Two months ago, we sold our washer and dryer online and I watched as the customer backed into our driveway. When he stopped, I walked outside to greet him. I waved hello and the first words out of his mouth were, \u201cDo you live here?\u201d Honestly, I thought that was a foolish question. After a few minutes of conversation, I found out this man was a hard-working Korean American. His words brought back a memory.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, we decided to sell one of our vehicles to a college student in our church. His dad, a friend and elder in our church wanted to look at it first. So, I gave him the address and he came right over. As soon as he stepped into our house, his eyes quickly looked into the foyer, dining and living room and he said, \u201cWow, this is a nice house, do you live here, or do you rent?\u201d I was shocked by his question, and I momentarily let it go.<\/p>\n
After talking with my family, we all agreed I should say something to my good buddy about his comment. I did have that conversation with my buddy and explained to him, I was hurt by his comment and asked him, \u201cHave you ever gone into a white person\u2019s home and said, Nice home, do you live here, or do you rent? Your comment came across like you would not expect a black person to have a nice home. Your comment hurt BUT I do not believe you are racist, but do you think subconsciously something is there?\u201d My good buddy deeply apologized and agreed with me about how hurtful that comment must have felt. He did not pick up on how his words were possibly bias until I brought it to his attention. He was totally oblivious to his thought process. This is why the book, Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias<\/em> by Dr. Pragya Agarwal was such a blessing this week.<\/p>\n In her book she primarily looks at examples where a \u201cbias is misdirected and creates prejudice and discriminatory behavior through a negative association with a certain group or community.\u201d1 <\/sup>A few pages later she writes, \u201cprejudices are emotional biases that can lead to discrimination and can alter our instincts about people and situations.\u201d2 <\/sup>Agarwal does an excellent job explaining unconscious bias, which is also called implicit bias. This refers to the attitudes or stereotypes people hold deep in the unconscious part of their brains. These biases exist outside of our control, and they may not match how you feel when you give conscious thought to them. For example, like my good buddy from church. Before I return to my friend, I want to say I enjoyed reading this book because she shows how these implicit biases affect every area of life including race, age, sexuality, gender, and even someone\u2019s appearance. Now, back to my good friend.<\/p>\n My friend\u2019s bias reminded me of what Bobby Duffy wrote in his book, Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything, <\/em>\u201cDelusions and misperceptions, are a positive misunderstanding of reality.\u201d3 <\/sup>He adds, \u201cour delusions are often biased in particular directions, because our emotional responses influence our perceptions of reality.\u201d4 <\/sup>Sways book is about how our brains make decisions based upon our previous experiences and this is why it is easy to have delusions and misperceptions. Kathryn Schulz adds to this premise in her book, Being Wrong<\/em>, \u201cIf our current mistakes are necessarily invisible to us, our past errors have an oddly slippery status as well.\u201d5 <\/sup>This means we all have unconscious biases, we have always had them, and we always will have them. Like my good buddy he made a decision influenced by false beliefs or assumptions. Sometimes this is called stereotyping.<\/p>\n Sway talks about stereotypes by emphasizing, \u201cWhen there is uncertainty and ambiguity then these biases will be expressed even when there is no real threat or danger.\u201d6 <\/sup>This is why later on in her book, she writes, \u201cRacial discrimination emerges from stereotypes.\u201d7 <\/sup>Daniel Lieberman speaks of this in his book, Spellbound<\/em>, \u201chuman behavior arises from the combination of conscious deliberation and unconscious influence.\u201d8 <\/sup>My dear friend consciously made a statement that was actually influenced by his unconscious and he had no idea the weight of his comment. He is and has been a leader in our church. With this in mind I felt a responsibility to disciple him in relating to people of color. I agree with Agarwal, that \u201cunconscious biases are even more pervasive than we thought.\u201d9 <\/sup>I would have never thought my friend would make that statement and it only proves we all have room to grow. But maybe my response said more about me than him. It\u2019s human to be hurt or offended by a friend\u2019s statement. My response, my feelings, me engagement with family, my thoughts before bed, my thoughts when I saw him the next day in church, my feelings toward the leadership and so on all say something about my emotional intelligence. Maybe God was testing me to see how graceful I would respond. Maybe he wasn\u2019t testing me. I don\u2019t know. But no matter what I had to exercise my leadership and walk with my friend.<\/p>\n As I met with my buddy, I told him when I meet Asian people I automatically think, \u201cIf you\u2019re Asian, you\u2019re intelligent.\u201d We all have prejudices we need to work through. I asked him to go deep inside himself to see where that comment really came from. I gave him grace to explore his past, upbringing, and life experiences, and it strengthened our relationship so much, that in two months I am going to ask him to join our Board of Directors for our counseling center.<\/p>\n In conclusion, my friend\u2019s comment made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy. I also wanted to let it pass or just ride my feelings out because I knew I would eventually \u201cget over it.\u201d But that\u2019s not leadership. That\u2019s not being a RARE leader or a well differentiated leader. Our conversation not only strengthened our relationship, but it strengthened our families and ultimately our church. It helped our church leaders realize we all have negative subconscious thoughts, and the result was the establishment of our Embrace Unity Team, a multiethnic group committed to racial reconciliation\/unity in our church. That\u2019s one way to SWAY in the right direction.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two months ago, we sold our washer and dryer online and I watched as the customer backed into our driveway. When he stopped, I walked outside to greet him. I waved hello and the first words out of his mouth were, \u201cDo you live here?\u201d Honestly, I thought that was a foolish question. After a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"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":[2310],"tags":[3122],"class_list":["post-36628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-agarwal-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36628","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\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36629,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36628\/revisions\/36629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n