Implicit Bias

"Implicit bias" refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These attitudes can be based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, and appearance.

Although this social phenomenon has been around for over 20 years it gained popularity recently among the general public to understand racism, sexism and other forms of oppression.

Click here to check out a video by the New York Times about how implicit bias works.

An important piece about implicit bias is that our bias is directly connected to the words we use to communicate our beliefs to others. The language we use to describe others – based on their appearance, their race, their perceived social class etc. – can be directly tied to harmful biases we hold about others.

In other words, we may be using words that others perceive as racist or sexist and we may not even know it. We’re now going to dig into the “Power of Language”  

Activity:

Now that we've reviewed the definition and basic function of implicit bias, let's take a few minutes to analyze and discuss a few examples of how implicit bias comes out through different words.