics, and so they’ll be punished for the same things other well-behaved kids get away with! Principal Hal clearly had it out for Luz from the start , so I really don’t care about his judgment.

            It’s all about restorative justice for criminals, until one of them does something even remotely problematic and suddenly they have to be hauled off and not worked with. It’s all about supporting child welfare, recognizing that kids are a struggling and oppressed class in and of themselves, until Luz is having her entire summer vacation, a whole three-months period to herself that is idolized in our culture by kids for this reason, to be sent learning how to do taxes.

            But nnoooo these are important life skills, you argue! But if your parents used up your whole vacation, your only reprieve, to send you to a camp where you had to learn these things, you would understandably be calling it child abuse. Y’all stress the importance of breaks and how school genuinely wears a kid down, and vacation is legitimately necessary; But Luz is a Problem Child and you’ll say it with unironic contempt.

            And that’s not even getting into the implicit bigotry of the system, because under kids’ show censorship you can’t actually SAY that the system is targeting Luz disproportionately for being brown. But you can definitely imply it, just as in Teen Titans, Cyborg goes on a whole spiel about how he can verbalize Starfire’s struggles with fantasy bigotry without her even having to explain it to him, clarifying that he knows because he’s… part-robot.

            Belos isn’t allowed to rant about indigenous peoples but his attempted genocide of natives in a fantasy world is so obviously meant to hearken to what IRL Puritans did with Native Americans, and the show even clarifies that its universe’s witch hunters had the same motives as IRL witch hunters, who were racist, misogynistic, etc. Lilith tells Luz to go back to her world. The Reality Check Camp has Masha, an obvious Russian migrant child, a dark-skinned kid, and another kid based off of Molly Knox Ostertag, who is openly queer. Gee, it’s almost as if the camp is targeting, specifically, kids who don’t fit within the cultural hegemony of the United States!

            And yes, it’s interesting that Yesterday’s Lie creates ambiguity for Luz because these kids seemed to get along and find each other because of the camp… From her own perspective. But Luz doesn’t have the luxury of re-watching a scene carefully, she had other things on her mind. She’s canonically an Unreliable Narrator who remembers things as worse than they actually were, as revealed in the very next episode.

            The kids said they found solidarity while also calling the camp terrible, so it’s clear it was an unintended side-effect of the camp, it had nothing to do with the camp itself; But Luz isn’t the calm, detached viewer. So her takeaway is something that will fuel her regret over coming to the isles, which her mother really contributes towards at the end of said episode.

            I don’t think TOH is the pinnacle of Leftist media, obviously. It’s basic, entry-level stuff; But this is a kids show. So not only is its effort impressive for a kids show and setting the bar, but it’s also a good introduction for kids into other ideas. The writers are clearly operating off of ideas and beliefs, so it’s fun analyzing how they bleed into their work, how they think to convey these ideas, and Readings are always a thing. And also, yeah; It IS a kids show! What I’ve said should be obvious to kids, the first episode is cartoonishly obvious, but some of y’all are actual grown adults who still can’t get it, how embarrassing!

            And in the end, I don’t think it’s because you don’t have the skills. I think some of y’all do understand, but are just contrarians who live in a perfect bubble where you don’t notice the system’s issues and are insistent on taking its side, even when the narrative is unambiguous about its fault. I also think some of y’all are just racist, and/or misogynistic. That some of the people saying this are white does not elude me.

            I know I toss those words around a lot, but seriously; It genuinely is everywhere, but of course privileged people can ignore it, and treat women and PoC as insane and overreacting. It’s Not That Deep until it bleeds into everything, including people’s writing and how they engage with media. Luz was struggling with the viewers’ own racism since the first episode.

            The most absurd part is that the show does get around to this; It does address that Luz can get carried away, and that she needs to be more mindful. It can also be nuanced in acknowledging that she was disproportionately targeted and punished for being “weird.” The first episode sets up the show’s conflict, its themes, its status quo and cast; As well as the flaws and trajectory of our main character’s arc. It begins addressing these things pretty early on with Luz learning to be more mindful as early as the fourth episode.

            But y’all are adults who lack reading comprehension with a kids show, and demand every issue of the protagonist be resolved in its first episode, which is already going fast because of everything else it’s handling, on top of its first lesson for our protagonist. Y’all really needed Luz’s flaws to be resolved ASAP instead of her development occurring naturally over the course of the show, and ending with the show because it’s about her story.

            Because you can’t bear to deal with a girl of color’s flaws being a consistent thing on the backburner spaced across the show for her to eventually conquer, she needs to be punished immediately! Because it’s not enough that she learns and grows from her mistakes, no Luz needs to also be punished in a show that starts off talking about the system’s disproportionate punishment. But then y’all see your white faves and complain about how they were so much more fun when they were mean, why didn’t they stay mean, why didn’t we get more time for them to be mean before they had character development…!

[chaotic-archaeologist]

So to make a long story semi short; during fall term a couple unknowing found a set of mastodon teeth and brought to my anthropology professor at the college, since then they conducted some field work and found more bone. They obviously stopped because of winter but in summer the college will be offering a field work class to go help at the site. I want to do that, but as mentioned before I have Cerebral Palsy which means I don't have a lot of upper body strength or flexibility. But I can still do a lot. My I guess problem is my Professors respect me and that's hard for me to get with all the ableism and I worked hard these last two semesters to break out of my shell to get here , I guess I just don't want to 1. make a fool of myself 2. be a hindrance and/or mess something up

any advice?

This sounds like an incredible opportunity, and I would definitely encourage you to pursue it! I hear your concerns about embarrassing yourself and being a hindrance, but I think you should reframe your thinking around facts that 1) everybody deserves learning experiences regardless of their physical ability, and 2) there are things you can do that will be an asset to the excavation.

Some of these things include taking notes and photographs, documenting and storing finds, and working with any digital tools like GPS units. You may also be able to do lab work and different kinds of analysis, depending on what they find and how they run the program. A good supervisor (although not all are created equal) will be willing to work with you to come up with a plan for how you can participate and what that will look like.

Usually, classes like this have applications where students list their relevant coursework and write a brief personal statement about why they want to participate. There are a couple of ways you could go about this in regards to disclosing your disability and seeking accommodations. You can either:

Disclose early: this would entail including something about your disability in your personal statement, in an email to the professor running the dig, etc.

Disclose later: submit your application without mentioning your disability. Feel free to mention how hard you've worked to get where you are, and if you want to talk about vague challenges with your health as part of that, it's up to you. If you are accepted to the dig, ask for a meeting with the supervisor where you can then explain your needs and what you are able to do.

Generally, I advise erring on the side of disclosing later rather than earlier. As I'm sure you're aware, prejudice and implicit bias are unfortunately a thing, and sometimes the only way to protect yourself from those impeding your application is to withhold information (although obviously this isn't an option if the professor already knows you). Additionally, you have legal protections against discrimination that are much easier to enforce after you have been accepted.

That being said, I've been heartened to see that more and more people in archaeology spaces are thinking about what accessibility means in field settings and how to include people with disabilities.—perhaps this is also the case with whoever is running this dig. Archaeology is for everyone, and there are many roles in an excavation for someone who can't do physical labor.

Finally, I'll close with some resources that might be helpful.

The Disabled Archaeologists Network: while I don't think they have a ton of programming for undergraduates (yet), membership is free and can put you in touch with

Field Tested: an article about a disabled student who was able to participate in a geology field school (similar levels of work to an archaeology one). It discusses some of the accommodations the student needed, and what they were able to do.

Here's an article by Dr. Anita Marshall, the professor who ran that accessible field school. Its content isn't substantially different from the one I linked above, but at the end it also cites some good literature about accessibility in field work. You should be able to access a lot of those publications through your institution's library or @jstor's free (or institutional) service.

Good luck, -Reid

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

The main takeaway here is that DEI has been proven to be unscientific nonsense.

And the unconscious bias training that was supposed to produce antiracist allies? Turns out people hate being told they have hidden prejudices.

...two-thirds of human resources specialists report that diversity training does not have positive effects, and several field studies have found no effect of diversity training on women’s or minorities’ careers or on managerial diversity. These findings are not surprising. There is ample evidence that training alone does not change attitudes or behavior, or not by much and not for long. In their review of 985 studies of antibias interventions, Paluck and Green found little evidence that training reduces bias. In their review of 31 organizational studies using pretest/posttest assessments or a control group, Kulik and Roberson identified 27 that documented improved knowledge of, or attitudes toward, diversity, but most found small, short-term improvements on one or two of the items measured. In their review of 39 similar studies, Bezrukova, Joshi and Jehn identified only f ive that examined long-term effects on bias, two showing positive effects, two negative, and one no effect.

...

The problems with DEI trainings are not in their tone, however, but in their substance. The implicit-bias theory (also called unconscious-bias theory) on which these trainings are based has no scientific basis, as years of examinations have consistently demonstrated. Lee Jussim puts it politely in his “12 Reasons to Be Skeptical of Common Claims About Implicit Bias,” but the Open Science Foundation’s archive of Articles Critical of the IAT and Implicit Bias renders a harsher verdict. In 2011, Etienne LeBel and Sampo Paunonen reviewed evidence that measures of implicit bias possess low reliability. In other words, when you test for implicit bias multiple times, you rarely get the same result. Their conclusion was that some part of “implicit bias” is really “random measurement error.” In 2017, Heather Mac Donald’s intensive examination of the theory and its empirical basis (or lack thereof) concluded that the “implicit-bias crusade is agenda-driven social science.” And Bertram Gawronski’s 2019 review of the scholarly literature on implicit-bias research also concludes that there’s no proof that people aren’t self-aware enough to know what’s causing their supposedly “implicit” or “unconscious” biases; and that you can’t prove that there’s any relationship between how people do on the test and how they behave in the real world... Professional critiques of implicit bias have shown, politely but repeatedly, that there is nothing there. Activists and scientists who think that science should serve political objectives want to believe in the existence of massive systemic bias to justify their goals of imposing “equity” by law and by litigation. Implicit bias is a pseudoscientific theory made to order for this purpose. It’s a house of cards, and governments and the private sector should terminate every program based on it.

[chosaraki]

Rebellious concubine.

—————————————————————————

Part 3:

————————————-

The days passed, and my little tradition of testing Shingen's patience continued. He always deviated, impassive, while I dramatized my frustration for not yet being a widow.

One afternoon, while he was reviewing documents in his office, I took a small kunai and threw it at him without warning. As always, he deviated with a slight movement of his head, without even looking up from the papers.

- Tsk... I thought today would be the day - I murmured, crossing my arms, pretending a disappointed expression.

Shingen let out an almost imperceptible sigh. Finally, after so long, he bothered to answer me:

- If you really wanted to kill me, you should be more creative.

I raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

- Oh? Are you encouraging me?

- I'm just pointing out your lack of originality - he replied, without emotion, putting the brush aside and staring at me. - You've been doing this for months and still haven't even been able to scratch me.

The implicit challenge made a smile appear on my lips.

- Do you want a real attack on your life, then?

Shingen didn't answer. He just focused on his documents again, as if my presence was irrelevant.

But I saw it.

For a fraction of a second, a glint of interest passed through his eyes.

⛩️

My "lack of originality" became a personal nuisance. If he thought I was predictable, then I would fix it.

That night, while Shingen was bathing, I enjoyed the perfect moment. I took one of the metal ornaments in the room, heavy and sharp, and threw it hard at it.

This time, he didn't completely deviate. He moved his hand at the last moment, holding the object with ease, before it hit it.

His eyes met mine, cold and calculating.

- It's better - he commented, holding the object for a moment before throwing it aside.

My heart accelerated, not of fear, but of excitement.

- So, how long until I can at least scratch you?

Shingen got up, the water running down his skin, and walked slowly to me. Instinctively, I took a step back, but he held my wrist before I could go far.

- Maybe you've already hit me - he murmured, his voice low and dangerous.

I felt a chill run down my spine.

After all, what were we really playing there?

—————————————————————————

This is a fanfic in development..

Who gave me the idea was:

Bia-chan

……………………………………………………………………………

The concubine is inspired by this muse:

[violetfractal]

Re: the tumblr discourse on misogyny in rap music: misattribution. Top 40 radio hits are in general misogynistic. The average white american tumblr user's only exposure to rap music is through top 40 singles. They engage more deeply with their preferred genre(s) beyond mass-produced pop culture and find music that is not misogynistic. From this skewed sample they conclude that rap music is misogynistic.

The converse: If you heard Kendrick and MF DOOM growing up at home, but your only exposure to rock was Buckcherry and Mudvayne on the radio, you would conclude that rock music was misogynistic and rap was fine!

But wait, there's more! White americans carry implicit bias - they are more easily convinced that a black man is misogynistic than a white man.

Solution: listen to more varied rap music. take the implicit association test. learn to recognize and counter your implicit biases.

[stuckinbyler]

The subtext in Jayvik

Mel's reaction shows that she wasn’t aware of the extent of their bond, almost as though there is emotional distance between them that Jayce has breached. Jayce’s answer is:

“Nothing feels impossible when I’m with you”

Jayce’s relationship with Mel is largely built on Mel’s ambition for power. We see she pushes him to make bold decisions and take an active role in Piltover’s politics. He feeds off of her confidence, and this creates a dynamic where he feels like he can do anything with her. However, their relationship is imbalanced, because we know Mel encourages him to make decisions that align with her goals. Jayce has a false sense of empowerment, a product of Mel’s mentorship; he’s rarely making decisions by himself. 

Jayce often relies on external validation to make decisions, be it Heimerdinger, Mel or Viktor. Even when he acts on his own (like when he shuts down the Hextech project temporarily), his decisions are a product of his moral struggles, usually caused by external pressure.

It’s not surprising when Mel tells him he should be with Viktor, especially considering Viktor's fate.

“You should be with him, Jayce”

This is also the episode where we see Viktor opening up about his illness for the first time:

"I can feel my body eroding"

We’ve seen him attempt to control the Hexcore with organic matter, but his transmutations fail. He shows this to Jayce:

“Curing you”

Finally, we get this piece of dialogue from Jayce. This is the first time he associates the Hexcore with saving Viktor. From this moment onward, saving Viktor becomes his main goal. It’s the catalyst for Jayce pushing Heimerdinger to retirement. One of the key phrases he uses are:

“Humans don’t live for centuries. We can’t wait for progress”

Clearly, Viktor’s deteriorating health has had an impact on him, driving him to make impulsive decisions.

Episode 7

Summary

Jayce orders a blockgate (border shutdown) to protect Piltover from Zaun. Meanwhile, Viktor accepts Shimmer (a variant of it) to change “nature”, in order to survive the transmutations. After returning from his visit to Singed, he encounters Jayce, who is distressed from the altercation with Zaun. He gets defensive about Viktor’s friend being from the Undercity, which offends Viktor. They argue, but they brush it off.

Later, Viktor dismantles Jinx’s bomb as Mel proposes to build Hextech weapons to use against Zaun. Viktor is completely against the idea, while Jayce suggests they might not have a choice. This marks another breaking point in their relationship, where Viktor keeps hiding things from Jayce and Jayce keeps making decisions without considering Viktor’s input. By the end of the episode, Viktor tests the Hexcore on himself after taking Shimmer.

Scenes

First, I wanted to highlight some scenes which foreshadow what happens later in the show. They appear during Viktor’s visit to Singed. This is what he tells Viktor:

"Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress. It’s why I parted ways with Heimerdinger"

This sets up the future separation between Jayce and Viktor, which will consolidate in season 2. Viktor’s response to this statement, unprompted, is that “Jayce will understand”.

Next, we have Jayce and Viktor fight on the border. This is another crossroads point in their relationship, as it highlights the growing power imbalance that has developed between them, mainly stemming from Jayce’s fear of Zaun.  

We get this line of dialogue from Jayce: 

“They are dangerous” 

“I'm from the undercity”

This exchange remarks Jayce’s implicit bias and Viktor’s frustration with being lumped in the same category as those that Jayce fears. Someone also pointed out how Viktor seems to anticipate Jayce’s physical touch, which is a test to how close they are and how naturally they invade each other’s personal spaces.

Jayce apologizes straight away, saying he's had a lot on his plate. A moment later, when he asks Viktor whether his friend was able to help or not, Viktor's response is lying. They don't stand on the issue for long. 

"I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot on my plate"

"No, he said, 'Nature was resistant to this sort of tampering'"

As the episode progresses, we get a scene between Jayce, Viktor and Mel. It's shot in a specific way: as Viktor is working on the bomb, he's hunched over the table, while Jayce and Mel converse behind him. 

This visual framing creates a certain hierarchy between them: on a higher level (Piltover) Jayce and Mel, and on a lower level, Viktor (Zaun). It symbolizes Viktor’s diminished role in the making of decisions. Mel barely acknowledges his presence, and instead we get this:

"It's your decision"

In the scenes, we witness the camera change its focus towards Jayce and Mel in a close-up. Viktor is being sidelined, both figuratively and literally; his autonomy is not being considered at all (I know Jayce is the only one that can make the decision because he’s the councillor, but they are partners; we’ve seen Jayce acknowledge Viktor’s contributions in the past as well). 

“We can’t afford to wait to find out"

Mel and Viktor represent two opposing opinions: using Hextech as a weapon or using it to save others. We can see again that Viktor completely loses his choice on the matter in the way that it’s shot as well: the camera stops paying attention to him, instead focusing on Mel and Jayce. While Mel attempts to convince Jayce, Viktor expresses what he thinks and we can see him turn to look at Jayce. Then, the camera zooms in on Mel from Jayce’s perspective. At this point, the decision has been made.

Viktor is understandably upset at this, and he states that they are scientists, not soldiers. When Jayce suggests that they may not have a choice, Viktor counters with: 

"There's always a choice"

Viktor's point is proven within the shot where he dismantles the bomb, where he lingers a few seconds before actually breaking the cable, implying he could’ve detonated it if he’d chosen to.

This is where, I'd argue, their partnership practically breaks down. Jayce doesn't let Viktor have a choice on the use of Hextech, and Viktor ends up going behind his back and using Shimmer. It's no surprise their scenes are extrapolated with the fight between Piltover and Zaun, as their fight mirrors the broader conflict.

Jayce's decision is confirmed the moment he hugs his mom.

Episode 8 

Summary

Jayce sees the aftermath of the bridge's fight and throws up. He also meets Mel's mom, Ambessa, who manipulates him to militarize Hextech. He ends up arguing in favour of using Hextech to create weapons, despite Mel's and Kaylin's opposition to it. Viktor gets a scene in which he can finally run after interacting with the Hexcore. He tries doing it again later but, just as he undergoes his transformation, Sky tries to save him and dies in the act. Meanwhile, Jayce has already designed a pair of gauntlets for Vi to fight against Silco; they decide to shut down his supply of Shimmer together (taking out his manufacturing facilities). However, their raid results in the death of a child. 

Scenes

There's nothing to go into much detail here, since Jayce and Viktor didn't interact in this episode, each acting on their own storylines. However, there are some things we can mention.

Jayce is being manipulated by Ambessa, as seen by the threat of his death in this scene:

"(...) if you don’t accept certain realities, I fear you’ll end up like General Parlec. Slaughtered with your eyes closed"

The impact of the threat is amplified by his emotions, which were already running high due to  his experience at the border. This is why he rushes to go with force, an idea to which Mel opposes, as it could trigger war. When Caitlyn questions his stance, his response reflects his guilt and emotional turmoil:

"They are still cleaning the blood off the bridge"

Viktor's running scene has been analyzed by others already. As we know, there's the symbolism with the boat behind him as he can finally run and leave it behind (as opposed to the scene we get from his childhood). 

Immediately after, he goes to the lab to carve the runes on his skin and test the Hexcore on himself again, most likely with the idea of curing his illness. However, as he undergoes his transformation, he's saved by Sky, who dies in the act.

Sky was introduced in the past episodes, and we could see her sneaking a glance towards Viktor. We also saw her trying to convince him to "walk with him" to which Viktor denies. That scene was directly contrasted to Jayce and Mel's sex scene, which highlights the unreciprocated nature of their relationship. In this case, she's outwardly rehearsing to express her admiration towards him. 

Both Jayce and Viktor suffer a deep charge of consciousness in this episode, as they end up killing innocent people in the pursuit of their rushed and impulsive decisions. While Jayce kills a child with his gauntlet, Viktor kills Sky during his transmutation. This is a parallel that highlights how their pursuits (Jayce, security and Viktor, progress) come at the cost of their own humanity and innocent lives. 

Episode 9

Summary

We see Viktor and Jayce both dealing with the aftermath of their actions. Jayce argues with Vi, choosing to distance himself from the conflict and not to get involved in any more bloodshed. Meanwhile, Viktor cries as he reads Sky's notes and is consumed by guilt. He tries destroying the Hexcore but fails. 

This leads him to try ending it all, but he is interrupted by Jayce, paralleling their scene from episode 2. As they reminisce, Viktor asks Jayce to destroy the Hexcore and Jayce makes a promise to do so. Jayce negotiates with Silco and comes to an agreement; peace in exchange for the undercity's independence. Just as they're casting the votes in favour of the proposition, Jinx fires her shot. 

Scenes

Some notes before the actual shots:

Viktor's guilt is symbolized through Sky's notebook, as he keeps hold of it after her death. He throws her ashes into the river, and then tries taking his own life.

The parallel

We get this scene, which directly parallels the scene from episode 2, when Viktor interrupted Jayce as he was about to jump:

"Am I interrupting?"

This is a point of reconciliation within their relationship, somehow they've come full cycle.

Jayce gives Viktor this look:

Parts | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Te-Ping Chen and  Lauren Weber

Published: Jul 21, 2023

Two years ago chief diversity officers were some of the hottest hires into executive ranks. Now, they increasingly feel left out in the cold.

Companies including Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said that high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion executives will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year, and some companies are scaling back racial justice commitments.

Diversity, equity and inclusion—or DEI—jobs were put in the crosshairs after many companies started re-examining their executive ranks during the tech sector’s shake out last fall. Some chief diversity officers say their work is facing additional scrutiny since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and companies brace for potential legal challenges. DEI work has also become a political target.

“There’s a combination of grief, being very tired, and being, in some cases, overwhelmed,” says Miriam Warren, chief diversity officer for Yelp, of the challenges facing executives in the field.

In interviews, current and former chief diversity officers said company executives at times didn’t want to change hiring or promotion processes, despite initially telling CDOs they were hired to improve the talent pipeline. The quick about-face shows company enthusiasm for diversity initiatives hasn’t always proved durable, leaving some diversity officers now questioning their career path. 

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in police custody in May 2020, companies scrambled to hire chief diversity officers, changing the face of the C-suite. In 2018, less than half the companies in the S&P 500 employed someone in the role, and by 2022 three out four companies had created a position, according to a study from Russell Reynolds, an executive search firm. 

Once mostly tasked with HR matters, today’s diversity leaders are expected to weigh in on new product development, marketing efforts and current events that have an impact on how workers and consumers are feeling. Warren and other CDOs said the expanded remit is playing out in a politically divided environment where corporate diversity efforts are the subject of frequent social-media firestorms. 

Falling demand

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer. 

“I got to 300 applications and then I stopped tracking,” says Stephanie Lubin, who was laid off from her role as diversity head at Drizly, an online alcohol marketplace, in May following the company’s acquisition by Uber. In one case, Lubin says she went through 16 rounds of interviews for a role she didn’t get, and says she is now planning to pivot out of DEI work.

The number of CDO searches is down 75% in the past year, says Jason Hanold, chief executive of Hanold Associates Executive Search, which works with Fortune 100 companies to recruit HR and DEI executives, among other roles. Demand is the lowest he has seen in his 30 years of recruiting.

At the same time, he says, more executives are feeling skittish about taking on diversity roles.

“They’re telling us, the only way I want to go into another role with DEI is if it includes something else,” he says of the requests for broader titles that offer more responsibilities and resources. He estimates that 60% of diversity roles he is currently filling combine the title with another position, such as chief human resources officer, up from about 10% five years ago.

During the pandemic, some companies moved people into diversity leadership if they were an ethnic minority, says Dani Monroe, even when they weren’t qualified. Monroe served as CDO for Mass General Brigham, a Boston-based hospital system and one of the largest employers in the state, until 2021 and convenes a yearly gathering of more than 100 CDOs.

“These were knee-jerk reactions,” she says of the hurried CDO hires, adding that some of those elevations didn’t create much impact, leaving both sides feeling disillusioned.

On-the-job obstruction 

American workers are split on the importance of a diverse workforce, surveys find. 

Diversity chiefs also encounter obstruction from top executives, says Melinda Starbird, a human resources and diversity executive who has worked at AT&T, Starbucks and OfferUp, an online marketplace. Leaders sometimes associate diversity efforts with mandates, such as the equal-employment rules that apply to federal contractors. Those requirements for compliance can create executive resistance that bleeds over into other cultural or policy shifts, such as adding Juneteenth as a company holiday, she says. 

“Even if you report to the CEO, it’s still a battle and it’s a smaller budget,” says Starbird, who was laid off from OfferUp in November during a broader restructuring. 

Many diversity executives feel a lack of buy-in from their colleagues. In a survey of 138 diversity executives conducted this spring by World 50 Group, a networking organization for corporate leaders, 82% said they had sufficient influence to do their job, down 6 percentage points from 2022. Asked if they felt supported by middle managers, 41% said yes, an 8-percentage-point drop.

Since the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June, companies are anticipating spillover legal action could have an impact on them. Those that are still hiring CDOs want people who can help the board navigate the political and legal landscape of diversity work and figure out how to take defensive moves to shield them from litigation, says Tina Shah Paikeday, global leader of Russell Reynolds’s diversity, equity and inclusion practice. 

“They recognize it would be smart to get ahead of that.”

People are more resistant to company-backed efforts to advance diversity when they are worried about their own jobs, whether because of impending layoffs or disruptions from AI, says David Kenny, chief executive of Nielsen, the media-ratings company. 

Kenny was both CEO and CDO for a time, taking on the diversity role to emphasize how important it was to the future of the business. Even as CEO, it could be a tough sell. Efforts to restructure compensation to make it more equitable created a backlash.

“A lot of it is, ‘I’m losing my slice of the pie,�� ” he says.

[ Via: https://archive.vn/jHRFo ]

==

The grift is over.

There seems to be a built-in implication that much of the movements around DIE in the last few years have been performative: organizations making the approved signals to keep the puritans at bay. Perhaps they've now figured out that these measures are, at best, unable to demonstrate their efficacy, or at worst, anti-productive. The number of DIE programs that can or even will quantify or demonstrate their effectiveness with metrics and data can be counted on one hand; the truly fanatical ones will scold you for even suggesting that you should. Or more likely, perhaps they've figured out that as an insurance policy, the impact to the bottom line is no longer worth the investment; throwing buckets of money to purchase indulgences during a moral-religious panic might have made sense in 2020, but not so much in 2023.

Study after study reveals that none of this social snakeoil - from the phrenology of "implicit bias training" to the Maoist struggle sessions of "white fragility training" - actually help, and reliably make things worse by making everyone fixate on identity politics rather than doing anything productive. Meaning DIE is nothing but expensive and destructive virtue signaling. If you want to destroy an organization from the inside, there's no better way than embracing DIE.

You're far better off sticking to your core telos, supported by liberal ethics like equal opportunity, colorblindness and the ideal of meritocracy. Or more formally, Merit, Fairness and Equality (MFE). Whatever results you get from a fair process are inherently fair.

"Diversity" in particular is always about superficiality and thinly-veiled racism, while "equity" requires someone in authority to artificially create preferred outcomes (establishing the perfect conditions for an authoritarian), rather than a system of fairly and consistently applied rules (equality).

I can name five people, men and women, where I work who have different ethic ancestry, who grew up within 40 miles of each other and have the same local accent.

And I can name five white men who grew up on four different continents with three different first languages, who have worked for over a dozen different organizations, from multi-national companies to military to non-profits to education institutions before immigrating.

"Diversity" apparatchiks don't acknowledge the diversity in the latter. Only, like any good racist, the bogus "diversity" in the former.

[nerves-nebula]

sister gave me consent to post her rant about the IAT, which is some kind of bias training thing? idk. anyways I'll post it plain text too:

also, holy shit i hate the IAT so much. its basically a weird computer game you do to show your implicit bias, by matching words with positive or negative connotations to stuff like races/genders/sexualities/etc. you train matching 'good' with white and 'bad' with black, or vice versa, and then you have to switch your associations on the second run through. so any lag or mis-attributing (aka picking black when the word has a 'bad' connotation) means ur subconsciously racist bc u sorted it so fast you couldn't consciouly think. BUT FIEST OF ALL: so fucking what? the test only serves to make white liberals self-flagellate. none of the fucking problems in our current society are attributable to subconscious biases, but fucking CONSCIOUS ACTION. its basically a test to determine if you do thought crimes and it has no way of showing a correlation between subconscious bias and conscious action. SECONDLY, the mental load you have to do on the switching round is SUBSTANTIALLY HIGHER. like, the test FORCES you to make an association, and then says you're racist when you accidentally follow the muscle memory/association that the TEST ITSELF created in you. THIRDLY, the test is LAUGHABLY BAD at replicability. theres a scale of 0 to 1 that ppl use for the consistency/replicability of certain tests as metrics, and the general BASELINE of something being replicable is like.. 0.8ish. The IAT has a replicability of FUCKING 0.6. You could take the test at different FUCKING DAYS, and suddenly be more or less implicitely racist. FOURTH, the fucking creators of this bs test are such fucking sanctimonious LIBERALS that they construe ANY attempts to question the usefulness or the replicability of their test as an unwillingess on their detractors part to face their own internal bigotry, but theyre not fucking complaining abt that, theyre complaining because your TEST DOES NOTHING AND IT DOESNT GIVE CONSISTENT RESULTS

[real-total-drama-takes]

you guys are getting real close to being the homophobic degenerates you were in 2008. remember when noco and dunhar were niche gay ships just starting out but ppl dismissed them and said we were “reaching”? thats how i feel nowadays with mkulia. literally what about those girls is giving “im straight & would date a reboot guy.” hate to break it to you but theirs only 3 guys to choose from & none of those queens would date those fucking losers. bowie & raj are limp wrists, caleb & ripper are in a relationship, Chase is on n off with emma, so wtf makes you all think mk or julia would stoop to genuinely feel attraction to zee & wayne who are braindead or damien whose a pussy. fresh tv & terry mcgurin knew what tf they were doing when they introduced mkulia in s2. homophobic networks wouldnt let them get the romance past censors, so we were left with a half baked ass friendship. bffr those girls were boning. “if mk’s brain were a cool car i would date it” hello??? & julia in a confessional? aka the most intimate space for the contestant to share there honest feelings??? jfc, they beat it over our heads yet ppl insist on their bland ass juliayne & mkaleb garbage. do those shippers know they just forced those girls into comphet relationships, which itself is a form of the sinister implicit bias against queer romance this fandom clearly has? its like every season theres a test for if you ppl can “spot the obvious queer-coded couple the writers wanted to write but couldnt because cartoon network is a capitalist homophobic hellscape with terrible marketing for td” & every season you numbskulls fail with flying colors (but no rainbows! we hate rainbows in this fandom!) , katie x sadie in island, leheather in action, gwourtney in world tour & all stars, jasmmy in pahkitew, prillie in the reboot s1). & now its mkulias turn to bite the mfing dust & rot since wlw undertones are lost on everyone without it being beat over your heads. is the unconscious lesbophobia that fing bad in anti-mkulias that their hug at mks bs elimination was jst seen as “platonic.” dont make me laugh. learn to appreciate queer rep when u see it. atleast give mkulia the godamn dignity to acknowledge it on par with rajbow/bowraj/waver the f you guys are calling that milk toast piece of stale forced rep (how did the network approve that over mkulia exactly?)

do better.

[chadchadsonthesnail]

SO

For a psychology class, I had to do implicit bias tests. Well, I only had to do one, and could do two more for extra credit, but not important.

So I was looking through them because they are fun, and saw one for Straight People vs Gay People. SO naturally, I took it.

Seems about right. I'm in the 3% that prefers my fellow queers.

It was just hilarious. The times I messed up the most was when I had to click the same button for "positive" and "straight" and for "negative" and "gay". Fabulous always tripped me up. What do you MEAN fabulous isn't a gay word? /joking /lighthearted

[widogasted]

when i was in high school i used to take the harvard implicit bias test 5-10 times a day to retrain myself to "be a better person" by attempting to alter the IMPLICIT. ITS IN THE NAME way i reacted to pictures on a test on thr internet. as you can imagine im doing great on tumblr in 2025

[darkmaga-returns]

01/18/2025•Mises Wire•Lipton Matthews

Michael Huemer’s Progressive Myths is a powerful critique of contemporary progressive dogmas that eviscerates popular cliches with clinical precision. The University of Colorado philosophy professor probes a variety of explosive topics—ranging from racial and gender disparities to environmental and economic concerns—aiming to expose exaggerations and misrepresentations often-perpetuated by progressive narratives.

Progressive Racial Myths

Huemer begins by dissecting myths surrounding race, particularly in the domain of police violence and systemic racism. A prominent thread in progressive discourse is that American police disproportionately kill unarmed black individuals due to systemic racism. However, his interrogation of recent data on police shootings reveals that in 2018, 54 unarmed white people were killed compared to 36 unarmed black individuals. Moreover, conveniently omitted from debates on police misconduct, is that black Americans are overrepresented as dangerous criminals and constitute 43 percent of cop-killers. Huemer finds it odd that progressives can appreciate that most victims of police violence are men because their heightened exposure to violence increases the probability of them having negative interactions with the police. Yet, using this logic to understand why black offenders are shot at higher rates, is a struggle. Admitting that the negative picture of blacks painted by statistics stems from their conduct offends elite sensibilities, however, concocting strange theories to indict the American legal system for racism will not help blacks nor will it protect the victims of crime who are disproportionately black Americans.

Unrelenting in his approach to dismantling myths, he undercuts the credibility of implicit bias, another edifice of progressive propaganda. Citing 2016 research by Carlson and Agerström, Huemer highlights that the widely promoted Implicit Association Test (IAT) does not reliably predict discriminatory behavior. Evidently, priming subjects with images of admirable black people and villainous white people shapes how people perceive race on racial IATs. However, drawing on a meta-analysis by Forscher et al 2019, he notes that there is no evidence suggesting that modifying the Implicit Association Tests translates into behavioral change. These findings undermine the progressive argument that implicit bias is a primary driver of systemic inequality. Heumer concludes that although implicit bias is not a legitimate construct, the concept persists because it is essential to the project of academics who consider themselves crusaders for social justice.

[uinferno]

Remembered I got bored once and took some Implicit Bias tests from Harvard and found getting this result funny. I'm not even queer