One aspect of the reading I found very interesting is the application of knowing versus endorsing in relation to automatic beliefs. Although humans are able to reflect and determine whether or not we endorse or subscribe to a particular belief or stereotype, however, this does not always line up with how an individual reacts at an automatic level. This difference between the conscious mind and unconscious mind creates implicit biases which an individual is often unaware of, or even if they realize they hold this bias, they may not want to admit because when they consciously reflect they disagree with their implicit biases.
This concept aligns with an idea that has become more prominent in the past year about acknowledging your biases, but actively reflecting and combating them to avoid engaging in biased or harmful behaviors towards specific social groups or individuals, in particular to the ideas of anti-racism. This approach recognizes that unconscious bias based on automatic beliefs exist, but also attempts to consciously combat them, and even implies the opportunity to unlearn these biases. While the reading later says that the evidence supporting that this un-learning or re-conditioning away from formerly held automatic beliefs is not completely conclusive about its success long-term, this popular narrative accounts for this uncertainty, explaining this active reflection and re-conditioning as something to strive for as a constant practice. I think it’s interesting to see this logic in combating, racism, sexism, ableism, etc. enter mainstream media in the past year. If this idea of a constant reflective practice were taken up by the majority of the population, would we learn to be aware of our implicit biases at a younger age? Would the types of implicit biases we have change?
I think you have a really interesting point about reflection being the key to long term change. Part of this is that implicit bias can feel very personal – after all it’s going deep into your mind to find preferences that you might not even know existed – but they are built up by large scale structures and systems that promote these biases. So while I wholeheartedly support your point about utilizing active reflection to combat racism, sexism, ableism, etc, I don’t want to forget the big picture – that it will take systemic revolution to deafet racism, sexism, ableism, etc. Everyone committing to unlearning their implicit biases would be incredible and would make a huge difference, but if the systems that promote those biases are unchecked, they will only return.
I think your idea of constant reflective practice is really interesting and I certainly think that a practice like this could begin to lower discrimination (subconscious and conscious) and bring people together. Obviously actually implementing constant reflective practice is difficult, but I wonder if this could be introduced at a systematic level rather than relying on family to introduce this (which could create bias). These sorts of implicit bias tests certainly begin to start the conversation as we are forced to reflect on our automatic opinions and thoughts, but these conversations need to be continued in order to create change.
I agree, I think that knowing/endorsing opinions vs. having automatic/implicit beliefs are extremely different and just because one does not consider themselves to hold/endorse certain ideas, the content that they have consumed throughout their lives, the people they’ve surrounded themselves with, and various other environmental factors may influence their belief systems in ways that they aren’t necessarily aware of, which can prevent them from growing as people, and unconscious ideas can turn into conscious ones that perpetuate cycles of inequality, prejudice, and “othering” that are extremely detrimental.