Bias - Conscious or Unconscious?
As we’ve seen in the last year or so, blatant examples of racism have filled news headlines. But many other examples of discrimination and hate crimes have occurred in the same time span and are only receiving attention now. What about these types of discrimination that are just as hurtful, derogatory, and even dangerous? These thoughts led me to look into issues around conscious and unconscious bias, which delves into how more subtle forms of racism, sexism, and LGBTQ discrimination are propagated even in the most professional environments. So what is unconscious bias? It is the bias that shows up in a person's behavior that they themselves are totally unaware of. I t is higher in frequency and sometimes built into the way we think, so much so, that we don’t even realize it’s discrimination! Bias can be conscious or unconscious. Interestingly enough, conscious forms of bias tend to be seen less in modern day life. For example, sixty or so years a...