Interrupting & Eradicating Bias & Prejudice
Interrupting & Eradicating Isms
Isms are a form oppression that many people have experienced or have been exposed to throughout human history. This type of oppression occurs when someone develops a bias or prejudice against themselves or someone else because of the color of their skin, where they’re from, who they like to date, their abilities, their religion or politics, the clothes they wear, their age, and even the amount of money they earn (or how they earn it). Unfortunately, when left unaddressed, this type of oppression can lead to extreme and severe human rights violations, including slavery, discrimination, and denial of basic human needs. Using the Human First Lens can help us create a world where isms and oppression like racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia no longer exist.
Human Learning Cycle
Understanding the Human Learning Cycle help us to identify, alleviate, and eradicate bias, prejudice and oppression. Very similar to our digestive cycle, the Human Learning Cycle generally includes six (6) basic phases.
The first phase is acquisition (or receiving input). It is the process of obtaining and/or receiving new information, resources or tools. This process is similar to eating or ingesting food or drinks.
Alignment is the process of discernment in which newly acquired information gets aligned with our other beliefs and values. If it fits, we continue to absorb the information and begin incorporating it into our knowledge and experience base. If it doesn’t fit, we tend to reject it. When it comes to food, this is the time when we might think something tastes a little off.
Decision is the moment in which we intentionally or subconsciously decide to internalize the new information, and incorporate it into our decision-making and actions. If we don’t like it, we reject it completely. Again with food, this is when we decide to swallow it, or spit it out.
Plateau is the temporary period in which we’re not ingesting new information. Instead, we’re subconsciously digesting and processing the information we’ve already received. Just like when we’ve eaten enough (or too much) and feel full, sometimes we can’t accept or learn new information while we’re in the plateau phase.
Testing is a period of practicing and nurturing the input we’ve received. We start consciously incorporating the new information into our thoughts and behaviors. In this phase, we also eliminate unnecessary information and retain what is helpful to us. Rejecting oppression is still possible during this phase, especially if we come to notice adverse impacts on ourselves, or our relationships with others. When it comes to food digestion, it’s similar to keeping the healthy nutrients and eliminating waste by going number 1 or number 2, or this is the time when we throw up.
In the final phase, operating, we are now automatically making decisions and taking actions based on our new beliefs or the new information received. We’ve fully absorbed and incorporated the new information, and it’s now a part of our daily thoughts and activities. It becomes part of what we put back out into the world (output). When it comes to food digestion, it’s similar to being full and feeling energized and ready to take on the day.
Rejecting Oppression
When we fully understand our basic human rights, basic human needs, and utilize a spectrum-based view of humanity we are more likely to easily identify and reject information, policies, and systems that lead to internalized, interpersonal, or systemic oppression. In fact, we’re often able to reject isms immediately during the acquisition phase when new information or ideas are presented to us. But sometimes it can take a bit longer, and we’re able to reject these ideas during the testing phase if we see how isms impact ourselves or our relationships with others. However, if bias or prejudice has taken root in our beliefs, we can begin operating and acting with bias and prejudice towards ourselves and others. If this is brought to our attention – or when we experience adverse impacts from acting with bias and prejudice – we can say “it’s not okay” and start to address it.
Roots of Isms
Human beings are not born with bias or prejudice, and no human being is inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist or classist. But there are many ways we can be exposed to isms and incorporate them into ourselves. Knowing the roots of the isms we may have encountered or developed can be helpful when we set out to reject isms moving forward. Here are just a few of the most common ways:
Cultural Downloads
All human beings start out dependent on others to get their basic needs met, and this includes our first set of beliefs and values, as well as our understanding of how the world works. These things are often provided and initially instilled upon us by the family, culture and society we grow up in. Similar to a computer’s “operating system”, if our initial “cultural download” includes bias, prejudice or isms, it’s more likely that we will have to challenges those thoughts and beliefs in ourselves later in life.
Learned Behaviors and Ideas
Ignorance – Lack of Information, Lack of Exposure to Human Diversity
In many cases, bias, prejudice and isms can be developed when we encounter people or situations that we’re unfamiliar with. Our lack of knowledge, experience and exposure to human diversity can lead us to believe that someone is not like us simply because we don’t immediately recognize that they are.
Negative Association
Next to “cultural downloads”, negative association is the most common way in which bias, prejudice and isms are developed. Negative association occurs when we experience something traumatic or harmful. As part of our sense of security – and as a protection mechanism – we may take note of the characteristics or behaviors of the person(s) who harmed us to try to avoid the same experience in the future. But negative association often goes further when we apply predictions, assumptions and expectations onto every other person who seems to have those same characteristics. We may even begin to place all people with similar characteristics into a group in our minds, rather than viewing each person as an individual.
Experiencing Bias, Prejudice and Oppression + Our Sense of Belonging
Human beings have an inherent need to feel like we belong to something larger than ourselves. If we have experienced bias, prejudice, exclusion or isms, we may find ourselves going beyond negative association, and starting to feel disconnected from the community-at-large. When this occurs, we may be more likely to identify solely with other people who share our exact same pain, trauma, characteristics, traditions, beliefs or experiences. While this can be helpful in addressing our need for belonging initially, it can also lead to our self-identity being intertwined with a “group identity”. Maintaining group identities often requires viewing people who are not part of the same group as “others”, “enemies”, or “non-human” and in turn furthers the cycle of oppression. More importantly, maintaining group identities can prevent us from healing and rejecting bias and prejudice because we may accommodate isms as “that’s just the way that it is”. If we come to believe we can’t find anyone we can relate to, we can develop broad-based prejudice and bias against everyone else and believe we are unable to reconnect to the community-at-large, or to humanity as a whole.
Interrupting and Eradicating Isms
It can be helpful to know where bias and prejudice is rooted, but we can interrupt and eradicate isms regardless of how they came to be by challenging those beliefs, increasing our exposure to human diversity, and deepening our relationships with people we may have previously held a bias or prejudice against.
Challenging Beliefs
The most important part of interrupting and eradicating isms is to challenge biased and prejudiced beliefs by learning more about human rights, basic human needs, oppression and human relationships, as well as viewing human diversity through the spectrum-based lens.
Exposure + Positive Association
In addition to challenging our thoughts and beliefs, exposing ourselves to human diversity with an intention to create positive association and relatability can help us fully get rid of bias and prejudice. This can be as simple as watching different television shows, listening to different music, learning about the history of people and cultures online, or by intentionally interacting with people at gatherings, spaces and community events. When we engage in this type of exploration, we’re intentionally seeking to find new ways to relate, and become excited about human diversity. We also intentionally seek to understand another’s person’s experiences, traditions, and worldviews by considering how they are similar (and sometimes different) to our own.
Genuine Relationship
Developing deeper relationship layers beyond general regard with people we may have once held a bias or prejudice towards is also important to interrupting and eradicating isms completely. Increasing our emotional connections and attachments with friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers and others, can increase our empathy and genuine concern for other people. As importantly, when we develop deeper relationships with people, we are also more likely to take oppression they experience as a personal offense and stand up for them just as we would ourselves.
Trauma-Informed, Empowerment Based
When we’re consciously working to interrupt and eradicate isms, a trauma-informed, empowerment-based approach means that we remember a few principles:
- We reaffirm that isms are not okay;
- We recognize that most people – including ourselves – do not want to experience isms, or to be bias or prejudice against anyone else;
- We recognize that all people can and do experience trauma, and everyone can be susceptible to experiencing and continuing the cycle of oppression if they don’t have the information or tools they need to reject and overcome it;
- We recognize that all people – including us – have the ability to heal, learn and grow;
- We seek to build upon our own and other people’s strengths, rather than tearing ourselves or other people down; and
- We recognize that oppression, including isms are able to be interrupted and eradicated.
Topics
This section, Interrupting and Eradicating Isms includes eleven (11) topics covering the most common isms. We recommend starting with Racism and going from there, however, you are free to explore, visit and re-visit topics as you choose. You can revisit this topic menu here, or in the main menu at anytime.