The secret code of the ruling class

I naively hoped that last year’s statement by the Equalities Minister explaining why unconscious bias training was being phased out across the civil service might slow its spread. After all, the minister’s scepticism wasn’t based on political disagreement but on research commissioned from the Behavioural Insights Team that concluded: ‘There is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term or improves… equality in terms of representation of women, ethnic minorities or other minority groups.’

Reading between the lines, the BIT evidently thinks that UBT is little more than snake oil — and there’s a vast amount of literature in the social sciences to back that up. The empirical evidence suggesting there’s a causal link between people’s unconscious biases and the under-representation of minorities in Russell Group universities or in professions such as law, accountancy and banking is threadbare. And even if you accept the premise of UBT, there’s little evidence to suggest that bringing these biases to the surface will have a lasting impact on people’s behaviour, making them less discriminatory once they’ve taken the course.