Thinking About Bias

Some examples of bias or prejudice that we can experience at the individual level:

• Assuming a Black man in a hoodie is a criminal (racism)

• Assuming that a wedding ring on a woman's finger indicates she has a husband (heteronormativity)

• Seeing a person with masculine features and assuming they are a man (cis-sexism, gender norms)

• Assuming that someone celebrates Christmas (Christian normativity)

• Being surprised when a girl is good at math (sexism)

All of the individual biases listed above have in some way been reinforced at cultural and institutional levels through popular media, laws, school policies, and/or company practices. Can you think of any ways you've seen those biases reinforced?

Unconscious Bias

We all have biases, many of them unconscious. If you'd like to assess your own unconscious biases, you can take a free online test here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

To learn a bit about unconscious bias and see how it might show up in a Computer Science classroom, watch this video: