Biases

 I have biases. Like a lot of biases. And I don't realize them all the time. Most of the time they don't have huge impacts on my life but I feel like they affect the people around me. I ever used to notice the ways that I made snap assumptions about people without even knowing them but after learning more about race and culture I realized that I am just as bit judgmental as I am perceptive. Being the person that I am I try to make judgments to make sense of the world around me and I always thought my judgments were correct.



I think muscular guys are stupid, I hate most Frat guys, I think people who watch anime are weird, etc. I have always thought all of these things to be true, and to be honest these ideas have caused me to be needlessly hostile towards people I don't know. I have categorized people before I even knew them and I feel now more than ever that I should stop being so biased towards others for no reason. 



But how am I supposed to fight against it? I think there are classes I could take or videos I could watch to learn more about overcoming biases, but that is all conceptual thought. The best way in my opinion would be to expose myself to people different from me that fall into these groups that I have previously had disdain for. I don't have many black, transgender, gay, Greek life, or conservative friends. Since the culture and ideas surrounding those groups are more unfamiliar to me, I get uncomfortable when exposed to them. I think I need to become comfortable seeing and being around more people in these groups. This way, I can prove to myself that there is no reason to fear them.

I'm hoping that I can do these things and if I make mistakes those around me can correct my missteps along the way. I feel like society is already making steps in the right direction. With every woman that enters a STEM field, or every foreign individual that becomes a brilliant life-saving doctor, the stereotypes that only white men in certain jobs can be trusted slowly fade. Most advertising, movies and TV shows are starting to include more diversity in their cast and in the topics, stories, and cultures they portray.


My journey to exposing and smothering my biases could start anytime but I hope that after Covid-19 blows over and I can begin to meet new people and get involved in more social groups outside of class. I can begin to seek out those different from me to confront my biases and hopefully by the summer be better off than I am now.

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