We all have biases

If you’ve followed my writing much over the past few years, you’ll know that a big push of mine has been to see situations from all sides and remove as much bias as possible from my thinking. I feel I’m making solid improvements, but it’s not the kind of journey that you ever finish — you simply need to keep working hard to get better and better.

In his book “ Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man “, author Emmanuel Acho sums it up like this:

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, has biases. It’s the job of empathetic and considerate people not to let them dictate actions that harm others.”

I agree with him. There are certainly some people that are much more heavily biased than others, but we all have them.

If you want to work to be a more empathetic and considerate person, as I think we all should, it’s important to realize that you indeed have biases and then work to minimize them and make sure you’re not inflicting harm on others as a result of them.

You’ll never completely get rid of them, but you can be self-aware enough to make sure they’re not causing you to take actions that hurt others.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on April 22, 2023.