In recent years, implicit bias has emerged as something of a buzzword for talking about racial justice in America. Implicit bias is a very real phenomenon and certainly affects wide swaths of American life. Its role in health care has been evident at least since the publication of the Institute of Medicine’s influential book, “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” in 2002.
Implicit bias is a problem of cognitive “mind bugs” and unconscious stereotypes. It can be manifest by a police officer who thinks a 12-year-old African American boy is really a 20-year-old “thug.” Or an ER doctor who thinks a young black woman presenting with symptoms of disorientation must be on welfare and using drugs.
The problem with the embrace of implicit bias is not that it doesn’t exist; it is that it has been used to explain too much of our current problems of racial injustice. As a master narrative for talking about racial injustice, implicit bias tells us that overt racism is largely a thing of the past, at most a marginal holdover among a few extreme elements in society. It gives us too easy an out for feeling good about our stance on racism. Everybody has implicit biases, and since we can’t consciously control these biases it feels like they are not really our fault.
[For more on this story by Jonathan Kahn, go to https://www.centerforhealthjou...rces-perpetuating-it]
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