Let me tell you a story about a shy, little girl.\u00a0 She happened to be part of a family that a lot of people knew and sometimes put on a pedestal.\u00a0 They were talented and outgoing.\u00a0 This little girl did not want any attention, she just wanted to live her life.\u00a0 In her sophomore year of high school, she was called into the guidance office much to her chagrin.\u00a0 She was told she was chosen to be the school\u2019s representative to a leadership seminar in the state\u2019s capital. What?\u00a0 Her?\u00a0 Well, okay.\u00a0 This is where it all awoke for her.\u00a0 She is a leader.<\/p>\n
As time went on and she was attending church, she kept getting chosen to lead the youth group, to work out her faith and her leadership\u2026she noted\u2026where are the women leaders? By sheer experience, this girl was breaking free of her own unconscious bias of women don\u2019t lead, especially in the church. \u00a0It started to unravel for her.<\/p>\n
In Pragya Agarwal\u2019s book SWAY: Unravelling unconscious bias, <\/em>Pragya begins her story in much the same way, recognizing that because she was a girl there were things she couldn\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is unconscious bias? Unconscious (or implicit) bias is\u00a0a term that describes the associations we hold, outside our conscious awareness and control.\u00a0 Unconscious bias affects everyone. Unconscious bias is triggered by our brain automatically making quick judgments and assessments.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0Agarwal notes \u201cNot all bias is implicit\u201d[2]<\/a>, she goes on to note \u201cUnconscious bias does not explain all prejudice and discrimination. And there is a real danger of unconscious bias being reduced to a \u2018trend\u2019 or a \u2018fluff word\u2019 and being used to excuse all sorts of discriminatory behaviour.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 So the question is, how do we help ourselves out of our own unconscious biases?\u00a0 Can we be conscious of what is unconscious?\u00a0 Probably so, but what we need to be even more aware of is that we have to admit we were wrong in our thinking!\u00a0 \u201cWhen we discover that we have been wrong, we say that we were under an illusion, <\/em>and when we no longer believe in something, we say that we are disillusioned. <\/em>People who possess the truth are perceptive, insightful, observant, illuminated, enlightened, and visionary;<\/em> by contrast, the ignorant are in the dark.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n As you have probably surmised, this little girl at the beginning of the story was me.\u00a0 I came into my vocational call as a leader and called into ministry in a denomination that did not support women in leadership.\u00a0 Throughout college at a Christian University, I continued to strive for and get every leadership position I went for: tried out of for the cheer team and was made captain in a week, became a Resident Assistant, Chair of the Homecoming Committee, etc.\u2026 As I continued on in these leadership roles I had to reconcile my childhood faith.\u00a0 I had to make the courageous decision that I was not going to be within this denomination.\u00a0 Some are called to make changes from within and some need to leave. I left.<\/p>\n What gave me this courage?\u00a0 This story in the bible:<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise. And they remembered his words and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. \u00a0\u00a0Luke 24-5-9.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n The very first people to declare the Gospel that Jesus is Risen were women!\u00a0 They were the first gospel preachers!\u00a0 I am not making the declaration that my denomination had implicit bias (although that may how the church has not adapted to new ways of understanding scripture) but to \u201csee\u201d or become conscious of this story with a whole new way of understanding this part of the Easter story, was what I needed to leave.\u00a0 I was biased against myself!<\/p>\n While Agarwal does a very in depth and thorough background of how Unconscious or implicit bias works and puts many wonderful examples of implicit bias, she did not leave room in her book on how to address fixing or becoming aware of this bias.\u00a0 While unravelling this is part of waking up to our own biases.\u00a0 In her epilogue, called De-Biasing 101, Agarwal gives 4 pages to this topic.\u00a0 It feels unfinished to do so much unravelling and be left with a mess and to not have ways to re-weave our conscious into something productive for our own bias and for those around us.<\/p>\n If I had more time to research, I\u2019d like to find more books on ways to wake us up from our own biases, and how to teach implicit bias.\u00a0 Perhaps this author could write a series where she unravels it in this book, how to move through this new threshold of di-biasing and then how to move into creating new generations who are aware of unconscious bias from the get-go?\u00a0 Is this wishful thinking?\u00a0 Another NPO for a wicked problem? How to educate and train on implicit bias?<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> https:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/equality\/resources\/unconscious-bias\/#:~:text=What%20is%20unconscious%20bias%3F,making%20quick%20judgments%20and%20assessments.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Agarwal, Pragya. SWAY:\u00a0 Unravelling unconscious bias. <\/em>(London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020) 11.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Agarwal, 11<\/p>\n