Implicit Bias

I'm attending an online webinar this week on Immigrant Student Success: Models and Tools for K-12 and Adult Educators, offered by the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, MA. In preparation for tomorrow's session, we're asked to watch a video about implicit bias on the New York Times POV channel. It's a simple and straightforward examination of the subconscious biases we all have, their effects, and how to address them. There are 6 short episodes which play automatically one after the other.  

My parents raised us to recognize our implicit biases about race, religion, and class, but that doesn't make mine any less real. And beyond race, religion, and class, I have learned biases about age, weight, education, ability/disability, clothing, and dental health, to mention just a few.

You can take an online test, created by Project Implicit, to reveal your implicit biases. There are 14 topics to choose from—I did two: religion, and weight. Not surprisingly, I scored a “slight" bias for Christianity over Judaism and Islam, and a “moderate" bias for thin people over fat ones. The tests are basic indicators, not in-depth examinations, so my weight bias didn't show up to be as strong as I know it really is (stemming from my own inculcated sense of shame about my bodyweight). But it's certainly worth the time to explore.