Understanding Bias

Through these articles you will get to know me and understand the different aspects of my identity and my educational priorities as well as my interests and passions. And in this, my inaugural post, I share with you that I am a big Trevor Noah fan. While I find both comedic and intellectual richness in his writing and performances, I never expected Comedy Central's The Daily Show to provide a potent example of the impact of our implicit biases on our understanding of shared experiences. This ten-second exchange (Season 24, episode 144) between Noah and his guest, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, highlights the difference a word can make:

Noah: You can't deny New York City has been divided in and around the case of Eric Garner.

DeBlasio: Yes.

Noah: You know that was a case that really broke people's hearts because we saw the video…

DeBlasio: We saw him die.

Noah: We didn't see him die; we saw him get killed.

DeBlasio: Right.

I hit the pause button and sat with that for a while. I mulled over how different those descriptions are and how the way people understand and describe what they see when they watch that video speaks volumes about the experiences they bring with them to that viewing. And, how, as educators, we strive to help our students build the information literacy skills to navigate bias and point of view and their impact on fact. And, how it is so important that we come to terms with our implicit biases and consistently confront the impact they have on our information access.

As educators, we must come to terms with how a readers' biases impact their information access. Before we tackle the texts, we have to face ourselves. Nurturing self-awareness in our students and guiding them to see how their biases interact with their information acquisition is a fundamental element in helping them develop media literacy and the communication skills essential for civil discourse. Until we become aware of our biases and how they emerge through our language, we can fall into the bias confirmation trap—we see opinions with which we agree as true and information with which we disagree as false. Brooke Gladstone of NPR's On the Media said, "in the final analysis confirmation bias has nothing to do with thinking and everything to do with feeling." Perhaps the biggest challenge we face when accessing information is confronting our biases before we are able to unpack and make meaning of the opinions and insights of other people.

Bias is a part of any information source, the issue is the degree of transparency. Alex Berrio Matamoros in Information Literacy for Today's Diverse Students concluded, "Using problem posing learning activities leads students to reflect not only on the role of the dominant forces that oppress affected groups but also on the way in which related information and knowledge can be constructed and disseminated to further their oppression" (2019, p. 29). When a text is laden with super-charged words and images, the bias is obvious. When the language is more subtle, we are more inclined to miss it. So when working with students, tackle the subtle texts as well so they learn to recognize these linguistic symptoms of systems of oppression.

To this end, one exercise I developed resembles, on the surface, an old mad libs game. From a paragraph in an op-ed essay, I remove some of the descriptive words, mostly verbs and adjectives. I like to use an excerpt of a particularly potent paragraph from an essay by Prudence Carter (2016).

The students' instructions are to work independently to fill in the blanks and make the paragraph make sense. Once they have completed this step, I direct them to work in pairs or groups of three to discuss the text and agree on the words to fill in each blank. Now, the task is harder because they find differences in the words they independently selected and they start trying to convince each other why their word is better. For example, when completing the statement "equitably funded schools run by ___ educators," some students choose the adjective "qualified" and others choose "unqualified." Others fill the blank with the word "passionate," and still others choose "caring." In this exercise, students are discussing organically the connotations of language and recognizing that choices of words indicate subtle and even unconscious beliefs.

Finally, I ask students to focus on one sentence from the paragraph: "they _____________ to keep up, while others are ____________ up on elevators." and share how they completed it. Here are some examples from students.

• they struggle to keep up,while others are racing up
• they try to keep up, while others are rising up
• they attempt to keep up, while others are moving up

Now we drill into their words starting with "struggle," "try," and "attempt." What do these words imply? What do these words say about the people doing the action? Notice that these words insinuated difficulty, obstacles, likely failure, and even a lack of will or commitment to the task. Ultimately, these words imply a lack of agency.

Next we consider the second words: "racing," "rising," "moving." Here, the words used imply progress, accomplishment, success, and action. Certainly the way the statement was completed gave the "others" power and agency "they" did not have.

Of course the final step is for students to compare their word choice with the original author's: "they work to keep up, while others are zooming up."

Carter, the original author, gave agency to the people my students described as struggling, attempting, and trying. Not only did she give them agency, by saying they work, she implies that they have skill, purpose, and goals. And by describing others as zooming, she implies privilege. And there, in that one phrase, is material for a substantive and meaningful discussion of implicit bias. How our place, our upbringing, our background, and our media exposure contribute to our world view. And unless we confront the bias, we can not overcome it.

If we consider the language we have used to tell our history and we choose to use different words, we are inviting different points of view into our understanding of the world. We are broadening our perspective and gaining empathy with diverse people. Consider this example from Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Jackie Robinson has been described as the first Black person to play Major League Baseball or as the first African American to cross the color barrier in Major League ball. What if we use these words instead?: Jackie Robinson was the first Black man allowed by white team owners to play Major League ball. Words matter. If we pay attention, they show us so much about ourselves, and understanding ourselves helps us to understand other people, too. In Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction, the authors posit "Research in sociology, communication, and other disciplines suggest worldview, culture, socioeconomic status, and gender as foundations of difference. Understanding each of these dimensions can help school librarians design effective learning sessions" (Thomas et al. 2020, p. 96). Certainly Noah and DeBlasio's conversation highlights the impact these differences have on perspective. Just as the lesson above shows students who may have grown up and gone to school together in the same community, that the various other aspects of their identity can result in very different understandings of shared experiences.

I have replicated this "mad libs" lesson many times with both students and adults. No one has ever completed the sentences the way Prudence Carter originally wrote them. Every time I guide people through this lesson, the conversation about the role bias plays in our lives and our learning is deep and thoughtful. Some people are struck by the need to read completely—not just skim a headline or abstract in a media feed. Others notice how limiting it is to describe an issue as binary or having two sides. And, still others realize that bias is inherent in all of us. For everyone what resonates is the implicit weight of words.

The cool thing, to me, about this lesson is that the same people can do it over again with a different text and continue to learn about themselves and how their unconscious and implicit biases affect their worldview. And then, they can consciously choose to expand their perspective.

You can explore the lesson in detail on this page, as well as more selected resources that have helped me grapple with this topic. And please share your reactions to these ideas, questions, and any reflections on your own teaching around understanding bias using the contact form!

Works Cited:

Carter, Prudence, "Poor Schools Need to Encompass More than Instruction to Succeed," Room for Debate. New York Times (September 14, 2016). www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/09/14/is-school-reform-hopeless/poor-schools-need-to-encompass-more-than-instruction-to-succeed

The Daily Show. Comedy Central, Season 24, Ep. 144 (August 14, 2019). cc.com/video-clips/efoikh/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-bill-de-blasio---campaigning-on-progressive-change-in-the-2020-white-house-race---extended-interview

DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Beacon Press, 2018.

Gladstone, Brooke. "Your Moment of Zen," On the Media. NPR (September 28, 2018). wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/your-moment-zen.

Matamoros, Alex Berrio. Information Literacy for Today's Diverse Students: Differentiated Instructional Techniques for Academic Librarians. Libraries Unlimited, 2019.

Thomas, Nancy Pickering, et.al.. Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction: New Directions for School Libraries. Fourth Edition. Libraries Unlimited, 2020.