As Dr. Bezio mentioned in her podcast, nobody wants to be seen as biased because in our society, being biased is synonymous with being bigoted in one way or another. This was the conception that I previously had of biases, that they were broadly negative connotations that were held by a few in power and something to shy away from. However, over the past few years and as I have done more research on BLM and other social justice movements, I grew to realize how many biases I held and how they were created and reinforced by those around me. In my opinion, these can be just as harmful as true, full-blown racism and are far more common. When people are not aware of a problem they have, or cannot see the problem exists at all, there is no way to fix it and the problem gets worse.<\/p>\n
I have spent most of my life in Massachusetts, an incredibly liberal and supposedly un-racist state that prides itself on its actions against slavery in the Civil War. In our history classes, we learn about racism as if it is something exclusive to the South and not a universal fact of life in America. But Massachusetts is also one of the most segregated and homogenous parts of the country, with many schools in Boston and throughout the suburbs consisting of 90% or more one ethnic group. My own high school, which was about an hour outside the city, was 97% white, and most of the other schools in my area shared similar demographics. This is immensely problematic because without exposure to different cultures, races, and ideologies, students have to rely on media depictions (which will always be biased) or simply regurgitate their parents’ views on the world (which will most likely also be biased). The largest issue with this homogeny is that many people do not see a problem with it and preach about equality while they hold deeply racist views. These views get perpetrated by microaggressions and seemingly innocent actions or phrases that get glossed over in daily conversations but become more problematic as they compound.\u00a0 When people hold racist views and cannot comprehend that they are racists, there is no hope for them to change and we will never be able to create a more equitable society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Dr. Bezio mentioned in her podcast, nobody wants to be seen as biased because in our society, being biased is synonymous with being bigoted in one way or another. This was the conception that I previously had of biases, that they were broadly negative connotations that were held by a few in power and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6312,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6307\/revisions\/6312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}