In 2018, Starbucks closed its stores after a manager called the police on two black men waiting at a table. The months that followed brought a rash of incidents of white people calling the police on people of color napping in a college dorm, BBQing in a public park, touring a university campus, and selling water on the side of the road. For many, this is where implicit bias enters.
As a shortcut for our thinking, implicit bias plays a crucial role in how we perceive people who are different, and those first impressions can dramatically affect our perception of another person.
In this program, we'll discuss how many of us have been socialized to be “color-blind” or “identity-blind” when it comes to seeing other people. Using interactive exercises, we witness our own implicit biases at work and see how those biases affect our perceptions of other people. Attendees will get strategies to successfully interrupt implicit bias, and create spaces where we can all see behind the stereotype to the authentic person within.