Nobody wants to be accused of having biases, yet it is impossible to not have biases. Stereotypes are embedded into literally everything in our lives. As a business student with a marketing concentration, I literally learn how marketing relies on stereotypes. Companies group people into segments in order to determine their target audiences and marketing strategies. In America, as Dr. Bezio points out in the podcast, basically all products are marketed to middle class white people. Growing up, implicit biases were placed in our brains by these companies and the media we all consume. The Disney princesses were mostly white, I never saw a black or brown barbie doll until these past few years, and the main characters in my favorite TV shows were always white. It’s really sad looking back as an adult. It is nice to see how media and popular culture have evolved since I was young, but there is still a looooong way to go.
There is a massive lack of exposure to different cultures, and I agree that exposure is the best, if not only, way to erase implicit biases. I find it problematic that white culture is the default culture. The US loves to call itself a “melting pot,” when in reality, we only ever fully embraced the white European cultures. Historically speaking, non-white cultural voices have been suppressed which is the cause of such strong biases. Nobody talks about white culture because as said in the podcast, white people feel guilty, but we only feel guilty because we know it’s wrong.
It’s also important to point out how easy it is to find biases and how many different ways stereotyping exists. As a woman I have experienced the consequences of these biases. This is not to say that I have not benefited from white privilege because I certainly have. While it is difficult to admit we have biases, it is an essential step for everyone to take. In order to reverse bias, the first step is awareness, the second step is action (not performative activism!!!).
I agree about how saddening it is looking back on the TV shows you watched as a kid and only realizing now how there was such a lack of meaningful representation of different races of people. My initial thought goes to all of the Disney sitcoms I watched, like Good Luck Charlie. In this show the main characters were white and both had black best friends who were only on the show to further the storyline of the main characters. They did not have any storyline of their own, and this is the case for so many shows where the producers tried to have representation but only for the sake of seeming inclusive from the outside, and that is where the problem lies.
This really resonated with my childhood as well–all main characters in movies and tv shows were always white, usually with blonde and blue eyes (my two favorite shows were Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverley Place). Not only is this representation harmful to children’s development, it also paves the way for implicit biases into our adulthood. Like you said, the first step towards eliminating biases is through exposure and action in everyday moments.
I am also concentrating in Marketing and have found the same to be true in my classes. While adding people to groups may seem to make the job easier, it is actually detrimental to our society as you have pointed out in the example of figures on TV screens. I believe it is becoming harder to put people into groups as we are being taught, especially based on race and ethnicity. While these are very important distinctions to make in terms of one’s culture, I do not think that in the next couple of years, people will attempt to market to one person over the other. Rather I think an emerging and important strategy is to show how a product is important to everyone, or represent everyone in their product.