I would like to weigh in here on the issue of the Holmes report and the ideas that have followed in its wake. I realize that many of you will not be receptive to what I have to say, but on the chance that there are still those inclined toward the use of empiricism at the organizational level, here goes.
My greatest concern for modern society is that there is a growing tendency for individuals and groups to stand firmly on inner convictions in the absence of robust external evidence. This problem is at the core of many evolving social and political issues plaguing America and the western world at present.
It should be stated that racial discrimination is illegal in the U.S.; so if there is compelling evidence that race is actually used to exclude or administratively discriminate against any race, the Department of Justice would need that data in order to proceed in a civil rights case. They would require well documented evidence. If such evidence existed, I and many others would aid in the facilitation of correcting an identifiable discriminatory practice at the organizational level.
However, I would think that any group of scholars who endeavored to characterize their professional organization as an extension of “white supremacy” (a term found 151 times in the Holmes report) would come to that conclusion only after rock solid data had led them to such a claim.
The Holmes report is no such document; it lacks serious research methodology. The paper reads more like a religious tome, its very opening statements of the problems are circular and include many non sequiturs, and the outcomes are based merely on subjective reports. There is no actuarial evidence to support any of the few trends found in the subjective reports. There is not even a proper methods or results section. Have any of you ever read a legitimate empirical social sciences study that did not bother to include a proper methods or results section? Would you take seriously one that does not? It is not even clear that the data sets include normal distributions if there are even analyses of between group differences versus what appear to be simple percentage comparisons, if they were truncated and on what basis, what the specific analyses were and whether they were appropriate for the data. Readers are left to guess what the “mixed methods design” was composed of, which renders my aforementioned statistical questions shots in the dark.
Some may rejoinder that the subjective experience of respondents should be taken on its own as valid. My answer to that position is that when the Holmes Commission included an attempt at quantitative methods they were then obligated as social scientists to proceed along a valid design. They unfortunately did no such thing.
The paper is internally inconsistent and riddled with content validity problems. Items have no evidence of content validity surveys establishing their credibility or cohesion. Conclusions are reached conveniently and spuriously. What I am stating here is only a snapshot of the methods problems of the report. There are literally too many problems to include here.
…For one of many examples to be found, when POCs report perceptions of problems, that is apparently to be taken as a veridical representation of an actual problem in the external world around the subject (In Apsaa as an organization). But for white people…”Especially concerning was that white candidates and faculty underestimated (italics here and below added by me) the degree to which critical racial incidents contributed to candidates’ decisions to leave training.”
So…the subjective experience of one race is oddly to be taken as an objective representation of the external world… and the subjective experiences of another race are clearly seen as a defensive denial of reality, or at least a problem/distortion by way of being an “underestimation”?
I guess this is the point of the social breakdown following 2020 where it was claimed that certain races have “other ways of knowing.” I don’t know if there are any of you out there who will join me in observing a historical fact: claiming that races are epistemically distinct (have different internal parts and perceptual processes that align with their external appearance) has been tried before in human history, and the results have been catastrophic. It is an utter, stark, and for me a very sad irony that the same process is unfolding yet again in western civilization and apparently in Apsaa.
As an example of such a quandary, one item asks: “Did you ever have a discriminatory experience with your advisor, supervisor, or instructor?” It is supposed to be taken as statistically significant in terms of differences in percentages that “22% of white candidates and 37% of BIPOC candidates indicated “yes.” Moreover… “One respondent observed, “Having only ‘unintentionally’ racist white supervisors evaluating candidates of color who struggle at the very least to talk about anything race related” disadvantages candidates of color.”
…For the purposes of the study’s internal validity and reliability, why would we assume that any person is able to perceptually discern whether an interaction with a supervisor or anyone is a “discriminatory experience” or “unintentionally’ racist?” These are unbelievably complex terms in the item-design and would be nearly impossible to measure properly. A robust attempt to measure these items would include an incredibly complex and controlled experimental design. So they don’t bother with content validity or measurement.
…Why do they not also assess covariating factors and mediating variables at the level of the individual respondents, such as the perpetual processes of the perceivers? In other words, if unconscious bias assessments (though lacking validity in terms of measurement tools) are good for the goose, are they not also good for the gander? This is a serious problem in this study and others like it. It would seem to me that if a study wanted to rule these factors out in order to provide a compelling series of conclusions rather than untested and hence relatively unfounded claims, they would have been included. Again, the Holmes report makes major claims and major assertions. It really needed to have included major design integrity to accomplish those outcomes.
As far as the idea of having an ombudsman for race-related issues in Apsaa, such a notion could only be entertained after a problem had been identified empirically in more valid ways than has been done here.
Some have said that an ombudsman would merely be someone who facilitates dialogue. Let me present the definition of Ombudsman: “Aperson who investigates, reports on, and helps settle complaints.”
If anyone is merely advocating for some sort of sensitive person who listens and engages in dialogue (those people are called psychoanalysts, by the way)…why exactly would this person need to be imbued with the authority of an official ombudsman?
In our society, the general idea of having an “antiracist” administrative body comes directly from Ibram Kendi’s proposal to have an anti-racist governing agency and an actual amendment to the US constitution that oversees other branches of government. It is worth reading his short statement in the following link in order to see the basic ideology and its actual aims. It is quite striking to say the least. https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment/
Again, this has been tried before in human history. I hope it is not tried again in Apsaa. There are better ways of moving toward a more just society, where diverse voices are heard and respected than what has been promoted in the Holmes Commission report and elsewhere in the SJW world. As an example, it is well known in organizational management of both the technical and academic world that incentive initiatives are much more effective and productive than oversight in terms of producing innovation.
I hope we as a field maintain our fidelity to a wonderful and yet apparently vulnerable psychoanalytic tradition. May what I have offered here be a contribution in some way.
Lucas Klein, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist (OR2899,CA25861, NY019804)
LK@drkleinpsychology.com