During my time as an executive with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS), I was asked from time to time what I did at work.
I knew what they were asking. They were seeking an exciting, risk-taking, or juicy political story that might be worth sharing. I hated telling them that most of the time my job was navigating government bureaucracy. In fact, I’m pretty sure that in the FBI we put the word “bureau” in bureaucracy.
Instead, I told my friends that I spent my time “thinking big thoughts.”
Not sure that answer really resonated with anyone, but it was true. I did a lot of time thinking. In the FBI, it was thinking about ideas, information, and investigations. At MDHS, it was thinking about ways to provide assistance to children and families in considerable need.
I’m still trying to think big thoughts.
Recently, my thoughts have been centered around three seemingly disparate ideas: how implicit bias works; how we learn to trust others; and how the Polyvagal Theory informs our understanding of bias and trust.
On May 3, 2021, National Public Radio (NPR) published an article by Rose Eveleth titled, “You’re Probably Not As Open-Minded As You Think. Here’s How To Practice.”[1]
In the article, Ms. Eveleth postulates that most people are not as open to new ideas as they think they are or would like to be. A primary reason is that it “can be hard to reconsider long-held beliefs, and even harder to question things you didn’t even know you believed in the first place.”[2]
She acknowledges that our brains do a lot of things without our conscious control. For example, we breathe without thinking about it. We make split-second decisions without thinking. And we often pick up ideas from around us without even knowing it.
Sometimes these unconsciously learned ideas, whether positive or negative, can spill over into hot topic areas such as race, gender, education, medicine, and religion.
In other words, we have implicit biases.
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