I don’t read self improvement books. I used to, but I gradually came to the conclusion that they are part of a racket that I call just-change-yourself-and-you-will-be-an-acceptable-person. Wear these clothes, this make-up. Five things should never wear if you’re over fifty. Twenty decorating mistakes interior designers warn you about. I believe okayness is something you choose for yourself, not something you earn by living up to others’ expectations.
However, the courageous conversations discussion group at my church decided to read this book, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Dolly Chugh, and it is a very different kind of self improvement book. It is really quite good and I recommend it.
Dolly Chugh is a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business who studies implicit bias and unintentional unethical behavior and incorporates these issues into the MBA classroom.
This is what got me hooked:
Chugh tells the story of an English professor who had an Indian student with an intimidating last name. She was so afraid of mispronouncing the surname that she only addressed the woman by her first name even though she had a nagging feeling that that was wrong.
When the course was over the professor encouraged her student to expand a story she’d written for class into a children’s book and the two began a collaboration.
The protagonist of the story was a twelve year old boy whose family moves from Bangalore to New Jersey and none of his teachers or fellow students will say his last name. When the professor finally worked up the nerve to ask the other woman about the other characters’ motivation, specifically why they wouldn’t say the boy’s last name, her answer was immediate and unflinching. “Arrogance,” she said. “They just don’t care.” The professor was stunned and chagrined. So she confessed her fear of mispronouncing the woman’s name and asked her to teach her how to say it.
Their conversation grew from there. They wrote down stereotypes that each of their respective cultures held about the other. They compared what is considered “normal” versus “weird” in their worlds.
Notably they had different experiences of these candid exchanges. Sarah [the professor] still cringes when remembering her awkward entry into these conversations, while Gita [the student] remembers far less discomfort. In fact, she remembers the pleasure she felt that somebody wanted to know and understand her. Sarah was processing her self threat while Gita was feeling seen and heard.
Chugh defines self threat as a moment when one’s identity is being challenged or dismissed, for example when the self image is that of someone who champions diversity, but the person makes a an insensitive remark and gets called on it.
In the second chapter Chugh recounts the experience of a man she met at a Google conference. Google, trying to address the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of its workforce, had sent Rick, who prided himself on his lack of gender bias, to an implicit bias workshop. Part of the workshop involved taking the Harvard Implicit Association Test for gender bias. Rick’s self threat was activated when he learned that the test showed he was indeed biased. Rick bypassed the internal debate about whether or not the results of the test were accurate and instead went to work. He did an audit of his contacts and social media interactions, discovered that only 20 percent were women, so he made an effort to shift the gender ratio. He declined invitations to all male panel discussions and suggested alternatives. He actively sought out connections with people who “didn’t look” like him.
He had a “growth mindset” as opposed to a fixed mindset and this is one of Chugh’s four prescriptions for evolving into the person you mean to be.
- ACTIVATING A GROWTH MINDSET of being a good-ish work-in-progress, not a premade good person;
- SEEING THE ORDINARY PRIVILEGE we hold and putting it to good use on behalf of others;
- OPTING FOR WILLFUL AWARENESS, though our minds and lives make willful ignorance more likely; and
- ENGAGING the people and systems around us.
I took a few of the IATs and was dismayed to learn that I had a bias with respect to identifying Native Americans as American. That is, not that I was more likely to associate them with negative words or pictures (thank goodness), but that I was more likely to associate white people with “American” pictures and symbols. I had to admit that I did tend to think of “American” as the culture created by the people who came or were brought here rather than those who were already here, and my prescription to myself is to learn more about the Iroquois Confederation and its influence on the writing of the Constitution.
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An update on the diary I wrote last week about the Netflix series “Living Undocumented”. Andrea Martinez, the attorney featured in the first three episodes, who was thrown to the ground by ICE agents is now suing ICE.