Unconscious Bias

This is not a transformation but a transformation wanting to happen.  A transformation in the making.

It started with my observation of Sarah at the retreat at Zion National park. Sarah quite overweight and in charge of lighting the candle at the beginning of meditation while the rest of us sit and watch. This ritual of candle lighting and bowing happened three or four times a day for seven days.  I watched her and I loved her, and I loved her reverence for the ritual, not in a hurry. Each time she invited someone to light the candle and bow towards the altar with her. Followed with a bow towards each other.  I did this with her a couple of times.  As I sat and watched this same ritual over and over again continuing to be fascinated with the process and be fascinated with the curves and the power of her body as she bowed.  The power of her owning her body just as it is.

I wanted to write about it and give it to her including noticing her big stomach and its curves and also noticing that noticing her big stomach seemed wrong although unavoidable.

I’ve been thinking about the things that are there but not to be spoken about. Like someone in a wheelchair or blind,  don’t speak about it.  And then there is a man’s scraggly beard or pompadour that distracts me but don’t speak about it or if I do speak about it why is it any of my business.

Then there are tattoos or talking with your mouth full or leaning over your food with your left arm on the table or  not speaking up so that the whole table can hear you or at least I can hear you.

And then there’s all that I do as a white person that I am unconscious of that has an impact or is noticed by a black person, rather a person of color. Diana and I debriefed my Thanksgiving dinner party and the times of whiteness. And lack of listening to her or thinking we know what she’s talking about. We don’t know the black experience.

We don’t know the young person‘s experience and act like we do because we were young once but we’re not young now.

I went to book reading on unconscious bias in the schools by a new colleague, Tracey Benson,  introduced to us by Kathy Minardi. He is a professor at UNCC.  Focus on race and culture and social justice and nonwhite culture, a former high school principal,  brilliant,  focused and disciplined in his field. 

At the book signing I said I think there’s unconscious bias everywhere not just white teachers towards black students, rather students of color. That I have unconscious bias and that he has unconscious bias about many things, and we don’t even know because it is unconscious. Then I told him that’s how we begin our work with executives, and they are at first offended and defensive but not for long because it is so obvious that they have a point of  view whether it is about someone’s hair, weight, or wheelchair.

You could have a room full of all white 50-year-old New York bankers and they would have an unconscious bias towards each other for the way they process ideas, or for the way they listen, or for how quick they are to get a joke or slow they are. He saw a new access for working with teachers who say they are not racist, or they defend the reason they call on the white students, it’s because blah blah blah.

So now I am still working on the essay about Sarah and lighting the candles and loving her just the way she is  and me just the way I am.