The Different Levels of Bias

It is important, as individuals, we recognize that biases and prejudices are a normal facet of being human. Through thousands of years, our tendency to catagorize and stereotype like things has helped us to find beneficial opportunities and avoid danger or trouble. It has helped us to survive.

Carried to the extreme, this natural tendency to categorize and stereotype becomes destructive. It allows us to justify slavery, segregation, wars, riots, marginalization of various groups of people, and violence against individual people belonging to the group of "them."

There's a fine line between bias and prejudism. There's a fine line between prejudism and bigotry. And there's a fine line between bigotry and a racism/homophobia.

As individuals, no matter how open-minded we may believe we are, we need to be truthful with ourselves and accept that we all carry our biases and prejudices inside us. Once we accept that, then we have to recognize when our prejudices are coloring our thinking and what we are saying.

At this point one might be thinking, "This guy is full of it." Let's take a simple example to illustrate what I have just stated.

An avid gardener takes a road trip every weekend looking for plants to add to his garden. Since he knows the habitat where the plants normally grow, he knows what he is looking for. As he winds down back country roads, he passes many side roads. Some he takes, some he passes up. Initially, how he makes these decisions is purely random. A road is a road to him and all are equal. He exhibits no bias.

After a couple of weekends of searching for plants and finding some really cool ones, on his next trip he starts consciously making a decision of which roads to turn on and which ones to pass up. Specifically, he has learned from his past trips that winding roads, roads with cool sounding names like Snake Creek Road and roads that slope slightly downward through a forest of thick trees hold the most promise to finding really unique plants. If the road holds all three qualities, he knows he will almost definitely find something really cool. As he drives through the country, he specifically looks for these roads. He is now showing his bias by ignoring roads that don't have at least one of the three characteristics he's looking for. When he tells his gardening friends, "If you want to find really cool plants, you might have better luck finding them if you go down winding roads or roads with cool names or roads that slope downward into a forest," he is expressing his bias.

His bias moves towards prejudism when he exclusively searches for the roads with at least one of those characteristics and almost always turns down any other road. When he tells his gardening friends, "If you want to find really cool plants, you're best bet is to find roads that are winding or have really cool names or slope downward into a forest. If you find a road with all three characteristics, you'll surely find the plants you want," he is expressing his prejudism. The switch is subtle, but now he promotes roads having at least one of the three characteristics to the exclusion of any other road and even implies that any other road just isn't good enough.

His prejudism moves towards bigotry when he turns down a road that doesn't have any of those characteristics despite being told that the road might have what he is looking for. When he tells his friends, "Oh no. That road isn't a winding road, has a plain name, and doesn't slope downward into a forest so the plant I want can't be down there," he is expressing his bigotry.

His bigotry moves towards racism/homophobia when he seeks out roads with all three characteristics, settles on roads with at least two of the characteristics, begrudgingly accepts roads with one characteristic without holding high hopes for it, and refuses to go down any other road. When he tells friends, "If the road is winding, has a cool name, and slopes downwards through a forest, those are the best roads to find cool plants. A road with two of those characteristics ain't bad, and if it only has one, you'll most likely be wasting your time. Forget about going down any other road. You'll only find trash plants on them," he is expressing his racism/homophobia.

Notice how there is a kernel of truth to his assumptions about the roads where he thinks he will most likely find some cool plants. Winding roads are usually less travelled because they take longer to get through than straight roads. A lot of times, the cool sounding names imply something about the characteristic of the road. Snake Creek Road, for example, might have been named after the winding creek the road parallels. Cool plants can be found along creeks. Roads sloping down through a forest implies two things: first, the area might not be developed and the downward slopes implies a possible creek, stream, or fertile valley where cool plants love to grow.

Notice, though, that as he moves from bias to racism/homophobia, he moves away from the assumptions above, and begins judging good roads from bad roads based on those assumptions and the assumptions, themselves, move from assumptions to facts.

If one were to point out to him that he can't judge the likilihood of finding cool plants based on the appearance of the first couple of hundred yards of the road because any or all of those characteristics can change a mile or two down the road, his response would be a good clue as to how much faith you should put in his advice.

If he responds, "True, but there's only so many hours of daylight and you want to increase your chances of finding cool plants, try to pick the roads with any of those characteristics," you can probably believe him because he appears to have used reason and logic to come to his conclusion.

If he responds, "True, but a lot of times you'll come up empty-handed whereas if you stayed on the road you were on, a couple of miles down might have been the better road to choose," you can still probably believe him because he is still using reason and logic. Notice, however, the subtle switch in his judgment. I biased person will agree with you about judging the road prematurely, but just wants to increaase his odds, the prejudiced person slips in the nuance that roads that hold none of the three characteristics are a waste of time. It's subtle, but it's there.

If he responds, "True, but most of the times those other roads will get you nothing so why waste your time?", you probably should start questioning his judgment. Unlike the prejudiced person, the bigot is now making a firm, negative judgment on roads that don't possess certain characteristics.

If he responds, "True. I know a road that didn't appear to have any of those characteristics and it turned out that a few miles down, I found a perfect spot with a lot of cool plants. Most roads, though, if they don't have all three characteristics, or at least two of them, are roads that the state may as well as build malls on because you ain't going to find any decent plants on them," you probably already know who you are dealing with and will ignore anything he has to say. He's made it clear there are good roads and bad roads all based on three characteristics.

No matter what topic one is talking about, the critical thinker will pick up on the clues to help him determine just how much faith he should put into what one is saying. And, being honest with ourselves and accepting that we, too, hold the same biases and prejudices as anyone else, we can carefully choose our words and organize our thoughts so as not to be incorrectly judged as a bigot or racist/homophobic.