There was an interesting story in the Daily Mail a few weeks ago in which the government was criticised for making fake applications for several jobs to find out whether candidates from ethnic minorities were being put at a disadvantage. This was done in part because of a proposed amendment to the Equality Bill that CVs should be required to exclude the name of the applicant to reduce the risk of unconscious discrimination on the grounds of race. I confess that I fail to see what the fuss was all about. No action was ever taken against any of the employers involved in the research and, indeed, the only possible negative consequence for them was the need to process two or three additional applications. Similar research has been done by academics and journalists dozens of times before and the only possible criticism is that it was wholly unnecessary given the evidence of discrimination in the earlier studies.

In my opinion, anxiety about this sort of research reflects a certain defensiveness we all share about unconscious discrimination. We rightly condemn racism but this can prevent us from acknowledging that we are capable of racism ourselves, which is entirely the wrong approach. We evolved in a world full of conflict and so fighting discrimination means fighting our own innate tendencies towards in-group bias (and if you do not think that this applies to you, click here). Excluding names from CVs is a great way of doing this. However, just as an overweight person will never succeed in becoming thin if he or she is embarrassed to exercise, it is important not to be ashamed of the truth about our unconscious tendencies or otherwise it will be impossible for us to be able to tackle them with any seriousness.