What has the assassination of Abraham Lincoln got to do with the workplace of today?

The following is an extract from an in-house training module from TSP Learning on Equal Opportunities and Unconscious Bias. This short section follows a review discussion about "Affinity Bias", "Attribution Bias" (and others). With this reflection on the past, issues that can exist today are brought into focus.

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...Historical Bias

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there”[1]. 

Today’s Gender Pay Gap has its roots in the past when it was far more common to assume that women were, first and foremost, mothers and housewives. This influenced decisions about women (particularly those who may have recently married) when it came to recruitment or promotion. 

Problems arising from those attitudes are exacerbated by the fact that many women tend to revert (and/or be expected to revert) to the role of primary carer and the one to take off time from work to care for children or dependents. This is one reason why more women are in part time work than men (which tends to be lower paid) and why they often take up traditionally lower paid work e.g. in hospitality, social care etc.

Here, in a country that has been trying to tackle inequality among the sexes since before the suffragette movement in late Victorian times, it is not surprising to learn that the effect of historical bias towards ethnic groups is even more profound. It was reported by the CIPD in July 2019 that almost all categories of black and minority ethnic (BAME) workers are paid less on average than their white British counterparts. Some Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers were paid 20% less.

Further away, in the USA, it is reported that the average wealth of a white family is $171,000. For a black family, it is $17,600. In a powerful TV documentary[2] a theory is proposed as to why:

The American Civil War which led to the abolition of slavery ended in 1865. General Sherman consulted Black leaders at the time to try to work out ways to help freed slaves get a start in their new lives. The answer was that they needed land. A proposal to ensure that up to 40 acres of “tillable land” be distributed to former slaves was drawn up. This proposal was endorsed by President Abraham Lincoln who signed the bill that would have seen it enacted. 

Lincoln was assassinated before the law was passed and his successor, President Johnson reversed the proposal. Slaves who had helped their masters generate huge wealth were freed with nothing. 

Money follows money, so the saying goes, and the value of the land owned by the white people naturally increased. So did their wealth. The effect of compound interest on a $100 investment in 1865 would mean that by the year 2018, that sum would be worth $3.5m.

That poor start was further exaggerated by the effect of the Great Depression in the 1930’s. Many home owners out of work and/or whose investments had become worthless defaulted on their mortgage loans and would have lost their houses. Assistance was provided by Roosevelt’s New Deal in which homes were insured so people did not lose their properties. That is, unless your home was in an area designated “risky”. These were the poorer areas and where most of the black people lived. There was no such financial assistance provided to them and many of those home owners lost out.

These are reasons, it is suggested, why more black people in America today are significantly poorer than white Americans...

Under the banner 'TSP Learning', the Employment Team at Thompson Smith and Puxon offer in house training on a range of subjects designed to ensure that Managers are managing and that legal risks are reduced without compromising on the commercial goals.

[1] L.P. Hartley, “The Go Between” 1953

[2] The Racial Wealth Gap, Netflix Explained, Netflix.