Disrupting Unconscious Bias

Mindfulness separates the story we tell about what's happening from what's actually happening. We learn to identify the felt sense of bias as it arises, bring it into the light of awareness, and turn from it. In the process, we gradually move the line between what's unconscious and conscious to live more authentically.

Transcript

With a few full breaths,

Breathing deeply on the in-breath,

Filling your lung,

Relaxing on the out-breath.

Again,

Taking a full deep in-breath,

Feeling the chest expand and releasing.

One last full deep in-breath,

Filling the lung and at the top of the breath,

Holding the breath,

Feeling the contraction in the chest,

The tension there,

And then releasing,

Allowing the breath to be natural,

Smooth,

And check for where you feel the breath most predominant.

It might be in the rising and falling of the chest,

Or the breath as it passes through your nostrils,

Or the feeling of the whole body breathing.

There's nothing to do right now,

Only awareness of the breath as it enters and leaves the body.

And as you're ready,

You can come gently back,

Opening the eyes.

Conscious biases are products of the mind and are the story that we tell ourselves about reality,

Rather than our reality itself.

The writer Anais Nin said,

We do not see things as they are,

We see things as we are.

Mindfulness allows us to deconstruct this reality and make that separation between what's actually happening and the story that we tell ourselves about what's happening.

Here's an exercise I invite you to try.

You can take both hands and hold them in front of you,

The palms up facing you,

And look for a moment at what you see there.

Could be you've always liked the way that your hands look,

Or maybe you've thought that your fingers are a little short,

Or maybe you're taking a look at your nails and thinking maybe they need some work.

I look at my hands,

I see they're a little bit wrinkly,

I've got some dry skin,

Maybe they're not looking so good.

Just check to see whatever you find as you look at your hands right now.

And now you can just take your hands and relax them and lift them so palms are up and they're facing you,

And you can close your eyes for a moment.

Pause to sense,

Feel into your hands.

Might be there's some warmth or some tingling,

Whatever's there just note it.

Now you can just release the hands and open your eyes.

Can you sense the difference between your opinions and thoughts about your hands versus the experience,

The lived experience of the hands themselves?

One common definition of mindfulness is awareness that arises when we pay attention on purpose and non-judgmentally to what's happening in this moment.

Again,

Mindfulness is awareness that arises when we pay attention on purpose and non-judgmentally to what's happening in this moment.

It can be developed by dedicating a few minutes every day to mindfulness practice and also by just pausing during your day to notice what's happening.

Focusing on the body sensations or the breath is one starting place.

And it can teach us to separate what is actually happening from our thoughts and our opinions and our views about what's happening.

After I started meditating,

One thing I noticed was how often I would get stuck answering email.

I would notice these small things in emails.

It could be the tone that was used or it could be who was not copied on the email.

And I started to think is the author upset,

There's something unsaid,

Or if there's some other message under the surface.

And sometimes I would find that I would get lost after a minute or two of thinking about all of this,

What was happening in the email.

And with some mindfulness this allowed me to wake up and realize it's just an email and all I can do is read it on its face and answer it.

So these stories that we tell are not the thing itself,

In this case the email itself.

Joseph Goldstein said that if you want to understand your mind,

Sit down and observe your mind.

This is particularly true I find with other people.

The next time that you're out on the sidewalk you might notice as you see people approach you from the other direction,

What's going through your mind.

Often the mind is checking all the people for their height,

Their weight,

Their skin color,

Whether they're young,

Old,

Male,

Female.

They're basically sizing them up.

Is this friend?

Is this foe?

Is this part of my in group?

Is this my out group?

Are they attractive?

Are they unattractive?

Some of these judgments are obviously harmless,

But some of them are linked to biases which are quite harmful both to ourselves and others.

One teacher concluded through mindfulness you start to know yourself and the news is mostly bad.

Developing mindfulness and applying it to what happens starts to gradually move that line between what is conscious and unconscious in the mind.

Ruth King in her book Mindfulness of Race describes this process as messy at best,

But the famous psychologist Viktor Frankl explained that the liberating potential of this kind of practice,

And he observed this,

Between the stimulus and response there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response,

And in our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Again,

Between stimulus and response there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response,

And in our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Mindfulness opens up that space between the initial contact with experience,

Whatever it is,

And the unconscious bias that can arise.

It really is a practice,

We say the practice of mindfulness.

It's like a muscle that you can build if you take time to create this greater and greater sensitivity to what actually the bias feels like as it arises,

And as the sensitivity increases to what the bias feels like,

Then you can actually catch it earlier and earlier in this process.

So when you slow down experience a little bit with mindfulness calming the body and the mind,

You can start to feel that there are sensations that are directly associated with this.

It's a contraction or a tightening or a clenching of the body and the mind.

You can feel it's uncomfortable in the body,

And the more you start to recognize this experience itself,

The felt experience of unconscious bias,

Then that sensitivity increasing,

And it can be a positive feedback loop strengthening that muscle more and more to feel and then know that the unconscious bias is arising.

This is not work of one day or a week,

But it's really the work of a lifetime.

But for me at least,

It's done with this sure sense that this is the direction that I want to move and that I can move,

Creating this space within the heart and mind to slow down and to bring mindfulness to what is happening.

As Viktor Frankl said,

It creates this gap or space in our experience and gives us the freedom to choose then what will be our response.

For some unconscious bias,

Once you simply bring it to the light of awareness with these techniques,

It has a way of disappearing or dissipating immediately.

You say to yourself,

I had no idea.

I had no idea I was thinking these thoughts.

Or as Krishna Murthy says,

Often we're thinking society's thoughts and we don't even realize it.

For other biases,

They can persist even when they come to light.

For them,

It can be really the work of positive action once you recognize them.

As Ibram Kendi said in How to Be an Anti-Racist,

Sometimes it's not enough just to say that you're not a racist.

You need to be an anti-racist.

You need to make the intentional decision that you're going to consciously work against the biases which you identify,

Which we all identify.

I thought I'd offer a couple examples from my own life of this,

Both before the pandemic and now.

Currently,

I'm working from 1700 G Street most days.

When I get off at the metro going home,

It's about a mile walk.

I often will observe what happens,

Particularly when it's dark,

When I'm walking home.

I certainly have had the experience of,

At night,

Seeing someone coming towards me on the sidewalk in the opposite direction and seeing a dark-skinned man and then watching my mind as it starts to create this sense of fear or trepidation.

Seeing that,

I'll recognize it and choose to stay on the same side of the street and actually greet that person as we pass,

As a way of consciously working against the bias.

Also,

On my way home,

The sidewalk takes a few steps down onto a landing where young men often gather in the evening,

Making it hard to pass.

The first time I saw them,

I was afraid,

Not wondering whether they were going to try to rob passers-by or what was happening.

Then I smelled some weed and I realized,

Oh,

They're looking for a place to smoke.

Then I searched back in my own memory of being one such young man many years ago,

Looking for a place to smoke with my friends.

I could suddenly see myself in them.

With that,

That story I was telling about what was happening disappeared.

I'll often use this technique.

I'll do some switching for the person I see and see if I can substitute a person of a different race,

A woman for a man,

And see and check and see what the mind does.

The last example is something I call Buddha on the subway.

You can try this when you're on public transportation,

A train or a bus or anywhere there are a lot of people that you don't know,

Strangers.

The first is to notice when you see a bunch of people that you don't know.

Again,

All of the assumptions that you make,

There will naturally be people who seem attractive and welcoming and interesting and then they'll naturally be people that you find unattractive or harsh or they seem to be angry.

Then you can imagine secretly that the ones that you find most unattractive are actually the enlightened ones,

The Buddhas or the saints or the holy ones,

But in disguise.

Then you can start to study them and try to figure out,

Well,

How is it possible that this unattractive person is actually in disguise some kind of great being?

With me,

I'll start to study the face and say,

Oh,

What I thought was anger is actually maybe concentration or intensity.

Yes,

I can see the greatness in this person.

Soon you'll just see your opinion of everyone you see on the train starts to switch in this way.

The last benefit I'll mention of mindfulness is that it cultivates a more open mind and heart that really reveals our true nature.

So the work is of abandoning the unconscious bias because it is certainly the morally right thing to do,

But it also allows us to uncover this person that we really are,

That we are all built really for interconnection and kindness and empathy and passion.

This work is really aligning our lives and our actions with this person we truly are.

In recognizing that,

We can feel that our hearts and minds are by their nature just open and spacious and welcoming.

There's a quote by Zadaiya Hartman,

A fundamental requirement is believing that the world you want to come into existence can happen.

Close again with a very short meditation.

If you're comfortable,

Again,

You can close your eyes,

Go back inside,

And just reconnect with the gentle inflow and outflow of the breath.

You can feel how allowing the attention to be absorbed in the motion of the breath has this naturally calming effect on the heart and mind,

Even if experienced in moments is our true nature.

This spaciousness,

This aliveness is available at any moment during your day.

Gently back.