We're All (Probably) Racist. Let Me Explain.

The Prevalence of Implicit Bias

The World Has Shaped Us To "Know Who We Are". But Do We?

        About 40% of white Americans have friends who are exclusively of the same race as themselves. Yet racism rates amongst whites have dropped significantly in the last century, so the question remains as to how such outwards racism and discrimination can still withstand as prevalent an issue as it is. Implicit bias is a type of mental and subconscious bigotry in which people, using the media and their own personal experiences with the world around them, form biases regarding different groups and elements that can build up over time and stir directed responses and habits towards those things to which they hold bias towards. Implicit bias severely restricts and segregates human relationships, and can be easily avoided through its acknowledgement coupled with the utilization of counteractive methods that can combat its effects.

        One staggering reason for the existence of implicit bias within our populations lies in its ability to float under the radar and its omnipresence in even the most subtle of crevices hiding various facets of our day to day lives. For instance, in a video entitled “Peanut Butter, Jelly and Racism,” Dolly Chugh from New York University mentions that whenever she hears the words “peanut butter”, her mind immediately associates it with the word “jelly” almost by default, and she doesn’t even realize that these connections are being made in her mind due to how ingrained this connections has been since her childhood. Yet for other foreign nations or families that haven’t had many standard American dishes like the PB&J, this concept would seem distant and likely quite occult, as their cultures might have other associations with the two concepts that they’ve formed in order to form this implicit bias within their mind. Thus, from this example and many more, it can be seen that these seemingly mindless and habitual connections are made in people’s minds over the course of their childhoods, molded by their experiences and so integrated like the beat of a heart or motion of breathing that people don’t even seem to notice them, but they rise to the surface in creating biases in the long term. This phenomenon is one of the quintessential reasons why implicit bias is able to have such a lasting effect on society, as it isn’t even being formally recognized.

Another reason showcasing how implicit bias affects our lives comes from the fact the biases are only shown in certain motives of ours over others. In accordance with the video “Check Our Bias To Wreck Our Bias,” a unanimous male voiceover employee from the New York Times claims that people are more likely to manifest their biases in their assistance of others than in their harmful intentions towards fellow civilians. This means that, especially coupled with the fact that implicit bias is undetectable at anything but a subconscious level, you cannot actually tell by analyzing all of your tasks if you have bias. For example, if you were to decide who to lay off a company, the racial distribution of your victims might be suitably scattered, but as soon as it comes to hiring new people, you may shift to one race or another if qualifications are on par laterally across the board. This makes it even more challenging for people to actually tell if they are having a bias because for most of their day to day life, they aren’t explicitly being racist, while the implicit bias is indirectly playing a role in their lives and cutting short a lot of the potential they could have in human relationships and interactions with peers by limiting their reach to desired people of a specific sub group.

Finally, implicit bias can be mitigated and its effects ratified through the strengthening of interpersonal relationships and the acceptance of one’s flaws by analyzing its long term effects, converting this into a more beneficial bounce back routine through future efforts and more focused endeavors. According to Heather McGhee from The Washington Post, purely just coming clean to yourself in divulging your fears and prejudices is one of the most powerful first steps you can take towards cleansing your feelings of prejudice or impartiality from implicit bias. In addition, if you can visualize a clear breaking point of weakness in your human relationships with others, then you should be able to step forth and try to combat those weaknesses first hand, be it through mixing around with a racial group that you typically avoid and gelling with certain sexualities than you tend to shy away from. Although the creation of these biases themselves is hard to spot, once the biases have fully taken their course of action, it is not too late to revert the damage that has been done, in which case the long-terms results from that initiative can be properly cemented into one’s mind and the bias and begin to degenerate. For instance, if you notice that the only people that you hang out with are of the same race as you, that could severely stifle your ability in the real and corporate worlds to interact and collaborate with group members who almost certainly will not all be the same race as you. Although the original friend groups forming can be hard to track, you can still see how you’ve developed later in your adolescence and make an effort to mix around more and diversify your friendships. Therefore, by simply ‘hanging out’ and seeing how your pathways can be paved if you tackle your implicit biases head on like the third video suggests, you will be much more effectively able to figure out the holes in your conscious life as puppeteered by the implicit biases of your subconscious, and delete these areas of your life in order to increase your quality of life and relations overall.

With the world constantly renovating itself and modernizing into a brand new era of society, basic ethical principles are a core foundation for us that we must never be able to forget, and part of that comes from the inside. Simply adorning a smile to our faces and showing the world that we are completely and utterly impartial in all of our equivocal voicings of global activities isn’t going to remedy the fact that impartial biases can creep their way into every nook and corner of our being, consuming us and leaving us all rogue in a world where only true harmony can lead us forth as equals. Racism, discrimination, cultural shadowing, and gender bias are all facets of our lives that it feels like we’ve done everything legally and literally in our power to eradicate, yet they stem out from behind the prison gates like criminals that can’t be put to sleep. Overall, implicit bias is a very real part of most of humanity’s lives, and is something almost unavoidable that can be resolved with a few keen observations and a plenitude of bold and forceful movements on our part. If the world truly wants to eliminate many of the mental plagues that have stimulated society into far more atrocities than all other natural cataclysms combined, then it is time that we face our fears and biases for what they really are and crawl one step closer towards wholly and wholeheartedly tackling them to their graves. Implicit or explicit, it has gone on for far too long, so the time has finally come to put an end to this, once and for all.