<p>Research on implicit bias causes discomfort. The research shows that contradictory to their avowed egalitarian commitments, people sometimes discriminate against others on the basis of race, gender, age etcetera. While the discrimination is mitigated by calling it implicit, unconscious or unintentional, many people are offended by the suggestion that they might harbour racist or sexist biases. I identify three attempts in the recent literature to conceptualize implicit bias in such a way that the research avoids discomfort and backlash. As a result these approaches downplay the moral character of the phenomenon whereas I suggest that we should embrace the moral message inherent in implicit bias-research. This moral message is helpfully but unsufficiently addressed by recent developments of structural (i.e. social) and mixed (psychological-structural) accounts of implicit bias, since they leave our individual responsibility underdetermined. Unexpected help comes from concepts and theories in virtue ethics which have not been applied to the phenomenon of implicit bias yet. First, I will draw on Nomy Arpaly’s analysis of Huck Finn as an example of unprincipled virtue to argue that a reverse concept of unprincipled vice is applicable to implicitly biased behaviour. Secondly, Bernard Williams’ concept of moral luck will help to expand backward-looking responsibility beyond intentional actions only. Thirdly, Iris Murdoch’s virtue ethics of attention helps to show why a focus on collective solutions will not release the individual from a personal responsibility to aim for virtue. Within the framework of virtue ethics inspired by Arpaly, Williams and Murdoch, implicit bias appears as in essence a moral phenomenon that confronts us with the imperfections of human nature and injustices of societal structures, as morality is bound to do. This framework goes against the dominant view of implicit biases as a psychological phenomenon that only indirectly raises moral questions.</p>