The Person You Mean to Be summary

The term unconscious bias has become something of a buzzword lately. Essentially, it refers to the fact that people can unintentionally discriminate against others, or have prejudicial beliefs they’re not necessarily aware of. However, since researchers found a way to measure unconscious bias it’s now possible to increase this awareness.

Remarkably, studies have shown that the average person processes around 11 million pieces of information every second. Yet, we only process around 40 of those on a conscious level!

How difficult do you think your childhood was? When considering your personal history, don’t forget that white Americans, for example, generally have a much more privileged upbringing in terms of education, healthcare and standard of living than black Americans.

Now, you might think that a reminder to keep things in perspective would result in more white Americans saying that their childhood wasn’t so bad. However, when this question was posed in just this fashion by Stanford psychologists in 2015, the opposite was true. White Americans actually emphasized the difficulty in their childhood more after being reminded of white privilege.

At this point, you may be wondering what an unconscious bias looks like.

Well, let’s look at the example of Kimberly Davis, an African American executive and friend of the author. Once, when Davis was attending a convention for female executives, she entered a large room full of white women gathered in groups socializing. As Davis made her way around the room, none of the groups opened up to her. Davis didn’t feel like the groups were purposely or consciously rejecting her. She just assumed they didn’t recognize her as a fellow executive since a black businesswoman probably didn’t conform to their expectations.

If you’ve ever overheard a racist comment and assumed it’s not your place to speak up, you may want to think again.

The African-American poet Christopher Owens got fed up with the endless number of messages he received on Facebook from people asking him to address someone else’s racist comments. This shows just how many people think that it’s up to people of color to confront racists. Yet, research shows that this isn’t the best solution.

If you follow popular literature, you may have heard of the American author Jodi Picoult. Picoult sees herself as a progressive person, so she was taken aback when her son Kyle and his partner Kevin explained that she was sure to have unconscious racist biases based on her privileged white upbringing.

Prior to this discussion, Picoult equated racism with the behavior of white supremacists. But Kyle and Kevin were eventually able to show Picoult how unconscious bias works. She became so eager to correct this lack of awareness that she enrolled in an anti-racism workshop. It was a lengthy process, but Picoult was able to start recognizing her own biases, and the experience led her to write her 2016 book Small Great Things.

Recently, it’s become increasingly common for people to deflect any suspicion of racism by saying they’re color-blind, or that they don’t see people in terms of color. That may sound laudable, but is this a good thing?

In a 2008 study, Harvard University researchers Evan Apfelbaum and Michael Norton showed that this isn’t a sensible attitude to have. Participants were divided into pairs. Some pairs had two white participants, while others had one black and one white participant. The participants were then asked to choose a piece of paper with a face on it. They then had to ask each other questions until they could guess which face the other person chose.

There’s a good chance you’ve had the experience of being distracted while someone is telling you something. This inability to really listen to others is a big problem, and the constant presence of distracting technology is only making it worse. If we hope to make our companies truly inclusive, we need to listen carefully to make sure every voice is heard. Now, statistics show that minority voices are at high risk of being ignored.

In 2006, when the author was researching her PhD on unconscious bias, she went out on the streets of Boston with a container of jelly beans and asked random people to guess how many were in the jar.