The class blindness of the clerisy

What exactly is the root error in this argument made in Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist? by Nicholas Kristof that concludes that

racial stereotyping remains ubiquitous, and that the challenge is not a small number of twisted white supremacists but something infinitely more subtle and complex: People who believe in equality but who act in ways that perpetuate bias and inequality.

The bulk of the article is a dog's breakfast of assorted sociology/psychology studies without providing the necessary context that most sociology/psychology studies are withdrawn or cannot be replicated. The problem is especially acute in the field of bias research where 70% of findings among major papers cannot be reproduced.

Kristof is eager to find that everyone is influenced by stereotypes, that those stereotypes influence people's actions and that those actions have disproportionately negative consequences on particular populations. All true up to a point but not true in the way Kristof is trying to get to.

What is stereotyping? Stereotyping - Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual. Stereotypes are a cognitive solution to the empirically inescapable truth that we do not know everything about everything and everybody. In the absence of detailed specific knowledge, we substitute averages and other proxies such as past experience. Dog bit you once? You are probably instinctively hesitant of all strange dogs for some period afterwards without knowing anything about the particular dog.

Some stereotypes are well founded on averages, some are inadequately founded on unrepresentative experiences. It doesn't matter how they originate, the mind conjures them with the scraps of epistemological evidence it has and then refines the rules as it goes along. Are stereotypes unfair? Certainly. Are they avoidable? No. They are a necessary function in the context of our limitations. All you can do is be conscious of them and modify them as evidence accumulates for or against a given stereotype and to avoid stereotypes completely when evidence about the individual is readily available.

Stereotyping has nothing in particular to do with race. It is something we do about everything about which we know too little. Last time you came over to Aunt Mae's she gave you some freshly baked bread which was horrendously salty. She may or may not be a terrible baker but if that one loaf (versus all her baked goods) is all you you have to go on, then that is the template you have to work with.

Kristof is eager to look down on everyone else with their noxious sotto voce stereotypes and biases without recognizing that he has committed the Fundamental Attribution Error - The tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. Far easier to look down one's moral nose at the shortfalls of others than to understand that the absence of knowledge is the source of the stereotype. He does violence to common sense and logic in his pursuit of moral certitude and purity.

You are asleep in your home. You wake and hear someone knocking around downstairs. The first stereotype is that there is someone up to no good. Ockham's Razor prevails. There are all sorts of alternate scenarios with putatively innocent causes. But absent any other information than knowing that someone is where they shouldn't be, it is not unreasonable to assume that that unexpected guest is less than well-intended.

Kristof is one of those flawed pundits who have created a world where everyone earns a couple hundred thousand dollars, has never had a run in with the law, is well educated, never overindulges in the grape, or makes mistakes. In that world, and it does exist (selectively) the stereotypes that exist can afford to be ignored because there are few consequences. You wake to the noise and you know it can't be someone because your $100/month alarm system is turned on. You don't have to worry your sheltered head. For others, that is not the case.

The refusal to recognize that stereotypes are a coping mechanism in a world of incomplete information where decisions can be both momentous and need to be made near instantaneously is a huge class issue for the clerisy and they muddy the waters by ignoring it in their ever continuing efforts to cultivate moral rectitude.