I was thinking about my post on bias and different abilities and I want to make it clear. I’m not perfect either. I too am confronted with my own biases. As a teacher, I have always dug into my biases and how it makes a differences in the classroom. This year I am doing a year long professional development on Courageous Conversations (on race) and Culturally Relevant Teaching.

One thing I was excited about Cohousing was learning and growing. Actually, it was a neighbor who showed to me a bias I had not realized I had. We were discussing the upcoming plenary and how to present some of the conflicts by using fake examples and fake people. I mentioned the fake person (the bad guy so to speak) could be named “Boris” and my neighbor pointed out that could be considered anti-Russian, anti-immigrant, etc. I hadn’t considered that before. I just knew the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons but they were created during the Cold War. That’s not an excuse, just how I learned, without realizing it, my bias.  Now that I know  I will try not to use Communist Bloc names in a villainous way.

The point is to be part of a community that takes in new information and tries to become a better community and that each person tries to be a better person.

The author of the book below says “We live in a society that gives us permission to disengage” I don’t want to do that – I want to engage and face racism and bias.

Here is the book