This TED Talk discusses about unconscious biases, and it made me think about my own unconscious biases, especially towards people with different racial background. Most people when asked explicitly about immigrants in their country would say that they have positive impact on the society.
But this bit on TED Talk mentioned:
“… it appears that when things get funky and a little troublesome, a little risky….”
“Who is your default? Who do you trust? Who are you afraid of? Who do you implicitly feel connected to? Who do you run away from?”
“The implicit association test which measures unconscious bias… Five million people have taken it. Turns out, our default is white. We like white people. We prefer white… When people are shown images of black men and white men, we are more quickly able to associate that picture with a positive word… than we are when we are trying to associate positive with a black face, and vice versa. When we see a black face, it is easier for us to connect black with negative than it is white with negative. Seventy percent of white people taking that test prefer white. Fifty percent of black people taking that test prefer white.”
“… biases are the stories we make up about people before we know who they actually are. But how are we going to know who they are when we’ve been told to avoid and be afraid of them?”
When push comes to shove, I feel judged, not deserving to be here. I feel like I was not perceived as a human being, but a commodity that will be deported as soon as I cease delivering my function or dare to make a mistake.
Some people would say that I was different, that I am not one of those immigrants, they would say that they were referring to other immigrants. But they constantly put a blanket statement over all immigrants as soon as one individual cross the line. Suddenly all immigrants are suspects. All immigrants are deemed as evil, liars, drug dealers, murderers, and all sorts, or at the very least potential suspects by default.
I do not feel at home. I do not feel like an outsider. I feel like a convict on probation.
I feel like I must be on my toes at all times, pressured to excel, no room for mistakes or failures, because my brown skin, my foreign name, and my country-of-origin dictate that I must constantly prove that I deserve to live here.
Indonesian in Iceland 