If you’re human, you have unconscious biases. Ferreting those out isn’t just the right thing to do to make the world a better place for your fellow humans, it also opens up your world and makes it richer.
It’s not easy, but human-ing rarely is.
I have some pretty strong opinions about equality and justice and the lack of those in the world… that doesn’t mean I don’t have unconscious bias–and it’s solely my job to figure that out and fix it.
A SMALL EXAMPLE
A while ago, I noticed that a lot of the memes I was sharing were men. Now I’m an avowed feminist, so what-the-heck? Well… there’s a lot to unpack there, but the geeky memes of characters I liked were disproportionately men because men are disproportionately geeky characters in media. So… ahem. I made a conscious effort to seek out memes that represented women. Then my lack of people-of-color-in-memes became obvious, so I worked on fixing that. Now I’m conscious of memes that might exaggerate POC for comical effect, ie subtly play into racial stereotypes. Ditto female stereotypes (although I spot those more easily). And male ones. Etc etc.
It’s hard work to ferret out your own biases but my world (and my life) is richer for it. Put in the work to understand the water/culture you swim in–it’s worth it… and the only way we move forward as a people.