A Note On Unconscious Bias
Pick up a tennis ball. Throw and catch it. Put it down again.
The whole process takes only a few seconds, but in that time, your brain has performed innumerable calculations: gauging the weight of the object, marking its trajectory, repositioning your hand and fingers to brace for the fall. The vast majority of people, if asked to consciously work out the mathematics behind tossing a ball in the air, letting it spin and catching it again - velocity, force, motion, flight path - would be utterly incapable of doing so; and yet their sleeping minds have done exactly that. Adept students of maths and physics, of course, can do the working with ease, but it will still take them longer and require more effort than simply catching the ball.
Second by second, the brain is performing incredible feats of mathematics, association and memory at speeds far faster than anything we could intelligently comprehend, using knowledge to which we often lack conscious access. I can touch-type with my eyes closed, but if you asked me to draw an accurate layout of my keyboard from memory, I couldn’t. I am far from alone in this.
So why do we fear to acknowledge that the same thing happens with people, with stories: with human interaction? I never consciously taught myself the mathematics of how to catch a ball, and yet I can catch one; so saying that I never consciously taught myself stereotypes, prejudice or implicit bias doesn’t stop me from applying them. In order to work out how I caught the ball, it’s not enough just to know that maths and physics exist: I have to engage with them, understand them, work out the weight and force of the objects involved, and make a calculation. Similarly, if I want to understand how and when I’m making reflexive, stereotypical judgments about narrative, race, culture, sexuality and gender, it’s not enough to know that prejudices and stereotypes exist: I have to engage with them, understand them, work out the relevant factors, and draw a conscious conclusion.
The difference? I can never reprogramme my understanding of physics such that I can’t catch balls: regardless of any conscious knowledge, mathematics is an absolute force to which my actions will always be subject. But the effects of culture - and prejudice, and stereotype - are malleable, and if I’m prepared to put in the effort, then I can certainly stop myself from making negative reflexive judgments.
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