Confronting Our Implicit Biases
By Dr. Scott Gartlan, CRC Member
Below is an excerpt from an interview with CRC Executive Director Willie Ratchford by CRC member Dr. Scott Gartlan. This portion of the conversation focused on the impacts of implicit bias, where the CRC is going and where Mr. Ratchford sees real value for CRC in the future.
The CRC engages in civil rights work which has evolved over the years. The way we as a community deal with discrimination and adverse treatment of individuals due to their identity has also evolved and changed. Back in the 1960s, 70s, and early part of the 80s, as we addressed racism and discrimination, we spent a great deal of our time addressing people’s personal racism. However, over time we have come to understand racism and its impact in a different way.
Years ago, I believed most white people were racist. I’ve come to believe and realize, through my evolution, that most white people are not personally racist and that the discrimination in our communities doesn’t happen because of a person who carries individual prejudice or racist feelings. It happens because of the structures, the institutions, the systems and our history around race in this country. If you start a country off to include 356 years of special laws that were designed specifically to advantage white people and disadvantage people of color, 250 years of brutal and inhumane slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of separate but equal and 40 years of redlining — all of that becomes a part of the DNA of our country. It is who we are. This DNA is the foundation for the implicit and unconscious bias that runs rampant in America today. In other words, one does not have to be personally racist in order to enjoy the benefits of racism.
As a result, we have situations where one person might accuse another of being racist. The person being called out often denies it because deep in their heart they don’t see themselves that way and they really mean it. The problem with this is they may not understand where their accuser is coming from. The person who is making the accusation really doesn’t understand where the person they are accusing, may be coming from either. What may be happening here is unconscious or implicit bias. They may end up fighting and not understanding the reason they are fighting. If they would just have a conversation to try to understand where the other person is coming from, they might look at it differently.
The whole point here is that with implicit or unconscious bias, to treat people of color differently is so normal, so common, so much a part of our 400-year history and DNA that when you treat people that way you don’t know that you’ve done it to them. You just have no idea. All of us have biases regardless of our personal identity. ALL OF US HAVE IT! It is ok to have bias, however, we all have to work to better know our personal biases, so they don’t negatively impact our treatment of people who don’t look like us or because of a person’s identity.
In addressing racism and discrimination in our community, I am evolving to look at and address systemic racism, institutional racism, and structural racism. If I could wave a magic wand and every person in the United States of America instantly became an anti-racist and personal racism no longer existed, we would still be exactly where we are right now because the real problem of racism exists in our systems, our institutions our structures and our country’s DNA.
