In listening to Podcast 2: Culture & Implicit Bias, the main point, and one that I have not truly thought about before was the connection between culture and implicit bias. As it is commonly viewed, culture is the combination of different elements, such as food and dress that separate people into different subgroups. For example, as an Italian-American, a large amount of my family speaks Italian and makes Italian food, while also incorporating other aspects of American culture, such as their liking of “People” magazine and Americanized foods. Looking more largely at American culture, to understand the tie between culture and implicit bias in our country, it is critical to acknowledge that what we see as “American” culture is really white culture. In America, things we see as the default culture are typically associated with white people, while other aspects, such as certain foods eaten or music listened to, are labeled as the culture of different ethnic groups. I think this is important to recognize because as a white American, it is eye-opening to realize that the culture we live in commonly pushes the “default” to be white culture, while we tend to ignore or mark off the cultures of other groups, whether they be ethnic, religious, etc.

Once we understand this tie between white culture and American culture, we can view the development of implicit bias. An interesting point raised in this podcast that I was unaware of was the adaption of human brains to see patterns around us as a survival method. This physiological tie of a pattern can be seen in the development of implicit bias, for in our American culture, which is essentially white culture, oftentimes certain images of certain ethnic groups are shown. As the podcast described, white people are often placed as the hero, while other individuals, such as black Americans and Chinese individuals, are continuously shown in other roles. This constant feeding from the culture, along with the use of media, including movies, music, etc, creates a pattern of these certain individuals of certain ethnic groups in certain positions, and thus implicit bias develops, for we see these patterns and begin to implicitly assume the position of a certain individual from a certain ethnic group. From this podcast, I think the most important point to take away is that to begin the process of alleviating the impact and consequences of implicit bias, we must begin to increase representation in the media and put people of different ethnic groups in different positions to break these patterns and thus break these implicit biases.