school working with the teacher I was
impressed his content knowledge was
solid and so is his pedagogy there was
just one thing that caught me off-guard
he singled out the only black male in
the class for misbehavior even though
this child’s behavior was in line with
everyone else’s I couldn’t help but
wonder what made this what made them
decide to single out this child the
teacher even asked me to follow the
child out of the classroom because he
can’t be trusted well I was curious how
bad could this child be so I followed
him in the hallway another adult stopped
to shout at the child remember this is a
break not a vacation when I caught up
with the child I found him in the
bathroom
picking up wet paper towels off the
floor he just looked at me shook his
head and said the janitors have too much
to do already it’s quite the contrast
isn’t it the suspicion of the adults
versus the empathy of this child now
I’ve been in the field of Education for
years now first as a classroom teacher
and then after getting my MBA as a
corporate trainer and I’m still amazed
at the impact of teachers on students
early on in my own career I didn’t
understand the impact I could have on
others unfortunately this is all too
common not just in education but in all
aspects of life in this instance I
couldn’t help but wonder what impact
these adults were having on how the
child perceived himself what made these
adults single out this black child from
his white peers were they even aware
they were treating him differently maybe
you can think of your own story of bias
regarding race age gender or some other
way we classify one another maybe the
people in your stories didn’t consider
themselves biased either
in these stories there seems to be a
disconnect between how people think and
how they act where does this disconnect
come from comes from the difference
between our conscious thinking and our
unconscious thinking our conscious
thoughts are the ones we’re aware of our
unconscious thoughts are the ones we
don’t even know we have like an iceberg
we have large parts of our mind that are
hidden from sight or unconscious because
we don’t even know we have these
thoughts we act on them automatically
sometimes that’s helpful they can serve
as mental shortcuts for us
for instance my thoughts about driving
or unconscious because I’ve done it so
often when I come to a red light I don’t
have to consciously deliberate about
whether to stop I just put my foot on
the brake sometimes though these
unconscious thoughts can lead to
negative actions when we apply our
unconscious thinking to dealing with
other people we can cause big problems
when our unconscious thoughts contain a
bias against a group we can treat some
people unfairly without even realizing
it we have lots of evidence these
unconscious biases are real and
widespread Harvard put together
something called Project implicit and
for the project they gathered responses
from millions of people through implicit
association test or I 80s these tests
are designed to uncover our automatic
automatic preferences for one group over
another the results of these validated
tests overwhelmingly
respondents prefer white over black thin
over fat straight over gay young over
old and abled over disabled people a big
problem is that many of us like to think
we’re free from bias on a conscious
level we may be once you go under our
unconscious minds though it’s a whole
different story there it’s not a
question of whether we have bias it’s a
question of which ones we have and how
strong they are
when I first started investigating
unconscious bias these I took these same
eye ets myself and I showed a strong
bias for white thin and straight people
no preference for young versus old
fortunately and a preference for abled
people all of us have these biases it’s
just a question of which ones we have
despite our best intentions in our
unconscious minds we believe some people
are inferior to others that’s a huge
reason why we still have so much
discrimination today
now these unconscious biases are not our
fault we didn’t choose to have them they
come from cultural conditioning
we’ve been socialized since birth by
authority figures in our lives as well
as the media
to view the world in a certain way this
includes how we view other people as
well as how we view ourselves so I’m not
here to talk about blame I am here to
talk about recognizing our biases and
doing something about them because they
hurt all of us we can see an example of
the damage done in hiring practices the
University of Chicago Business School
sent out resumes to employers that were
identical except for the names some
resumes had white names like Greg and
Emily others had black names like
Lakeisha and Jamal the resumes with
white names were 50% more likely to
receive a callback for an interview what
this study tells us is that unconscious
bias means people of color don’t get the
career opportunities they should
what’s more white people suffer as well
their organizations aren’t nearly as
strong as they could be because they’re
not hiring the best possible talent so
when we let unconscious bias make our
decisions for us all of us lose it’s
been pretty heavy so far let’s get to
the good news the good news is there’s
hope we can change too
searchers out of Central Michigan
University Adam Lukey and Brian Gibson
made a startling discovery
they found that a brief mindfulness
practice dramatically cut down on
unconscious bias they took a group of
white college students and gave them an
IAT to assess their bias for race and
age before they did that they split them
in two groups one group listened to a
history lesson the other group did a
brief mindfulness practice in this case
they’d spend ten minutes
focusing on the sensations in their
bodies nothing else so what the beating
of their heartfelt like and the breath
moving in and out of the body then all
the students took the IAT now the group
that listened to the history lesson the
control group performed as you might
expect a group of young white people to
perform they showed strong bias against
both the elderly and against people of
color the surprise was from the
mindfulness group they showed much less
bias regarding both race and age now
this might seem really surprising
because there doesn’t seem to be a
connection does there connection between
paying attention to the sensations in
your bodies and reducing your biases the
key to understanding the connection lies
in understanding what mindfulness itself
is so mindfulness is paying attention on
purpose with curiosity mindfulness is a
state of being in which we’re focusing
on something in the present moment and
we are choosing what to focus on rather
than reacting out of habit we’re also
taking our familiar way of viewing the
world through a lens of judgment and
evaluation and replacing it with a lens
of curiosity and openness there’s a
quote by Viktor Frankl Holocaust
survivor and psychiatrist that sheds
light on mindfulness he said between
stimulus and response there is a space
in that space is our power to choose our
response
normally we find that space to be
cramped because our instincts take over
and we end up with no space between that
stimulus or an event in our lives and
how we respond to it how we deal with
that event what mindfulness does is
create that space for us it does so by
inserting awareness awareness of our
automatic reactions as well as what’s
actually happening in the present moment
once we have this awareness we have the
ability to choose our response rather
than react out of habit another way to
think about mindfulness is to consider a
raging river
this river represents our thoughts and
emotions including our unconscious
biases normally we’re like the people on
the raft we just get carried along by
that surging current we’re not in
control we’re just trying to hang in
there what mindfulness does is remove us
from that raging river of our own
thoughts and emotions we become the calm
observer on the bank of the shore notice
we’re not stopping the river or even
necessarily slowing it down what we are
doing though is changing our
relationship with our thoughts and
emotions we’re creating space between us
and them so we can choose which thoughts
to follow which ones to let slide by the
students in the experiment who practice
mindfulness were able to remove
themselves from that raging river of
their own thoughts and emotions they
weren’t being tossed around by
undercurrents of unconscious bias from
there they had the choice of how to
respond in the present moment rather
than reacting out of habit more choice
meant less bias now the researchers saw
these results and they were surprised
practicing mindfulness for 10 minutes
had made a huge impact on people’s
beliefs but would it change behavior
would it change how we treat one another
so they set up another study to answer
that question in this one again with
white college students they split the
students in two groups one group had the
privilege of listening to someone
describe the countryside then the other
group
did a short mindfulness practice again
then all of them played what’s called
the trust game the trust game is
designed to find out who people will
trust with their money based on only
seeing headshots of other people the
purpose is to find out how much more
participants will trust members of one
race over another so the control group
gave 14% more of their money to white
people over black people again just
based on seeing headshots the
mindfulness group even mere 3% more
hardly any difference at all so the
first study showed us that mindfulness
can have a huge impact on belief this
study shows us that mindfulness can have
a huge impact on biased behavior what
these two studies together suggest is we
have a powerful way to overcome our most
ingrained biases biases that many of us
might not even want to admit we have one
thing to keep in mind though is that a
single dose of practicing mindfulness
won’t hear us the effects wear off so we
need to practice regularly now practice
itself is simple all you need to do is
focus on one thing in the present moment
say the sensations of your breathing or
the sounds you hear and then when your
mind wanders off which it will you bring
it back without judging yourself and
focus on this thing with curiosity again
simple concept kind of hard to execute
because our minds like to think they
like to rehash scenes from the past they
also like to create scenarios of what
could happen in the future our minds
also love to judge it’s our minds way of
creating order out of the world around
us but this is precisely what
perpetuates unconscious bias relying on
our conditioned way of viewing the world
so that’s why it’s both so important and
so difficult to practice mindfulness
to make it easier on ourselves let’s
practice with others just like physical
exercise is easier to do if you commit
to doing it with someone else
let’s practice mindfulness together some
schools and businesses are already doing
this they’re taking advantage of the
other benefits of mindfulness like
increased emotional intelligence stress
reduction greater focus let’s see all
businesses in schools start each and
every day with 10 minutes of mindfulness
that way they can get those benefits as
well as reducing biases we can also
practice at home with family and friends
now if we practice all of us benefit we
bring more awareness into our day-to-day
situations and we reduce our own biases
we can also recognize when other people
are getting pulled under by their own
unconscious biases from there we can
take action to fix those situations by
doing so we can leverage everyone’s full
potential we can make our companies more
productive hiring managers can look at
resumes with fresh eyes and hire the
best possible talent coworkers can
regard each other with more trust and
willingness to collaborate we can make
our schools more inclusive students can
look at those who are different from
them with curiosity rather than judgment
think about the child I mentioned
earlier consider how his experience
might be different if the adults around
and practice mindfulness how would the
charr child regard himself if the adults
around him
Unum as a person whose potential they
wanted to develop rather than a
what would that mean for the rest of us
if this child viewed himself as a valued
contributor to the world rather than a
threat to it down the road if the hiring
managers who look at his resume are
practicing mindfulness he’ll get the
career opportunities he deserves
in the meantime let’s all of us practice
mindfulness so we get the benefits here
and now the key is that we actually
practice and practice regularly Anton
Chekhov said it best knowledge is of no
value unless you put it into practice
let’s get started on this today the child’s future and ours depend on it