Finding My Blindspots, or the Painful Truth of Admitting My Own Biases

On Sunday afternoon, I received a text from an old friend.

What do you know about bias?

“Quite a bit,” I responded, and then promptly sent over book recommendations. Then another text came through.

Can you be a panelist in a discussion about bias?

“Sure, yeah, I’d be happy to do that,” I texted back, and then I got to work, reminding myself of what I knew about biases.

My husband and I have two large dogs, Eleanor and Beatrice. As a good dog is generally a tired dog, that means that I spend a lot of time out walking them. And while I love the solitude that comes with walking and thinking, I also listen to several podcasts and audiobooks. Both are a great way for me to consume information while getting some fresh air into me and the dogs. On one of these walks, I listened to an interview with Mahzarin Banaji, a social psychologist discussing her book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.

In her book, Banaji has people play some simple word-association games in order to help them see their own biases. In the first round, she has people use a computer keyboard to associate dark-skinned faces with words such as evil, war, deception, and the like, while people with light-skinned faces were associated with words like joy, love, happiness, light. She then has them switch, associating dark-skinned faces with joy and love and happiness and light-skinned faces with evil and war and deception. She times them, noting the difference between the times as a metric for unconscious bias. The recorded times were clear: most people have an unconscious bias against dark-skinned people.

Malcolm Gladwell, yes that Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point and “Revolutionist History” and New York Times bestseller lists, does Banaji’s test. And Malcolm Gladwell, with a Jamaican mother and much to his surprise and horror, showed an unconscious bias against dark-skinned people. I wasn’t feeling great about my test results (I was in the Peace Corps! I travel! I’ve been to Robben Island!), but at least I was in good company. I am…biased.

Ugh.

Like any coach, I have some go-to questions. Here is one of mine:

What are you carrying that no one else can see?

In light of that panel discussion, writing this post, and general reflection on my own part, this question has changed. Previously, I may have asked that question to bring to light something that was heavy, a burden weighing a person down. But now, now there is a different aspect to this question: what am I carrying that I do not want others to see? What am I hiding, what biases am I keeping secret?

Just thinking about this brings me a great deal of shame. My own biases include education, literacy, social status, what you read, what you do for fun, where you grew up, how you spend your time, how you spend your money, and the list goes on. Going forward, that question of “What am I carrying that no one else can see?” is one that I will both see and ask differently, if only because I view the response through the lens of my own biases.

Questions to Ask to Bring Biases to Light

Let’s face it: bias is everywhere. It’s always been there. Our brains are lazy, we’re always looking for the hack. But can we find a way to make it less so, less prevalent? Fortunately, that answer is yes. In order to bring biases to light, it might be helpful to have some questions on hand to make it easier for others to see them and to provide feedback. Here are questions that have worked well for me:

• Who is watching us?

• What is the example we’re trying to set?

• What scares you about the “other?” What comes up for you when you think about “different?”

• Who am I helping?

• Who am I not helping?

• What is the change I want to see?

• What factors went into that decision?

• Where do I need to look more closely?

I’m human, fallible and imperfect, and therefore I have biases. But how I handle—not carry, not hide, but handle—these biases is up to me. As I mull this over, I come back to curiosity, to good questions, to starting with heart. I handle my biases by being genuinely curious about another person, to asking great questions that allow them to open up, and double-checking that my own heart is in a good place. Amy Cuddy calls this social bravery, and says that it “something we do first so that we can respect ourselves, not so that others can respect us.” When I am curious and handle my biases, I find that self-respect isn’t quite the social-bravery leap that it might have been, and it is worth that jump.

Photo credit for this blogpost is Linda Nickell. Find her on Instagram as @coznlinda.