Privileges — Part 2
Why we should check our biases
“What I learned from this — and the course too — is we can all benefit from checking our own biases.”
Recently at work I was enrolled in a training course where it’s quite thought provoking. The purpose of this course is to teach you about marginalized populations, in particular, a certain population in Canada. It speaks a lot to our privileges, what we — those who live in urban cities with access to life’s necessities — take for granted. It has reminded me on how privileged I am, to live in a home that has clean, running, drinkable water; running electricity; A/C and heat that can be set to any temperature I like; fast internet; and a family at home.
Throughout the course there are a lot discussions where you have to write journal entries and discuss amongst your classmates. The questions asked by the facilitators really makes you think about what bias, or lack-thereof, you have, and what others have encountered. One of the questions that my facilitator asked was, “have you ever encountered racism towards XX [the population we were learning about]”.
As I thought about whether I have encountered racism towards this population, it reminded me of a story that happened in undergrad.
I was living with my high school friend at the time, and one of our roommates was an international student. She had a thick accent. She dressed differently. At first glance, it would be evident she was not Canadian. One day, my high school friend and our roommate went to the mall, and after they came back my high school friend told me that while they were shopping inside a store, a sales associate approached them to sell a product. When the associate was talking to my high school friend, she spoke at a normal pace, but when it came to our roommate, she spoke much slower. It was clear that she was slowing down her English to her so that our roommate can understand better. She said she didn’t think our roommate noticed, but it was evident that she had slowed down to any native speaker. This was not her normal speaking pace.
The funny thing is, our roommate didn’t need anyone to slow down their English for her. She had no problems with comprehension. She didn’t ask her to slow down either. She wouldn’t have had any troubles understanding the associate 100%, or any other native speaker at a normal pace.
The university that I went to for my undergrad was located in a more sub-urban city in Canada. The demographics were far from a melting pot. I had heard of racist stories in the past as rumours, but I never thought this would happen to someone I know. How the associate reacted was biased. It was super prejudice.
Whether or not she was doing this on purpose is beyond this story, but what’s really interesting is, based on your past experiences, you can have a prejudice towards someone before you even meet them. This is no different than saying “asians are good at math”, or “foreigners are not good at English”.
These bias inside of us changes the way you react to others. It changes the way you respond to them. You already have set up a wall between you and that person, based on just how they look, speak, and talk.
