Bringing awareness to implicit bias

Article content

Being an author and lifelong bookworm, you might be surprised to learn I rarely read fiction these days. Back when I did, it wasn’t just for the gripping plot, engaging characters, or purple prose. To be honest, the well-researched historical fiction and classics I favoured helped fill gaping holes in my history learning at school.

Knowledge in many areas, including science and history, has taken significant steps forward since I graduated and reading current nonfiction continues to help satisfy my love of learning.

On one of many trips this summer to my local library, which thankfully is within walking distance, I discovered a delightfully refreshing new-to-me author and psychotherapist, Frank De La Rosa. So much in his book Don’t Tell Me to Relax resonated with me, neither time nor space would allow me to do it justice. I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy and finding out for yourself.

His chapter on implicit bias provides some particularly meaty food for thought. While many of us – I hope most if not all – would not consider ourselves to be prejudiced against specific demographics, De La Rosa explains how it is impossible to live in a structurally biased society without internalizing the stereotypes we encounter, regardless of our declared beliefs.

Prevalent supremacy notions in our culture that we are all exposed to include white, male, gender-normative, able-bodied, youth, conventional beauty, anti-fat, and neuro-typical, he notes.

While his list starts out with a couple of big red flag biases that tend to receive a lot of attention – and rightly so – I noticed he included some other harmful prejudices that typically receive less attention, such as ageism and ableism.

Have you noticed how ableism crops up everywhere in language and vocabulary? I have to wonder how ‘DISabled’, i.e. lack of ability, is any less demeaning than the now defunct ‘crippled’. It just feels DISrespectful to me as somebody with lifelong health challenges to imply that anyone is less than anyone else.

Physical environments, workplaces, and more, often reek of ableism. And as for the media, while ads these days tend to bend over backwards to include people of colour (and about time too), when was the last time you saw any differently abled people in mainstream advertising? At least TV shows and movies are trying to become a little more inclusive, often featuring neuro diverse people on the autism spectrum – think Sheldon, The Good Doctor, Extraordinary Attorney Woo – reflecting the ongoing increase in ASD. And then there’s Rebecca, the equally memorable kick-ass character with Down’s Syndrome in the Netflix series Never Have I Ever.

Ageism is equally egregious, but often more subtle. Microaggressions I’ve seen tend to feature assumptions about a person’s abilities based on their age, often around technology. I wonder what Bill Gates, born in 1955, would have to say about that?

I’ve noticed this widespread ‘ism’ tends to rear its ugly head in hiring practices, disrespectful languaging about and toward elders, and a growing trend we should all be concerned about: becoming invisible.

After experiencing this particular phenomenon, long-time Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert created a social media platform – Modern Prairie – specifically for other women who have also discovered that we tend to ‘disappear’ as we age.

While many people respect their elders and are grateful for them and all they have accomplished, it feels like our rapidly developing world has less and less time or value for seniors or the wealth of knowledge, wisdom and experience they hold.

Thank goodness there is hope. De La Rosa offers practical advice for mitigating unconscious bias, which includes developing awareness, letting go of guilt, and regularly spending time with people who are different from us. Even when that’s harder to do in person – during a pandemic, say – there’s always social media and good old-fashioned picking up the phone.

Brigitte Rivers is an author, artist, educator, Reiki Master and Advanced Teacher of Therapeutic Yoga who calls Carleton County.