Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

The brain is not a hardwired machine. It’s a malleable organ that responds to the environments we are placed in and the challenges we face.

Once we’ve decided on the category, our perceptual reality adjusts to suit the label we’ve settled on.

Bias, even when we are not conscious of it, has consequences that we need to understand and mitigate. The stereotypic associations we carry in our heads can affect what we perceive, how we think, and the actions we take.

When people focus on not seeing color, they may also fail to see discrimination.

Young people need to understand the history that created structural barriers to integration and equity.

‘You’re right. We’ve done a terrible job. We need to do better.’

Moving forward requires continued vigilance. It requires us to constantly attend to who we are, how we got that way, and all the selves we have the capacity to be.

But you can condemn what people say without condemning their legal right to say it.

So, teaching and learning about bias is a balancing act that has to be expertly calibrated to have the appropriate impact.

The narratives that prop up inequality can help us to live less troubled in a troubling world. But they also narrow our vision and strand “others” on the wrong side of the opportunity divide. When our comfort comes at their expense, that’s a social cost that ultimately shortchanges everyone.

We all have the capacity to make change—within ourselves, in the world, and in our relationship to that world.

So many people among us are probing, reaching, searching to do good and to be good in the best way they know how. And there is hope in the sheer act of reflection. This is where the power lies and how the process starts.