Blindspot by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald
By LateVelvetTiger
This is such a great book, like seriously. A few years back I came across the implicit bias stuff, and I learned it was put together by Banaji and Greenwald. I read their book “Blind Spot” and it kind of messed with me in the best (and worst) way, because I realized I have racial biases that I didn’t want to admit. I think most of it is unconscious, but it still ends up affecting choices and decisions all over the place. One time someone asked me to think of ten influential Americans, and I made my list without even thinking. Then they asked how many of them were Black. My answer was 0, and I honestly hated that my first instinct was that. I could tell something was off, but I didn’t want to pretend it wasn’t. That day I changed things—on my computer I made a screensaver with 50 images of influential Black Americans, like Spike Lee, Donald Glover, Coretta Scott King, Frederick Douglass, all of that. I want to believe if I was asked the question again my list would be different, but I’m not fully sure. I guess the hidden stuff takes real work to undo, and I know I still have a long way to go. I don’t think the goal is to say “I’m not racist” like that shuts it down. It’s more like, yeah, I grew up in a society that put races in a hierarchy, so it makes sense I picked up biases along the way. I just have to keep trying to counter it by listening to people of color and believing them, even when it’s uncomfortable. I’ll probably mess up sometimes, but I don’t want to get defensive. I need to admit I’ve got work to do, because that’s the only way anything actually changes.