Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.

ohr

Office of Human Rights
 

DC Agency Top Menu

-A +A
Bookmark and Share

#BeatBias Resolution Challenge: Step 1

#BeatBias Resolution Challenge

Visit the #BeatBias Resolution homepage to view all the steps released so far. 

Step 1: No offense, but you have unconscious bias, and so do we.

Unconscious bias is when our mind uses stereotypes and previous experiences to quickly analyze a person or situation, without us even realizing it. Often times, this “shortcut” our mind makes ends up influencing the way we interact with a person or engage in a situation. These stereotypes come from all sorts of places – the media, our parents, our friend group, our neighborhood – yet they don’t necessarily have to be stereotypes that we believe when we consciously think about them.

However, the reality is, we all have unconscious bias. Whether you are business person or a civil rights leader, from New York City or Alabama, a Democrat or a Republican: you have unconscious bias. Acknowledging you have it, and understanding what it looks like, is an important first step to ensuring you prevent your bias from influencing how you treat others.

And we are here to help. Each day for the next eight days, we will release a new step to help you better understand unconscious bias. Each step will include an action item or two. Be sure to complete each action item before moving to the new step. Thanks for joining us as we work to #BeatBias!

Today’s Action Item

  • Try this fast thought experiment: Think about a time you made assumptions about a person based on their appearance, and then turned out to be wrong. Did you mistakenly believe a customer at the grocery store actually worked there? Were you surprised a person in a hoodie had a law degree? Did you assume you knew what neighborhood someone lived in and was wrong?

We’ll dig into this more in later steps, but that’s enough for today. Come check out step 2 tomorrow at 10am.