Conscious bias still exists. We see it in the actions of the killer of the Emanuel 9 in Charleston, South Carolina. Sometimes it spills out in the comments sections of blogs and Facebook feeds.
It’s easy to get angry at people who consciously hurt others because of their race. But the thing is, conscious bias hurts relatively few people in today’s world. Today, the real killer is the unconscious biases that shape the course of every day: Where we live, where we work, where we send our kids to school, who we dream of our children marrying, and where we worship.
Unconscious (implicit) bias is so prevalent, research has shown that an estimated 75 percent of us demonstrate some level of unconscious bias when tested—even people who have made conscious decisions to pursue justice for a living.
This is important to understand, because these biases can manifest themselves in ways that negatively impact our society—and even put people’s lives in danger.