Let’s start off with: Yes, Bad Bunny. That was a thing. Well done!
Now, continuing to chew on some of the why’s, let’s take a little look at bias.
We are in that age where some factions of our government openly kidnap children (after years of decrying children trafficking), where over 4,400 court rulings have found immigrants unlawfully detained just since October of 2024, and some lie in public and tell us not to believe our eyes, ears, hearts, and minds while continuing to openly murder individuals. FYI, those are just the cliff notes.
For centuries, we Black, Brown and poor peoples have lived under the power of open and subvert favoring and disfavoring, ridiculous levels of classism, racism, oppression, social control dynamics, media manipulations, and yes, conscious and unconscious bias. Thoughtful examination points clearly to the biases of the factions that implement these atrocious and dehumanizing outcomes. Yet, since bias, to the best of our understanding at this time, is a natural human condition, then where are we in our own?
I mean bluntly, is it totally OK for us to have, rightfully so, a problem with their biases yet turn around and co-sign our own? Is it OK for us to use platforms of dehumanizing and belittling of some very not OK behaviors until we get to the place of power and then turn around and give headway to our own stuff to unleash? Is it possible that under the same critical examinations we use to justify criticizing the behavior of others, we also fail in that test comparative?
From what we currently understand about bias and brain dynamics, the unconscious mind absorbs and filters approximately a billion bits of information subconsciously in any given moment, yet we are only maybe consciously aware of about 10 bits. These same understandings point to up to 98% of our emotional cognition, awareness and reactions, being primarily within our subconscious mind.
I offer this to point to the question of trying to understand and come to terms with what we have absorbed. Author Ibram X. Kendi, and many others, have pointed to the experience of clean pain and dirty pain, healthy stress and toxic stress. Maybe those who are implementing some very terrible and problematic dynamics are even more caught up in that than we are?
Many times I’ve asked the question concerning the U.S.: “How many think our system is broken?” Nine times out of ten, almost all the hands in the room go up. I invite this perspective: Our system is not broken. It’s operating exactly how they designed it (Thank you JLW and Michelle Storms, 2018), and some of us are so potentially caught up in our own bias, trauma and brain dynamics that we struggle with even getting to that baseline reality, let alone meaningful, sustained actions for healthy change.
Always much love, and try chewing on this:
“If you are not actively engaged in understanding and dismantling it, you are automatically under the influence of it and or giving it the thumbs up to continue.”