Educating Ourselves

In our last session before summer, we were reading and considering famous speeches that changed the world and, particularly, changed how people in the United States were thinking. Today, just like those months ago, we continue in a climate of unrest where we continue to ask ourselves, "How will our world be changing and how can we participate in creating positive change?" I believe that we cannot change things that we don't understand. I also believe that if we have beliefs that we cannot support with both passion and intelligent argument that we cannot persuade others or hope to contribute meaningfully to positive change. Together, I would like us to read in class a book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD. I believe that reading and discussing these chapters will help us in considering the problems that confront us today and what we might do to contribute to change. Anyone who wants a copy of the book, let me know and I will work to get one ordered and a copy sent to you. Here is the link to the introduction that we will read today: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QyrxK-kplWlIh7dCHPuXbZpagzLITcfx/view?usp=sharing You can also click on the top link on the top right hand of this page to get to the google document that sets out the chapter. In class, I will be paging through the document for us to read, so you should be able to see the text without doing anything. After we read the introduction, we will discuss the following questions: 1) How do we talk about bias to people who could use the information but might not want to hear it? 2) When has a child said something surprising to you about race? What prompted it? How did you react? 3) How is bias conveyed to even very young children? What are the ways their behavior shows the effect of bias? 4) Are we all vulnerable to bias? 5) Is acting on bias inevitable?