Beyond Woke: Why the Focus on Unconscious Bias Will Not Address Systemic Racism– Ann Pellegrini, PhD Scientific Presentation

Fee to attend: $30 for NOBPC members; $50 non-members; and $15 student rate. All attendees will receive a 2 hour CME certificate. This meeting is virtual. Pre-registration is required.

This presentation begins with a short history of the concept of unconscious bias. Dr. Pellegrini will track the legal, educational, and therapeutic attempts to remedy unconscious bias and the ferocious political attacks on such efforts. One such paradigmatic example was President Trump’s October 2020 executive order that effectively banned any training intended to eliminate unconscious bias at any workplace in the US that received federal monies (a ban that affected nearly every college and university in the country). Although President Biden rescinded this executive order within his first days in office, the concept of unconscious bias and the practice of unconscious bias training remain controversial – and not only to the political right. For example, in 1987, legal scholar Charles Lawrence III, introduced the notion of unconscious bias into legal theory in a paper that has become foundational to the movement known as Critical Race Theory. Lawrence has more recently expressed his concerns that a focus on unconscious bias has taken attention away from addressing systemic and ongoing racial subordination. Alongside this trenchant legal critique, we could also consider psychoanalytic pressures on the notion of unconscious bias, asking whether bias is something that could be eliminated if located in, and then extracted from, the unconscious. In this presentation, by contrast, Dr. Pellegrini argues that the very language of unconscious bias promises to free us from prejudice by making racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes “conscious.” But this impossible hope ignores the unconscious forces magnetized by racism (Holland, Saketopoulou). Putting psychoanalysis into conversation with Critical Race Theory and queer of color critique, Dr. Pellegrini challenges some of the enticing, yet simplistic solutions promised us by conceptualizations of unconscious bias, offering a different analytics that may more helpfully intervene by foregrounding the problem of whiteness and its investments by racism.

Learning objectives:
1. To become familiar with contemporary debates over “unconscious bias” and “unconscious bias training.”
2. To put these contemporary debates into a longer historical frame.
3. To describe – from an anti-racist perspective — the limits of unconscious bias training.
4. To put psychoanalysis to work alongside Critical Race Theory and Queer of Color Critique to consider the enduring problem of systemic racism.

REGISTRATION

If you prefer to pay via check, please email nobpcenter@gmail.com.

Ann Pellegrini is Professor of Performance Studies and Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. Her books and articles traverse several disciplines and interdisciplines, but one through-line is an abiding interest in exploring how feelings are lived, experienced, and communicated between and across bodies—and with what risks and possibilities for self and others. Another is the value of the aesthetic for repairing democratic social life. She has written extensively about religion, sexuality, and US public life. Her publications include Performance Anxieties as well as the coauthored books Love the Sin, You Can Tell Just By Looking and 20 Other Myths About LGBT Life and People. She is the co-editor of the journal Studies in Gender and Psychoanalysis. She’s currently completing a new book on queer structures of religious feeling. She is a candidate in adult psychoanalysis at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York City.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and NOBPC. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s). Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters of this CME program have any relevant financial relationships to disclose. PSYCHOLOGISTS AND SOCIAL WORKERS MAY RECEIVE CREDIT FOR THIS ACTIVITY WITH A CME CERTIFICATE.