The History of Hate and Tolerance:
The History of Hate and Tolerance was a class focusing on both Islamophobia and Antisemitism in the modern Western World. There was emphasis throughout the class encouraging students to recognize their own prejudice and potential hidden bias. In my understanding this was particularly important when discovering new topics in order to approach a situation with an awareness of how my perspective skews different ideas and events. When learning about Islamophobia and Islamic terrorist groups in the Middle East, I forced myself to be consciously aware of how my consumption of the Western perspective through media impacts how I perceive events. One poll we analyzed as a class was investigating how “Westerners” see people in the Middle East (more generally followers of the Islamic faith). The poll was done by Pew Research Center and reported that a majority of people in the West see Muslims as “fanatical, violent, and lacking tolerance”. Not surprisingly, the poll also reported that Muslims in the Middle East and Asia felt “Westerners” were “selfish, immoral, and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.” This poll is identifying the implicit bias of people in different parts of the world. This implicit bias is fueled through stereotypes created by media and/or cultural rhetoric. These stereotypes are unpleasant and extremely harmful, but gave me an opportunity to acknowledge my “hidden” bias.
When researching my Global Scholars Diploma project I am reading many different sources with implicit biases that may not be initially completely apparent. Learning about how damaging a one sided perspective can be to the lives of others gave me the opportunity to identify the weaknesses in each of my sources. My project is focusing on the topic of genocide. Accussing an individual or nation of genocide is not to be taken lightly and is often controversial. Naturally, when disscusing an accusation of genocide researchers and academics have their own implicit bias that are often reflected in their writing/research of the topic. As a result of taking this class I have learned how to analyze academic opinion with the awareness that untrue and harmful bias may be included in some of my sources.