Page 2 - Implicit Bias

It is possible to uncover our own implicit biases by taking one or more Implicit Association Tests
(IAT) offered online by an organization called Project Implicit, which was founded in 1988 by
scientists from the University of Washington, Harvard, and the University of Virginia. One goal
of Project Implicit is to educate the public about hidden biases. The IAT measures attitudes and
beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report.

You can access the IAT online at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. There you
will find several tests that can be taken at no cost to you other than your time and your growing
self awareness. Each test will take about ten to fifteen minutes.
● You may want to identify one or more tests that are particularly relevant for your
Threshold Choir chapter and your community.

Discussion Topics
● Which, if any, tests did you choose to take? Why?
● What did you learn about yourself as a result of taking this test/these tests?
● Did anything surprise you?

Implicit Bias - A Family Story: by Maria Barron de Gonzalez
Audio Version of Story

“Mom, I’m home!” Opening the door, I was enticed by the smells of fresh tortillas, percolating
coffee and fresh gardenias. I was “home”, visiting my mami.

When I was five and my mother 32, my mother married an Irish American widower from the
States. Before then, we lived with mi abuela (grandmother) in a poor barrio in Mazatlan,
Sinaloa, Mexico. After the wedding, we moved to a white house with a little white picket fence
in a little white community in California. There were no people of color for my mother to relate
to. There were no people of color to help my mother navigate this foreign world.

The neighbors on our block were not overt racists. No one called out “Spicks” or told us to go
back where we came from. But I watched our neighbors condescend to my mother, telling her
how to dress, that her garden was too garish, her food too spicy. Slowly I saw her change. It is
hard to be an outsider when you are isolated from your own. She stopped wearing her colorful
Mexican dresses and her huaraches. I have a photo of her wearing a pillbox hat and a rose suit
that look superimposed on her body.

What I did not realize was that she absorbed their beliefs as well, including racism and implicit
bias.

As we drank our coffee and ate our steaming fresh tortillas, and I had a bowl of first day beans
with two dollops of sour cream, I told her about my week. How sad and hard it was for my
community, particularly my black friends.

“Oh, Mom, it has been such a week! Can you believe that all the policemen who beat Rodney
King were all found not guilty? Yeah, right, of course not guilty by a jury who did not have even
one black person on it!”