The science of implicit bias is one of the most promising fields for animating the human change that makes social change possible. The social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is one of its primary architects. She understands the mind as a “difference-seeking machine” that helps us order and navigate the overwhelming complexity of reality. But this gift also creates blind spots and biases as we fill in what we don’t know with the limits of what we do know. This is science that takes our grappling with difference out of the realm of guilt and into the realm of transformative good.
In my thinking about “bad faith”, I am not seeing it in the realm of morality, as in something to scold. I see it as a constructed response to situations. One of its feature seems to be that, once set in motion, it can escalate. Bad faith penetrates everywhere creating uncertainty in everything. Not a good situation. If guilt is present, this should not cause fear of being exposed, it should be taken to be as a sign that one is in the process of learning something new. This woman actually does research in this area:
I’ve had people call me up and say, “I took your stupid test six months ago and didn’t think anything was useful, but I just traveled to a new city where I now live, and I have to pick a doctor. And I selected a white doctor from the list of doctors before me at the new HMO. And it turns out that the black doctor actually had expertise in my disease of diabetes. But I hadn’t picked him. Now I think that maybe I see what your stupid test was trying to tell me then. And I didn’t understand. I am writing to thank you for it.”
These days, I think many people sense these types of limits to their world picture. Many are anxious and defensive about this to the point of engaging in runaway mendacity, including self-deception. This is meta: guilt about being guilty.