> Oh no I asked the model to draw a doctor and it drew a male doctor, I guess there's no point in me pursuing medical studies
If you don't think this is a real thing that happens to children you're not thinking especially hard. It doesn't have to be common to be real.
I believe that's where parenting comes in. Maybe I'm too cynical but I think that the parents' job is to undo all of the harm done by society and instill in their children the "correct" values.
Far from being too cynical, this is too optimistic.
The vast majority of parents try to instill the value "do not use heroin." And yet society manages to do that harm on a large scale. There are other examples.
The quality of the evidence for this, as with almost all social science and much of psychology, is extremely low bordering on just certified opinions. I would love to understand why you think otherwise.
> Obviously there are things with much larger effects, that doesn't mean that this doesn't exist.
What a hedge. How should we estimate the size of this effect, so that we can accurately measure whether/when the self-appointed hall monitors are doing more harm than good?
It seems extremely unfair that parents of young black men should have to work extra hard to tell their kids they're not destined to be criminals. Hell, it's not fair on parents of blonde girls to tell their kids they don't have to be just dumb and pretty.
(note: I am deliberately picking bad stereotypes that are pervasive in our culture... I am not in any way suggesting those are true.)
The evidence for implicit bias is pretty weak and IIRC is better explained by people having explicit bias but lying about it when asked.
(Note: this is even worse.)