If you’ve followed my writing much over the past few years, you’ll know that a big push of mine has been to see situations from all sides and remove as much bias as possible from my thinking. I feel I’m making solid improvements, but it’s not the kind of journey that you ever finish — you simply need to keep working hard to get better and better.
In his book “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man“, author Emmanuel Acho sums it up like this:
“Everyone, and I mean everyone, has biases. It’s the job of empathetic and considerate people not to let them dictate actions that harm others.”
I agree with him. There are certainly some people that are much more heavily biased than others, but we all have them.
If you want to work to be a more empathetic and considerate person, as I think we all should, it’s important to realize that you indeed have biases and then work to minimize them and make sure you’re not inflicting harm on others as a result of them.
You’ll never completely get rid of them, but you can be self-aware enough to make sure they’re not causing you to take actions that hurt others.
Many years ago I served on a grand jury. If you’ve never had that experience, and I don’t wish it on anyone, I don’t think you can understand how much that biased me. However, I still think that I can be objective. I’d actually like to serve on a regular jury, but one of the qualifying questions is, roughly, do you have any biases? So … I’m always dismissed. How could anyone ever say ‘no’ to that question?
I’ve never been on one, and you make me thankful for that.
That’s a great question about the question; if answered honestly, everyone has biases and therefore no one is fit to serve on a jury.