The Anti-Bias Stand: What Makes it So Important?

Anti-bias education has become more popular in the educational and business world due to workplace violence, discrimination, and turnover. It is often implemented to foster an understanding of different races and cultures. But more importantly, it is taught to respect the value of democracy of others and actively challenge biases, stereotypes, and bullying behaviors.

Learning about bias is important because biases are attitudes that are learned. Children learn identity politics at an early age. In most cases, this socialization is unconscious from all the stimuli children are exposed to. The impact on people’s behaviors, attitudes, and values is imprinted before we even understand these concepts. 

What It May Look Like

Anti-bias education purports that individuals' personal and cultural identity is a factor in their daily lives. The impact of culture and differences on communication is revealed when individuals are accomplishing something together but never realize that the differences in culture can lead to biases. Recognizing, acknowledging, and addressing bias and discrimination within ourselves, others, and institutions can be critical to anti-bias education. The focus is to explore ways to address bias and prejudice through awareness, intervention, and personal action. Relationship building adds to the academic setting and the social-emotional development that is needed to create equity.

Race is usually the focus of anti-bias training. It is a highly important but uncomfortable conversation for many individuals. Defensiveness, guilt, fear, and anxiety can be the reactions. If there are never opportunities for co-workers and others to engage in these tough conversations about race, then forget about the elephant in the room. We create a poisonous gas that no one can identify, yet we all suffer from it. Dialogue about privilege is also an uncomfortable conversation, but it is a reality that impacts the biases that many of us share.

Anti-Bias Education Is Continuous

Changing attitudes is a difficult task, but fostering an environment where employees feel a sense of belonging is crucial to the success of any environment. Training can help individuals and organizations identify and overcome unwanted feelings with regard to race, gender, or even sexual orientation. Training is not a one-stop shop, and education should be an ongoing process. Studies have shown that training outcomes are often short-lived at best. No trainer or consultant should sell you on the idea that one training can solve biases in the workplace.

Starting and continuing the conversation, and having the courage to be open and transparent about race, gender, and stereotypes, and for participants to leave hearing perspectives that they have never heard before or been in a serious dialogue with, is the goal of this conversation. Society's inequalities are only relevant to those that are affected. We are only responsible and accountable for our own actions. But those actions can be hurtful and insensitive to others when ignorance of our own viewpoints and cultures surfaces.

Once again, it is about relationship building and trust and not about opposing people’s views or backgrounds. Communication is about furthering relationships and providing for our needs and wants. We can only grow if we are willing to challenge the things, we have been taught that contradict our democratic values as a nation.