Biases. Whether we like it or not, our brain functions using implicit bias.

It's something we always need to be aware of; something we constantly need to be challenging. Recently as a part of my philosophy of race and gender class, I had to take an implicit bias test online.

They set it up so that you self-report how much bias you believe you have, and then have experiments that expose your actual level of bias. Its humbling to say the least. I would really like to believe that I expect the best of people and that I don’t let stereotypes form the way I interpret the world, but things are subconscious until we are able to recognize and address them.

Whether it's in relation to race, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc. unfortunately we are bombarded with exaggerations and misrepresentations in the news and media that cloud the way we would like to see the world. I challenge you to think of ways that you might be interpreting the world without using what is actually in front of your face.

One of my favorite examples is the world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, who posed as a homeless man playing music in the D.C. subway. He is literally one of the most talented musicians in the world and barely made more than $20.

People didn’t even stop, didn’t look at him, didn’t listen to the same music they would then hear in his performance the next night at a theatre in Boston. We see but we don’t recognize.

We hear but we don’t listen. Especially going into the holiday season we need to make our greatest attempts to see and believe the best.

That’s not necessarily to encourage naïve thoughts or to live with our heads in the clouds but to actively make an effort to see people for who they are, standing in front of us, instead of grouping them into a particular category and making assumptions.

I encourage everyone to take one or all of these quizzes on an implicit bias to get in touch with your true perceptions in order to challenge them.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html