Title
Authorizing the Committee on Labor and Civil Service to hold hearings on the effectiveness of implicit bias and racial equity trainings for employees of the City of Philadelphia.
Body
WHEREAS, The expulsion, arrest, and detainment of two Black men awaiting a friend at a Starbucks located in Philadelphia on April 12, 2018, has sparked national outrage at the treatment of people of color by both local businesses and persons employed by the City of Philadelphia. Mayor Jim Kenney responded by stating that the incident "appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018"; and
WHEREAS, The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations is responding to the incident by examining Starbucks' policies and procedures, including the extent of, or need for, implicit bias training for its employees. Starbucks has also announced that it will facilitate unconscious bias training for all American Starbucks employees on May 29th of this year; and
WHEREAS, Unconscious bias exists within all individuals, and informs how we perceive and interact with others. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, biases can be based on skin color, gender, gender identity, age, height, weight, introversion versus extroversion, marital and parental status, disability status, and where someone went to college, among other categories. Additionally, biases cause individuals to make decisions in favor of one group to the detriment of others; and
WHEREAS, A study by Stanford University emphasizes the role of unconscious bias in the workplace. Stereotypes cause discrimination by influencing how individuals process and recall information about other people. As people process and store information, established stereotypes psychologically "distort" what a person perceives. Once a person develops stereotyped memories, they form mental frameworks of human behavior that are consistent with their established stereotypes. Biases can also result from conditional lear...
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