I attended an eye-opening alumni panel at Princeton a few years ago. The topic was a social issue, and the two sides were articulate and animated. The one side that railed against familiar biases was itself biased toward institutional solutions. Governments and organizations like the United Nations, they assumed, can fix any problem. No thought was given to individuals or to social groupings; only to public education and government regulations supported by laws. One side may have been denying its biases, and the other side was ignorant of its own institutional bias. I learned more about bias than about the topic being discussed.
1. Three ways to identify and address bias: Principles: we can learn the nature of bias, the pitfalls of being biased and become self-aware of our own biases. Some people are biased against foreigners, and people in Ohio are especially known for their strong bias against Michigan. An effort to learn to identify bias will help us deliberately adopt a non-biased approach. Even organizations can establish safeguards against inappropriate questions on applications or interviews or evaluations. Principles fight all biases.
The Process: Another way to discover bias is to take a test, such as the one Harvard provides, as a basis for anti-bias training. This is often based on general areas of bias, such as those related to social groups or the workplace. This process helps facilitate specific correction. People can learn to demonstrate improvement in actions and decisions compared to a baseline. This is almost principled, but it is a method.
The list: The currently popular way to address bias is to list a dozen or more specific biases common to uninformed, backward, or racist people, with the purpose of training them so they will adopt a dozen better standards against bias. This runs the risk of leading people to avoid thinking about bias in favor of adhering to a list of rules. Conforming to a fixed standard has its place, but it is not a way to correct a bias in attitude that can be healed for good. This kind of bias training is suitable for ‘education camps.’
2. Three ways to identify and address racism with antiracism: Principles: One way to look at anti-racism is through the perspective of MLK, who wanted the issue of race reduced to the level of one’s height, eye color, or other secondary personal traits. The Process: A second kind of anti-racism identifies and resists every situation or person where race or racism becomes a factor. This requires a level of sensitivity that can come from education and conversations and reflection. Once we learn a method, we can function better.
The List: The currently popular kind of anti-racism involves making decisions consciously based on race. If a racist makes bad decisions about race, then an anti-racist makes good decisions based on race. This leads to lists that can be taught. However, both the racist and anti-racist make decisions ‘based on race.’ If so, anti-racism is just a specific category of racism. Ibram Kendi, in his 2019 book, How to Be an Anti-Racist, defines racism as a combination of policies and ideas that produce and normalize racial inequities. In other words, to be anti-racist involves removing institutional rules or attitudes that lead to the statistical disparities in outcomes. This approach lists social outcomes that statistically indicate harm to people, yet operate in a realm nearly the opposite of MLK’s focus on principled anti-discrimination.
To de-escalate the current rhetoric and yet to acknowledge the realities of the lingering racism in society and our social structures, it is important to learn the principles of bias and race and to avoid imposing a list. When I first became a Christian, I was confronted with what seemed like an endless list of requirements, including a certain view of God’s will, of churches, of leaders, of activities, of language, and of behaviors. I see this same rigidity emerging in the similarly passionate certainties about politics, which seem to be held with the same certainty as religion. As I think of the past, I dread the thought of the heavy-handedness that would have been prevalent at an anti-religious-bias seminar led by those old and sincere, but misguided list makers.