{"id":28344,"date":"2022-03-09T19:31:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T03:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=28344"},"modified":"2022-03-09T19:31:12","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T03:31:12","slug":"keep-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/keep-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fascinating read! Named as one of the 100 most influential women in the UK nonprofit sector, Dr. Pragya Agarwal lives and works in the UK as a behavioral scientist, author, consultant, and speaker. In her book, Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, <\/em>Agarwal utilizes the field of social science to help readers understand how our unconscious biases affect the way we perceive and engage the world. Such biases may be influenced by gender, ethnicity, age, accent, looks, and even height. Opposed to explicit biases, these unintentional (or implicit) biases are those stereotypes we hold toward a particular people without being consciously aware of them. Agarwal\u2019s bold statement is that these biases are not limited to the ignorant or blatant racist, but rather, biases impact us all to one degree or another. She writes:<\/p>\n

Each of us form and carry unconscious biases of some sort. It\u2019s not only the behavior of bigoted, racist or sexist people but of everyone, including you and me. So really the answer is to go to the roots, to understand the processes that shape us, to be aware, to acknowledge that we are all biased \u2013 to a certain degree \u2013 and that we all discriminate.[1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Diving into the complexities of social science, psychology, and neuroscience, the purpose of Agarwal\u2019s writing is simple: to learn from the past as we look toward the future to combat the biases that reinforce \u201cthe systemic biases that are entrenched in our society.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

For this essay, I could not help but think back to 2016 and the political campaign for the governor of Montana. While the conflict in Syria had been brewing since 2011, it was not until the fall of 2015 that the US was in shock and horror by the image of Alan, the three-year-old Syrian boy found dead on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.[3]<\/a> The image of Alan went viral and humanized the suffering of Syrians. No longer could the conflict be ignored, even in Billings, Montana. By the end of 2016, 12 million Syrians were forcibly displaced, making this one of the worst humanitarian events of its time.[4]<\/a> Around this same period, several concerned followers of Jesus and myself began to advocate for the cause of refugees and ways to provide a viable relief. However, we were met with great resistance as the only two states in the US without a formal refugee resettlement office (thus, the pathway to resettle refugees) were Wyoming, the state where I was born and raised, and Montana, my home since 2009. Rolling into 2016, what hope we had to advocate for a formal refugee resettlement process quickly dissipated as rhetoric such as this was used to politicize the battle for power between the conservatives and liberals:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sadly, the conservative right, many of whom are dear brothers and sisters in Christ whom I love, had embraced the notion that Muslims were unsafe and that by opening our borders to welcome these refugees and strangers, Montana would be overrun. Fear had taken hold, and now it was seen as an opportunity to sway a political situation. Agarwal writes, \u201cOnce these stereotypes have been developed, it is easier to maintain them than to break them.\u201d[5]<\/a> She goes on to say that when these stereotypes infiltrate media, it \u201cquickly dehumanises individuals, makes whole groups homogenous, gives us permission to exercise our biases, and normalises such labels.\u201d[6]<\/a> Sadly, these unfounded implicit biases had taken root in Montana and plagued Christian thinking. Our fight to advocate and awaken the Church to our Biblical call to care for the orphan and stranger was put on hold, or so it seemed.<\/p>\n

The following year, the US inaugurated our 45th<\/sup> President, who was known for many things, but one of them was his firm stance in opposition to refugee resettlement. Realizing that our hope to resettle refugees in Montana would require great perseverance, as a group of faith leaders, we continued the conversation by hosting Perspectives<\/a>, a phenomenal 15-week course on God\u2019s heart for the nations, collecting refugee kits to be delivered to nearby cities, leading exposure trips to Muslim nations, and hosting Q&A\u2019s for churches, leaders, and community members regarding the refugee resettlement process. Reading Sway<\/em>, I realized we were paving pathways to deal with our biases. Agarwal writes,<\/p>\n

We need to consciously take the time to counteract these stereotypes and the environmental messages that we absorb. We need time, intention and adequate cognitive capacity and resources to be aware of the activation of stereotypes and then to significantly reduce the application of any stereotypical beliefs on others around us.[7]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amazingly, the process is working! In October, we learned of a new doorway to resettle Afghan evacuees through a program called Sponsor Circles<\/a>. Sparing many details, our faith community rallied together across denominational lines to apply to receive Afghan evacuees and more or less function as a resettlement agency. Without any government help or assistance, this process included securing the needed finances to pay for housing, clothes, food, and living expenses; volunteers to assist with ESL, getting children enrolled in school, finding jobs; and on and on the list of needs goes. In the last two months, the Billings community has been further enriched by adding two Afghan families, one family of five and another of seven. Additionally, because our community demonstrated goodwill toward our displaced friends, we are in conversations with a refugee resettlement agency looking to expand into Billings! The Lord is good. It has been a long and laborious road, but I have witnessed biases fall away as Montanans warmly welcome our foreign neighbors in the name of Christ.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Pragya Agarwal, Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias<\/em>, 2021, 22.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 407.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u201cDeath of Alan Kurdi,\u201d Wikipedia<\/em>, March 1, 2022, accessed March 8, 2022, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/index.php?title=Death_of_Alan_Kurdi&oldid=1074721846.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> \u201cUNHCR Global Trends – -Forced Displacement in 2016,\u201d accessed March 9, 2022, https:\/\/www.unhcr.org\/globaltrends2016\/.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Agarwal, Sway<\/em>, 77.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 121.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 148.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating read! Named as one of the 100 most influential women in the UK nonprofit sector, Dr. Pragya Agarwal lives and works in the UK as a behavioral scientist, author, consultant, and speaker. In her book, Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, Agarwal utilizes the field of social science to help readers understand how our unconscious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2244,2245],"class_list":["post-28344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agarwal","tag-sway","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28347,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344\/revisions\/28347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}