Prior to this exercise, I have never taken a bias test before. I took a few different ones on the website because the idea was interesting to me. I took the Skin Tone, Race and Weight bias tests.
The tests supply you with questions that ask you to rank your feelings towards certain situations, some of which I hadn’t considered before. The race bias test asked if I felt that black people needed to stress about education. This topic rarely crosses my mind because I am white.
This question prompted me to look into education more. Why would black people have to stress out about getting an education? Public school is free. However, the quality of the education that many African American students are receiving is not up to par with that of white students. White students are more likely to be exposed to advanced classes, and a recent study shows that only 10% of African American boys in the U.S. are able to read at a proficient level by the eighth grade.
This is just a small example of the issues that this exercise was able to shed light on for me. It’s important to not let ourselves be ignorant to issues that are going on all around us. I understand that noticing a bias within yourself can be upsetting and hard to confront, but it can also lead to a very important change in our perceptions.
Jordan Jewell 