Bias

My students are invariably proud to announce at the beginning of the semester that they are themselves devoid of bias. Bias, they have learned, often from faulty instruction in high school, is bad if not evil and must be denied at all costs. Good people hold no biases. I sigh and tell them that one of the things that I want them to learn is that every one of them – and everyone who has ever or will ever live – carries a host of biases. It’s in the nature of thought – of reaction, response, and opinion. Bias is at root an inclination or disposition based on culture, upbringing, experience, and expectation. “I like movies with lots of explosions and people getting killed in violent ways” is a common bias of my students that they have no problem holding though they don’t see it as a bias because having a bias is by definition a bad thing and liking movies with lots of explosions and people getting killed in violent ways is not a bad thing. I tell them, confirming their opinion of me as living on another planet (which is the point), that I prefer quiet, slow, character-driven films – and that is one of my biases. Of course, biases can be vile, hateful, dangerous, as in racial, religious, or gender biases. And that’s how the otherwise connotatively neutral term “bias” gained its now common condemnation; the media have for decades reported on the evil of “racial bias” and “religious bias” and “gender bias,” and in time the generic noun has assumed the negative connotation of the adjective-noun phrase. So it’s become a task to teach that bias underlies all opinion and that it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that we have to understand if we’re to comprehend the opinions of others – or our own.