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Unconscious Bias Workshop Tackles ‘Difficult Conversations We Need to Have’.

October 26, 2018
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On a Friday morning in Bakst Auditorium last month, School of Public Health students, faculty, and staff peered at an image of police officers handcuffing two black men and escorting them out of a Starbucks Coffee shop in Philadelphia.

“This slide hurts,” Stacy Blake-Beard, business scholar and organizational consultant, warned before she revealed the image on the projector to the audience. “I wasn’t sure whether I should show it, because I didn’t know if it would trigger or offend anyone.

“But I asked Yvette [Cozier, assistant dean of Diversity & Inclusion at the School of Public Health], and she said this picture evokes difficult conversations that we need to have.”

Blake-Beard displayed the image during an Unconscious Bias workshop on September 28 that the Office of Diversity & Inclusion offered as part of the school’s commitment to creating a culture of inclusion and respect. The two-hour workshop is mandatory for SPH faculty who serve on school committees, but it is open to the entire SPH community as well as to other BU community members.

The workshop facilitates dialogue and training on unconscious bias, which refers to attitudes, prejudices, or unsupported judgments that are in favor or against an individual or a group in a way that is considered unfair. In past private seminars held for SPH faculty, Blake-Beard coached participants on how to recognize their own unconscious biases and adjust their automatic patterns of thinking. During the most recent workshop, she broadened the conversation by incorporating the concept of intersectionality—the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, gender, and sexuality, and how those multiple identities create opportunities for bias, discrimination, or disadvantage.

“We modified the curriculum to provide action items and tools that people can use to tackle instances of bias in the workplace,” Cozier explained prior to the event. “We want faculty and staff to be continually engaged in this subject, so anyone who has participated in a previous workshop is welcome to attend the revised workshop again.”

Blake-Beard began the program by asking the audience to identify something about themselves that affords them privilege, as well as a disadvantage. Some participants named their race, while others named their gender or economic status. When asked to reflect on how they felt about the characteristics they identified, answers ranged from guilt to inspiration.

“I’m embarrassed. It’s embarrassing to think about the things you take for granted every day,” one participant admitted. Said another: “It makes me think about what I can do to be an ally rather than a bystander in my position of power and authority.”

After examining the implications of unconscious bias and ways people can reduce their bias on an individual level, Blake-Beard led participants in discussions and activities on how to create change at the group level, using intersectionality as a guide. By recognizing how certain people experience disadvantage as a result of multiple sources of oppression, she said, the SPH community can identify what changes need to be made to generate opportunities for inclusion both inside and outside of the classroom. The heart of the discussion raised a number of questions, such as: How can faculty, staff, and students can build coalitions that work to reduce instances of bias or discrimination, and replace them with inclusion and equal opportunity? What organizational systems need to be evaluated at SPH to eliminate inequitable treatment?

Participant Emily Barbo, communications manager for the Activist Lab, said she believed it is critical for members of the SPH community to recognize the privileges they possess and take advantage of opportunities where they can exercise influence within the school and the broader community. 

“It’s our responsibility to think about ways we can use our power to create actual change instead of just doing the things that are easiest,” Barbo said. 

The discussion on unconscious bias, intersectionality, and privilege was “a reminder that human decision-making is not objective; it reflects each person’s past and experience,” Lawrence Long, a global health research assistant professor, said after the event. “If we don’t challenge or unpack our assumptions, we cannot move forward.”

Blake-Beard later acknowledged that most participants already knew the general concepts that she presented; her goal, she said, was to provide them tools to create effective change at the school and university—in other words, to make the session serve as an impetus for action, not just dialogue.

“It’s a joy to me to bring theory and relevance to experiences they’ve already had,” she says. “My whole reason for doing this workshop was to give the BU community a chance to speak and offer information to senior leadership. I wanted the audience to delve into painful and critical topics together for the betterment of themselves, and also the organization. There is a dual agenda.”

Some participants from the broader BU community have already begun to take measures to improve diversity at the university.

Mark Williams, professor of finance at the Questrom School of Business, is a co-chair of Questrom’s Curriculum Diversity Task Force. The task force is reexamining the business school’s curriculums, including materials and methods that are used in classrooms, to ensure they fully reflect the diversity of the student body in areas such as race, gender, and sexuality.

Williams said the tools provided during the SPH workshop are critical for the entire BU community and show that the university is committed to improving diversity and inclusion.

“The discussion of intersectionality is a battle cry for groups to come together to make meaningful change and create an environment that we want our students to experience in the classroom, in the community, and when they graduate and enter the real world,” Williams says. “We need to reflect the real world and prepare our students for it, and this type of awareness training is a vital part of that.”

—Jillian McKoy

The next Unconscious Bias workshop will take place on Thursday, November 8, from 3 to 5 p.m. in Keefer Auditorium. 

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