Additional Reading and Activities
Truly understanding your biases and increasing your capacity for empathy is an incredibly difficult practice. We’re not going to undermine that. In addition to the activities we’ve taken you through, we’ve curated a list of six additional resources for you to explore.
The Privilege Walk
The Privilege Walk, via the Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing, is an excellent one for group settings. It is designed to reveal to each participant the relative privilege they have benefited from, in comparison to those around them.
10 Examples That Prove White Privilege Exists In Every Aspect Imaginable
A powerful breakdown by Jon Greenberg in Everyday Feminism that shines a light on the “vast array of benefits and advantages not shared by many People of Color (POC).”
10 Examples That Prove White Privilege Exists In Every Aspect Imaginable
The Origins of Privilege
By Joshua Rothman in the New York Times: an interview with Peggy McIntosh, author of the seminal work, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.”
The “Flip it to Check” Approach
Presented in an excellent TEDx talk by Roche’s Global Head of Human Resources Kristen Pressner, the “flip it to check” approach is a very simple but profound exercise. Before you make a statement with a value judgment— one that’s based on gender, race, age etc.— swap the term with a different gender, race or age. If the sentence now contains an assumption that “sounds off,” then it’s likely a biased statement.
For example, imagine you’re considering promoting a woman on your team. Yet, because the new role comes with a lot of travel and she has young kids at home, you decide against offering her the role. Now flip the scenario to test it: would you make that same decision if that employee were a man?
The next time you make a value-based statement, change out the gender/ age/race and see if the statement or question sounds off.
The SPACE2 Model of Inclusion
To truly train or manage your implicit bias, it’s important to bring those unconscious thoughts into your consciousness, and continue to critically examine them regularly. The SPACE2 Model includes six evidence-based strategies that “activate controlled processing and enable individuals to detect and override their automatic reflexes”.
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
To help uncover implicit biases and stereotypes, Harvard University devised a set of tests called the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This test measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., Asian people, fat people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., smart, lazy). Each concept is paired with a positive or negative association and assigned a letter on the keyboard. Participants are then presented a stimuli (a photo or word) and asked to respond with either key. The premise is that it is easier to make a response when the closely-related items are on the same key.
The results of the IAT are classified into three groups: a slight association, a moderate association, or a strong association. For example, we would say that a participant has a strong implicit preference for straight people relative to gay people if they are significantly faster to complete the task when Straight People + Good / Gay People + Bad are paired together compared to when Gay People + Good / Straight People + Bad are paired together.
The IAT is a well-validated measure, independent of variables such as handedness, hand-eye-coordination, in-group bias or even familiarity. As the test measures implicit bias, the results can surprise you. It is important though to remember that showing a moderate or even strong result should not be seen as a negative or immediately label you as prejudiced; the IAT is a great tool to help you discover your unconscious biases, and it’s what you do with the knowledge of your unconscious that makes it powerful.
