Unconscious Bias
It's a rather complicated experience to explain
on paper, but I shall make my best attempt.
Some years ago, there was a Presidential candidate.
I shall make my point without any identifications.
So much of who we are and how we think lie beneath
the surface and often go undetected by us and others.
Case in point. For no apparent reason that I detected,
a friend, thinking that I would be biased toward a certain
candidate made a baseless and prejudicious assumption
and informed me why I should not vote for that candidate.
My friend did not realize we were supporting the same
person, never bothering to ascertain such valuable
information. She was not mean-spirited and felt close
enough to me to allow her such freedom of expression.
She never realized that her attempt at pointing me away
from what she considered to be the wrong direction was
in bad taste. I think that because she was much older,
I decided not to confront her with the issue.
To be biased is blinding. By definition, it is to have an
undue propensity for something. I suspect that if her
assumption was a legitimate one, her mission to change
my way of thinking would have been justified.
However, she relied on the historical data of the media
and placed me in a certain category. In so during, I became
a statistical entity and not a personal friend with a mind
of his own. Ironically, she was blind to my lack of bias.
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