Skip to main content

Cameron Creath Hidden Bias Reflection

After participating in several of the hidden biases tests I am uncomfortable because diagnosing racism and sexism has always been so intangible. Getting a written result after a test makes me sad because it confirms fears in me that I don’t want to know, like my hidden sexist and racist biases. My first instinct is to act defensively, and point out that I only slightly one way or another. I am compelled to point out that I could be a lot worse, or that my biases are harmless because they are only categorized as slight. I don’t want to come across as bigoted. I don’t want my interactions with other people to be tainted by seeing one group of people as preferential. Like all of my interactions with the group I don’t prefer will now be insincere or false. 

My second reaction (perhaps obviously) is guilt. I feel this enormous weight of guilt that I have these biases that I logically know are wrong. It’s so easy to deny the biases when they cannot be quantified. Before taking these tests the biases are only theoretical. I feel guilty having a slight automatic association of Women with Family and Men with Career. I have some shame about my results that I wouldn’t want people to know. I feel like now I have something to hide and before I didn’t.

I only got one test result that was completely neutral. According to one test I have no automatic preference for straight people over gay people. That actually surprised me, that I didn’t reflect any guilt or shame over my homosexuality. I’ve never felt any, but I just assumed it would be there. 

My best friend (a heterosexual female) also did the same test and got a result that she has a moderate automatic preference for straight people over gay people. I guess it’s not shocking, and its not insulting to me either, but I wouldn’t want people knowing that about me.

One result that I was not surprised by was that I have a slight automatic association with Women as Unattractive and Man as Attractive. Being a gay man who often feels guilty and uncomfortable when just being in proximity to sexualized females I actually stand by that one. 

Lastly I was very pleased to see that according to one of the tests I moderately Identify as more Happy than Sad. Sometimes I am insecure (internally) because I don’t know if I am lying to myself about feeling happy. I have fought off a lot of unhappiness. Depression runs in my family. I only feel like the person I want to be when I am taking my antidepressants. I am actually proud to be in this category, considering all of the physical, social, and professional insecurities that I harbor.  


I don’t know what to do with this information. I don’t know what the goal is after this. Now that I know about some of these results I’m not sure if I am obligated to change them. What is right and what is wrong? Am I supposed to have no preferences? I am curious to know what my fellow classmates think they want to do with the information they have gotten from their test results. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Research- Andrew Moore

My first year at calarts, I was unfortunately raveled in a title 9 investigation revolving sexual misconduct. While I was not a involved directly, I was a bystander and very good friend to the person who started the investigation. I was asked by the affected person to be interviewed for evidence. My experience in the interview room with the investigator was anything but reassuring. I was asked to give my side of the story, but I was pushed by questions asked by the investigator that were geared towards finding the attacker innocent. I used to have trust in the government ability to handle situations like this justly, but I was disappointed to see that the disgusting stories that I've heard about victim blaming and non-fiction. The fact that it was unraveling itself before my eyes was very surprising. Unfortunately the person stayed in the dorms on campus through all of this and at the end of the year there was an even more dramatic event involving the same person and another gir...
Post a Comment
Read more

HIP HOP AND THE PRISON SYSTEM

“With five percent of the world's population, the US incarcerates 25 percent of the world's prisoners” (Daisy Hudson, Noisey Magazine. 2014). That same year “African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population, though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015 (NAACP). The prison system in America serves not as a correctional facility, but a container for which black bodies are buried alive. The conditions of which inmates are kept, the disparity in numbers and portrayal of those incarcerated. There is no question that factors such as education, employment, mental and physical health; the lack of access to such resources targets and propels African Americans through the pipeline to prison. In our history, it seems that prison, or largely the criminalization of African Americans, Black men in particularly, has been used as a tactic of oppr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Macy Rupp-Roof is on Fire response

1. CONTEXT: What were the circumstances that framed the meaning and process of this project?  Several things framed the meaning and process of this project.  Primarily, portrayal of “inner-city” youth in the media was the motivator for this project.  Events like lake and LA riots in such close proximity to the performance of the Roof is on Fire also provided a much more interesting grounding for the timing of the project.  2. CONTENT: What was the issue, need, idea or opportunity addressed by this project? Issues such as sex, abortion, race, financial income, and family were addressed and became the topic of this performance piece but specifically in relation to how these issues related to the teens.  The need for this discussion to come from teens is vital because teens are a direct reflection on how our culture is positively or negatively affecting society.  3: FORM: What is the medium that was used to address or ...
Post a Comment
Read more