Implicit bias.

No, it's not the lovely drape and swing of a dress designed in the 1930's. It's the things we don't know that we think or feel about others. There was a link to a TED talk by Jerry Kang on a work-related website. I copied the link and sent it to myself at home, because I didn't have fifteen minutes or half an hour or whatever to watch it at work, and I wanted to watch it when I could have uninterrupted time to listen and ponder. I listened to it tonight.

And then I went to another website and took a test to see what was hiding under the rocks inside my brain. Mom and Dad were careful to rear us to see people as individuals. Thankfully, I was not taught to be prejudiced. But I do live in the world, and I was pretty sure that some of it had crept in, no matter how careful I thought I was being. There are thirteen possible tests at that website, as of this writing.

Here are some of my results:

1. Your data suggest little or no automatic association between Weapons and Harmless Objects with White Americans and Black Americans. Well, that's good. Responsible weapon ownership and idiocy are, I would say, pretty evenly distributed.
2. Your data suggest a moderate automatic association for Male with Career and Female with Family. My data was fouled up because the test kept telling me that I was giving wrong answers. This test was frustrating.
3. Your data suggest a moderate automatic association for American with White American and Foreign with Native American. Banana oil. I just got faster at responding as the test went on.
4. Your data suggest no automatic preference between Old people and Young people. True. I like nice people.
5. Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Thomas Jefferson over Barack Obama. Also skewed. I certainly don't hate the POTUS. He is, after all, a cousin (13th cousin 1x removed), as is Thomas Jefferson (4th cousin 8x removed). It's bad manners to hate your relatives.

I haven't taken any of the other tests yet, but I probably will.

And I am out of spoons. Tomorrow and Friday are likely to be crazy-busy, as SemperFi informed me late this afternoon that the trial we were pretty sure we were not going to be reached in, is suddenly looking as if we are extremely likely to be reached. So I will spend a good chunk of the next two days preparing trial notebooks, because this is a huge case, and then it will settle at 4:55 on Friday afternoon, and I will take opposing counsel's name in vain.

Night, y'all.