Unconscious bias
Fred Ashmore discusses a workshop on the challenges of diversity
In a well-filled George Fox Room at Friends House two months ago, London Quakers considered the notion of ‘unconscious bias’. ‘Unconscious bias? I’m not biased!’ you might say. Well, Friend, you may not be, but I am – all the time, whether I am aware of it or not. I expect the person digging up the road to be a male. I am a little surprised when the bus driver is a woman. That person talking with a rough South London accent surely isn’t a professor of economics? From below the conscious level, these attitudes reflect unconscious bias.
Carey Haslam, who facilitated this introduction to unconscious bias on 8 September, has decades of experience as a conflict consultant, and has worked with Friends in the past, including in my own Local Meeting, Kingston. She has also trained participants to understand and work with all the main aspects of diversity, such as ‘privilege’, ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘inclusion’.
These are challenging topics for most Quakers, coming, as we mostly do, from a rather uniform background. Few of us would welcome the suggestion that we are intentionally or wilfully monochrome and middle class. But Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has minuted quite clearly its perception of the need for Friends to understand diversity better and get to grips with it in an attempt to make our Society more inclusive. London Quakers are starting off by learning more about the components. To quote Alcoholics Anonymous: ‘Easy does it, but do it!’
It was particularly interesting that our valuable Friend Jocelyn Burnell had mentioned diversity in an interview on Radio 4 the previous day. Her words are worth capturing and remembering. She said: ‘I think diversity is very important. It’s increasingly recognised that the more diverse a group is, the more robust, the more flexible and the more successful it is.’
I really want our Society to be robust, flexible and successful.
The workshop took things at quite an easy pace, but, by the end, I felt that I had a much better understanding of the ways in which unconscious bias can arise, and the ways it can manifest and corrupt our witness to truth and equality.
It was consoling to be told that data floods into the brain at millions of items a second, but that it can think about only a handful of them. The rest of the information needs to be filtered, managed and parked for later consideration. Our mind is obliged to develop a set of quick rules for responding to stimuli, and some of these become unconscious biases.
If we Quakers are to move forward to become a more diverse Society, there is likely to be some transformation of attitudes and practices happening among us. I hope we will be able to handle our personal learning and growth without too much of the pain that sometimes accompanies transformation.
The Quaker way calls us to this search for learning and understanding. I read through Advices & queries seeking the one to express these ideas, and in the end came back to the wonderful Advice 1:
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.
This workshop greatly helped to prompt me to think about these difficult areas. There will be further workshops on ‘inclusion’ and ‘privilege’ next year to continue the learning process.
Comments
Are there any notes from this that could be shared?
By Julia Lim on 29th December 2018 - 9:04
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