Victims of Prejudice: Gay Is The New Black

OPERATION BLACK VOTE FOUNDER BACKS RACISM TESTING TOOL

 

Response to article in The Voice Newspaper   6 -12 July 2009 by Trudy Simpson

 

Simon Woolley, the founder of Operation Black Vote, should not have endorsed IMPLICITY a racism testing tool developed by Pete Jones of Shire Professional Chartered Psychologists.  IMPLICITY is a psychological tool designed for the purpose of assessing racism and other forms of discrimination in the work place, based on the Implicit Association Test. theory, which makes no sense to me whatsoever.

 

My concerns are further heightened by the fact Dr. Pete Jones is part of a Yorkshire based company that have replicated the original product IMPLICT  which was first developed in 1998 by Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington and Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, and simply called their version of the original product IMPLICTY. How original can you get?

 

If shire Professional Chartered Psychologists are so interested in developing tools that identify levels of subconscious prejudice, can Dr. Pete Jones and his team explain why his company, Shire Professional Chartered Psychologist, consists of four men, and not one of them is a representative from the B.M.E. community or female?

 

If this tool is about detecting unconscious discrimination, then why didn’t the company developing    IMPLICITY consider employing the services of UK based chartered occupational psychologists or people from groups of people that are traditionally disadvantaged to participate in the research and development of this tool?  

 

Given that  Dr. Pete Jones and his company are touting IMPLICITY across numerous British organizations for endorsement, surely members of this organization could have at least dealt with their own unconscious discrimination by way of taking their test and thus identifying the reality of their own discriminatory practices, in terms of how they chose their development team as well as the sample group, by attending diversity and equality courses that cover the six equality strands such as race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, age.

 

 If Dr. Pete Jones and his team had done so, they would have realized that he was placing the credibility of his product in the firing line of criticism for not adhering to a few basic principles of psychometric test development that relate to matters of equality and diversity. Maybe he did, but I am not yet convinced.  Admittedly, Dr Pete Jones’s tool entitled IMPLICITY which is a version of the original American tool IMPLICIT, is useful for detecting unconscious attitudes and studying cognitive processes.

 

Irrespective of who developed the tool first, it is misleading for I.A.T. researchers involved in the development and research of tools such as IMPLICT and IMPLICITY to give individuals ratings like “slight,” “moderate” or “strong” — and advice on dealing with their bias — when there isn’t even that much consistency in the same person’s scores if the test is taken again, if evidence does exist, it’s not very evident..

 

If bias does exist after taking this tool, one can decrease racial bias scores on the I.A.T. by simply exposing white people to pictures of Black people in Church or at a Barbecue. Better still one can use images of well respected Black people, such as Obama, Mandela, Mohammed Ali, or any of the 20 most inspiring people often featured in Black publications, such as the Voice, Ebony and Essence. 

 

In contrast, there can be images of Lady Diana in Africa, or Bill Clinton in Harlem, or pictures of white people marching in an anti-racist campaign, that could encourage black people to have more positive views of white people. In reality, Black people tend to have a much diverse view of white people by virtue of the historical relations between Black and white people as consequence of slavery, colonialism, including historical revisionism reinforced through the media and the Eurocentric educational system.

 

 

While the latter views have a part to play in the construction of prejudicial attitudes, neither of these I.A.T tools (IMPLICT or IMPLICITY) proves that either group is racist or has other prejudices, let alone acts on these prejudices, consciously or unconsciously. Just because someone has expressed an opinion, or has been judged by this tool to have a preference in relation to age, race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion does not necessarily mean they will act in a manner that is considered preferential or prejudicial.

 

Dr. Pete Jones admits that “Prejudiced attitudes are incredibly difficult to measure, as in today’s society admitting to racism, sexism or ageism has severe consequences.”Prejudiced attitudes are incredibly difficult to measure, as in today’s society admitting to racism, sexism or ageism has severe consequences.”

 

Dr. Pete Jones continues to make questionable assertions which suggest that speed and response to images and word are indicative of certain attitudes: “The more they struggled or the longer they took to assign these words indicated inner prejudice”  This assertion is problematic, respondents may struggle because of a disability such as poor sight, dexterity, or possibly dyslexia.

 

In the following article, Dr. Peter Jones makes further generalizations, but this time his focus is race and sexuality. Dr. Pete Jones states:

 

“Without detracting from the seriousness of the prejudice that still exists against people because of their ethnic origin, the results of our study suggest that being gay or lesbian could be ‘the new black’ when it comes to being a victim of prejudice.”

 

Dr. Pete Jones and others that who share such questionable views that gay is the new black  appear to forget that one can hide sexuality, but it’s not so easy to hide certain types of disability, gender, and of course skin colour, Michael Jackson tried to hide his ethnicity, but like some many like him, they failed miserably. 

 

The tone of this commentary, reminds me of a radio Deejay  that has just announced the number one record, but in this instance, DJ Dr Pete Jones appears to be enthused by the notion that race has finally been knocked of the discrimination charts, in place of homophobia, a more deserving form of discrimination than racism.  His tone sends the wrong message, in that his equating homophobia with racism, by claiming that “being gay is the new black” is offensive, misguided and dangerous.

 

Interestingly, Rev. Irene Munroe, of Harvard University, reinforces this point as follows:

 

“If you are African American and gay, and fighting alongside your white LGBTQ brothers and sisters for queer civil rights, the notion that “Gay is the new black” is not only absurdly arrogant, it is also dangerously divisive. In a presumably “post-racial” era with the country’s first African American president-elect, it’s easy for some to assume that race doesn’t matter but in reality race does matter”

 

I am not suggesting that Dr. Pete Jones or his colleagues, are racist or prejudice or anything like that, but I do have concerns about their levels of understanding of diversity issues. In my opinion, financial gain is the driving force behind the development of this tool, but in order to gain academic credibility, Dr. Pete Jones has gone through the usual paper presenting process, by presenting a paper at the BPS conference in Blackpool, Jan 2009.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I had attended this conference, I would have asked Dr. Pete Jones the following questions:

 

1.      Has this I.A.T., Tool, developed by Dr. Peter called IMPLICITY been reviewed by the British Psychological Society or peer reviewed in other psychology publications or journals? if so please list them.

  

2.      How does Dr Pete Jones deem 60 responses an acceptable sample size for any psychometric tool that will eventually be used in a commercial context?

 

3.      How can Dr. Pete Jones, even consider marketing let alone piloting a tool that has been developed using such a small sample group?

 

4.      What is the diversity profile of the sample group?

 

5.      Which Black and Asian organisations were contacted or involved in the development of this tool? 

 

6.      Did this company con salt any BME chartered occupational psychologists?

 

7.      What level of participation did these organizations and BME occupational psychologists have in the development of this IAT tool? 

 

8.      Who will be allowed to use the IAT/IMPLICITY tool and what level of training will they be given?

9.      Most importantly, how will those in charge of the selection and recruitment process use these findings?

 Its common practice among test developers SHL, Psytech, CPP to ensure these questions are answered before their tools are piloted let alone made available to the market. My real issue with this tool, is that I strongly fear that BME’s and other disadvantaged groups not familiar with the language of Diversity and Equality training, will assume that I.A.T. tools like “IMPLICITY” are specifically meant to weed out white racists, are likely to find themselves excluded from employment, especially if the findings of their reports highlight a preference that may be incompatible with the culture of the organization, including  the value systems of individuals involved in the recruitment and selection process.

 

What concerns me is the fact that while over 4 million people have taken the original IAT test entitled IMPLICT, since 1998, only 60 respondents in the UK have taken Dr. Pete Jones version of this tool entitled IMPLICITY.  In my opinion, that is not the way psychometric tools should be developed. Most importantly, the licensing of this tool by any test publisher must be done with extreme caution, especially when the findings appear to suggest that white people still have a preference for their own group, yet Dr. Pete Jones, has not provided any sound evidence that IMPLICITY identified preferences are indicative of discriminatory tendencies or practices on the part of respondents, which begs the following question:.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.      Does a black respondent’s preference for Black people make them prejudice towards white people or white people more racist towards Black people because of their preferences for their own respective ethnic groups? 

 

2.      Where is the evidence extracted from either IMPLICIT and IMPLICITY  which identifies a correlation between unconscious attitudes and action, without taking into consideration the work place, irrespective of organizational culture and of course legal constraints?

 

I am yet to be convinced, that IMPLICITY and IMPLICIT can do what it states in relation to identifying prejudicial attitudes. Hence my assertion that Dr. Peter Jones’s  “IMPLICTY” tool is not acceptable or an appropriate tool for weeding out racists, in the UK work place, especially when those that have developed the tool appear to fall short in their methodological practices. In my opinion, Dr. Pete Jones has taken a methodological short cut, by extrapolating the validity of the original tool and hence assumed a small sample and a pilot study would be sufficient to warrant the product as valid in the UK context. WRONG!

 

More importantly, Shire Professional Chartered Psychologists, the organization responsible for the IMPLICITY product, appears to have has no visible minority representation, in their team, yet they are attempting to market a product that is about identifying unconscious discrimination.  Instinctively, I think of the Michael Jackson song “ Man in the Mirror” I am of the view that all four white men that make up Dr. Pete Jones’s organization, have failed to see the obvious. How can they be even attempting to market intervention tools when they haven’t even diversified the profile of their own organization?

 

I have no idea why Simon Woolley, of the OBV who is not a trained psychologist, neither is he in possession of any BPS Level A or Level B qualifications, was asked to endorse Dr. Pete Jones’s IMPLICITY tool, when he is not professionally qualified to comment on beyond that of a user.

 

I am of the opinion that Dr. Pete Jones has attempted to blind potential clients with psychological science. If Simon Woolley  and others like him, had bothered to scrutinise the product as well as the organization developing this tool, they  would have noticed some major methodological discrepancies, between  that the original IAT tool IMPLICIT  developed at Harvard University with a sample group of four million, while UK developed of IMPLICITY has a sample group of only sixty respondents.

 

Simon Woolley and others like him have been bamboozled by science! In essence, Woolley has been asked to endorse Beef burgers while not being told that Steak is on offer elsewhere. My advice to parties, asked to endorse this product is simple, make sure you are qualified to comment, do some background research, and avoid becoming the mouth piece of a test publisher that has little interest or understanding of diversity issues beyond the bottom line.

 

  

 Delroy Constantine-Simms

Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Psychometric an

www.passingpsychometrictests.blogspot.com

920 E 214st , New York, New York, 10469 USA

DTHINKDOCTOR@AOL.COM

UK Cell 007533 100492

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTERNET REFERENCES

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4246874/Britons-more-homophobic-than-racist.html 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7836766.stm 

 

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit.  

 

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/depts/dops/psychworks/the-application-of-implicit-attitude-theory.cfm

 

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?idE428

 

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/BNP-wins-Yorkshire-Euro-seat.5343062.jp

 

http://www.bps.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/releases$/division-of-occupational-psychology/prejudice-study-finds-gay-is-the-new-black.cfm

 

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7836766.stm

 

http://www.pinke.biz/news/547/British-People-Found-to-Hate-Gays-More-than-People-From-Other-Races/

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4246874/Britons-more-homophobic-than-racist.html

 

http://www.pamil-visions.net/gay-blac/

 

http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=13595

 

http://ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/08/Dec/1604.htm