Talking Bias

Understanding implicit bias can be an extremely difficult task for most people. It requires a degree of self-awareness and a willingness to admit that, sometimes, many of our daily interactions with other people are shaded by prejudice, even when we mean well. Nobody wants to own up to assuming that a person is less intelligent because of their hair color, or that they're less capable because of their age, or that they're more dangerous because of their skin color.

But, the reality is that we all have our own biases that need to be acknowledged, unpacked, and unlearned.

As a young(ish) black male, I've come face-to-face with race-based bias more often than I could even attempt to quantify. It's not uncommon for interactions fueled by biases to result in viral videos and attention-grabbing headlines. It's more common, however, for them to be felt in the tiny, seemingly harmless, micro-aggressions that members of minority groups encounter throughout everyday life.

No person of color is a stranger to moments like having your name intentionally mispronounced because it's slightly less common than "John." (Seriously, if you can pronounce Polish last names where "-dzki" is a common suffix, you can figure out "Jamel" without making a show of it.) Encountering bias is a part of life for many of us, and navigating it eventually becomes second nature.

Sifting my thoughts on this topic caused me to look at my own prejudices. What I found was that, in a strange way, being aware of how much of a role implicit bias and micro-aggressions play in my day-to-day interactions has led to me forming biases of my own as a bit of a defense mechanism.

Simply put, I assign biases to certain groups of people before I even give them a chance to exhibit them. When I see a police officer, I expect them to single me out and treat me unfairly. When I speak to "baby boomers," I expect my life experiences to be minimized and written off as an unmotivated millennial. When I meet a vegan, I expect them to preach on the health benefits of removing delicious fast-food double cheeseburgers from my diet.

So what can we do about it?

While it's probably impossible to rid yourself of all biases, what we can do is limit the amount of control they have over our actions. In order to accomplish this, we must acknowledge our prejudices and then work to make sure our interactions are not governed by them.

As difficult as it may be to admit it, this blog might be about you. Do you show favoritism or prejudice based on snap judgments of people you've just met? Do you harbor damaging opinions about other people based on insufficient data and assumptions you've adopted along the way? I've taken a long look in the mirror and named some of my biases.

Can you name some of yours?

Written by Justin Fantroy

Prejudice is difficult to overcome, especially if we don't see it in ourselves. What are yours?

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Jesus and Battle Scars

Years ago, when I was a young, naïve Christian teenager, I found myself in a lengthy discussion about faith with a non-Christian classmate. This particular classmate, who eventually became a very good friend, asked a lot of challenging questions about God, Jesus, and the Christian faith. By the end of the conversation, I came to the conclusion that he just thought too much to believe in the Christian faith.

Now the adult me asks, "Really? He thought too much?"

When I take an honest look at the Christian faith, the faith into which I was born and the faith into which I am now raising my children, there is an understanding that yes, it is a religious faith that takes a tremendous amount of belief. After all, to be a Christian is to believe that the historical man Jesus, a man revered by individuals from many different religious faiths, was not just a real man who lived and breathed and walked on earth, but God Himself.

For some, just believing that God exists is a stretch, and I get that—I really do. I also get how hard it is to add to that belief by saying that a historical figure is God in human form. After all, can't Christians just be happy believing Jesus was a good, wise man who said good things and taught us how to love each other and live our best possible life?

No.

Because I know a lot of good people.

I know a lot of wise people.

I know a lot of smart people.

And they may be really good people to know and have as friends, but I believe we humans need so much more.

After years of friendships and relationships with people of different faiths, I have matured in my understanding that thinking too much isn't the problem. The problem is in starting with the wrong questions and sometimes in seeking the wrong answers. As a teenager, I didn't know how to answer the questions I was asked because for the first time, I needed to challenge my own beliefs and search for hard answers.

For an individual of any faith, it is a scary odyssey because one never knows where they will end up. As one who loves reading almost anything and who is hungry for knowledge, it is also a daunting task. It is a task that has taken me through the Bible, Christian writers of different denominations, and non-Christian writers who challenge my view of the world, forcing me to question and defend beliefs I have accepted as true for my entire life. And 20 years later I'm back where I started, my feet firmly planted in the Christian faith, but this time with battle scars affirming my belief in Jesus Christ as God.

I know some people look at Christians as a group of gullible simpletons willing to believe in fairy tales, but some of the smartest, most well-read people I know are Christians, and yes, they believe that Jesus is God. Yes, they believe the Bible. And yes, they also believe in science and history.

Many of my fellow Christians don't believe in Jesus' divinity because they are willing to ignore everything else that they know and everything else that they have read. They believe it because to not believe it is to deny the power of God and the importance of God coming down to earth to save a world full of lost people.

Jesus left the glory of heaven to become a man. He experienced the physical, emotional, and mental pains of humanity before He sacrificed Himself on a cross. I can experience the struggles of my own life and look at Jesus and know that He gets it. I don't just have His sympathy; I have His empathy.

Jesus didn't just show us how to live and love, He showed us just how broken we are. He hung out with "sinners" because they were the ones most aware of their brokenness. Unlike the church leaders of the day, they were not looking for a political savior and affirmation that they were doing the right thing; they longed for Someone who would rescue them from themselves. And Jesus understood that brokenness because He also suffered intense emotional and physical pain. He listened to the pain of those around Him, healing the bodies and souls of those who reached out to Him for help.

But all of that is only significant if Jesus is God. All of that only matters if Jesus is something greater than my humanity. And all of that only matters for me—if I believe it.

Written by Sarah Styf

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