Bias is an inequality in almost everything around us to even the little things we do, and sometimes it’s what we use to guide us in life or protect us, though in its most violent form it is used and will continue to be used in everyday life to put other communities down and play others up.
We can carry biases towards race, gender, and social class. On a personal level where do these biases come from? Favorable biases towards certain groups might come about because we have a similar struggle or past experience we share with a certain group of people.
The media has a huge control of how certain groups are perceived and if a person’s only interaction with those groups is negatively portrayed media, they might explicitly form negative biases towards certain groups and feel justified from being validated by the media. This is also the same with our social media feeds, where we tend to “follow” sources and others that support our biased views so we continue to be exposed to only one side of the story which continues to feed our preconceived bias of particular groups.
These biases have become more prevalent in recent years with a wide range of groups painting others in a negative light, never showing the other side of the argument and never giving the background information or certain context to the situation surrounding the group. One could argue that biases can also be formed from not fully understanding a situation and the spread of misinformation.
Bias may never fully leave us but learning how our own bias came to be and not letting it affect how we treat others can help us all come together. Although the many biases in our government and society may seem consuming, people change these preconceived notions and can change how our government works if we all work to unite instead of dividing one another and recognize how the division bias creates affects all of us.
