Let’s just say I’m horrified, both by the present violence and the violence that precipitated it. And I am trying to understand. That’s how I cope. So here’s what I understand about why we are prejudiced. Some of us more than others. But it’s there. 

Why Implicit Bias?

Social science experts call it Implicit Bias, prejudices that often live beneath our awareness, common to us all in one way or another. Biases based on gender, obesity, sexual preference, political preference, and last but not least…race. People we see as different in an Us versus Them World. 

Insider/Outsider distinctions are thought to have emerged from people learning to live in groups. Early humans discovered that groups increased their access to food, water, shelter, protection, sexual opportunities—resources necessary for us, as individuals and as a species, to survive and to thrive.

Consequence of Group Living

Group living also made us afraid of outsiders living in other groups. Outsiders could spread disease, and possibly want to kill to steal resources for themselves and their own. The fear would, of course, run in both directions. And, the best detectors of who was in and who was out would be the more likely to survive. So they would live to make more babies likely to be wired, genetically and culturally, just like themselves.

By this reasoning it is no surprise some measure of prejudice—fear of others not like ourselves—would live in us all. But we are the advanced humans now, the ones with the more developed cortex. We are capable of overcoming our primitive nature on the inside, so it doesn’t actually manifest in heinous ways out there.

In all fairness to us, unfortunately, so much of our implicit bias is so deeply buried by now, so automatic and outside of our awareness, that it might take some work to get out in front of it to do no harm. On the other hand, given implicit bias, we are not even aiming for color blind, but color conscious instead. 

So Now What?

Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein have put together a comprehensive list of resources for consciousness raising on racism. Although, a wise, black friend of mine said this: 

“That’s a whole lot to do. In fact I think all of that is just too much for any white person to handle. All white people need to do is make sure that their child has one black friend, treat that friend as an equal, and the next generation will be free of racism.”

Amen to that.

Judgment Exercise: And to get started right now retraining your brain away from the snap judgments we humans all make, here is an exercise called The Judgment Room on the ”Complimentary…” pulldown on my website at madelaineweiss.com

This simple exercise will also help in other areas of life where we don’t know what we are doing, because we don’t know what we don’t know.

Practice, practice, practice…see what happens, and let me know in comments below.

Warm wishes, and be safe,

Madelaine