15. Internal Bias

Most of us have internal biases that influence our snap impressions of different types of people.

It's what makes us think redheads are temperamental and blondes as flighty.

It's what makes us assume that a white woman with four or five kids is a middle class woman who loves kids and a black woman with the same amount of kids as dependent on government assistance.

It's what makes us think about a man taking advantage of his rights when we see white man carrying a gun but threatened when we see a black man with a gun.

It's what makes women cross the street when they see a group of teen boys walking toward them.

It's what makes us think that the group of white people protesting outside of a mosque are just impassioned people looking out for our nation but see a group of black people protesting outside of police station as thugs, hoodlums, and bums who need to get a job.

It's what makes us see an Asian high school kid as smart and a black kid as less than smart.

It's what makes us see the Hispanic family at Walmart as illegal aliens.

It's what makes a store employee follow a black person around the store to make sure that nothing is stolen.

It's what makes us see a teen black boy in a black hoodie as a thug instead of a kid walking home from the store.

These impressions may last a split second, and we correct them. They may completely form our opinion of a person or situation with no correction.

If you're interested in finding out what your internal biases are, you can take a test online.

Over the next several days, I’m going to highlight different aspects of life, from medical care to buying a car, that this kind of stereotyping impacts for people of color.

To give a very recent personal experience with the stereotyping of my young black daughter (KG), I took all three kids to the doctor for what I knew was pink eye in my white son. The PA that saw us confirmed I was right. We had all been sick off and on for close to a month. Most of us were on round two of colds. I half-jokingly asked the PA if she could prescribe enough eye drops to cover the whole family so we wouldn’t have to drag ourselves back out to the doctor again when we all got it, too. She paused for a second, looked at KG, and looked back at me with an almost exasperated look on her face. She said with a tone that matched her look, “You know Medicaid will cover the eye drops so you don’t have to worry about the cost.”