At this stage, it is important to name, if you haven’t already figured it out, that bias is a natural human phenomenon.
Our brains absorb approximately a billion bits of information per second, yet we are only consciously aware of about ten of those bits. After receiving such overwhelming amounts of information, we are wired to create shortcuts to process it all. That information is stored in our subconscious over the span of our lifetimes.
The question on the table is not whether our subconscious has absorbed racial and social programming, class dynamics, exposure to whiteness, warped power dynamics, othering, or the justifications used to dehumanize and minimize the abhorrent mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical violence that exists in our world.
The question now becomes: How much of this stuff do we agree with?
No, I’m not talking about the ten bits of baseline capacity in our conscious minds. I’m referring primarily to the subconscious mind.
Have we ever taken a serious look at ourselves in that context? Have we ever looked at ourselves, regardless of our racial or ethnic backgrounds, and said, “I know I’m not a racist in my conscious mind, but what about my subconscious mind?” And if I haven’t done that work or asked that question, what is that doing to my well-being?
What does it actually mean to be human within current and generational dynamics, knowing that we have been exposed to so much harm and misinformation while rarely being trained to understand our true individual and collective human condition?
What could possibly be going on within us when we are almost certainly carrying opposing and contradictory beliefs in our minds, especially around questions of who belongs and who belongs within the “Circle of Concern” (see the outstanding work of Professor John Powell and bell hooks)?
I suggest that what is occurring throughout vast portions of our human family is an extreme amount of cognitive dissonance and its toxic impact (see the work of Franz Fanon, James Baldwin, and others). Thank you, Sandy and Wilhelmenia.
Let’s just be real about it. What does it do to us to suffer racial, class, and social harms, yet turn around and carry some of those same views about others within our own subconscious minds?
Are we so caught up in our own identity dynamics that we would rather remain in denial about who we are, how we think, and how we actually behave, while readily, and sometimes violently, taking inventory of everyone else’s behavior?
Even when doing so clearly contradicts who we claim to be?
I will leave you with these thoughts:
“We must check our bias to wreck our bias, and wreck our bias to check our bias.”
Because part of the reality we are living in is this:
“If you’re not actively engaged in understanding it and dismantling it, you are automatically under the influence of it and/or giving it the thumbs up to continue.”
Much love, respect, and gratitude to the Williams family.