The Mind Of The Village: Understanding Our Implicit Biases

Are you racist?

It’s a question that makes most of us uncomfortable and defensive.

Harvard University psychologist Mahzarin Banaji says while most people don’t feel they’re racist, they likely carry unfavorable opinions about people of color — even if they are people of color themselves.

Banaji is one of the creators of the Implicit Association Test, a widely-used tool for measuring a person’s implicit biases. She says it’s important to acknowledge that the individual mind sits in society.

“Perhaps we behave in ways that are not known to our own conscious awareness, that we are being driven to act in certain ways not because we are explicitly prejudiced, but because we may carry in our heads the thumbprint of the culture,” she says.

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