The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

Equality says we treat everyone the same, regardless of headwinds or tailwinds. Equity says we give people what they need to have the same access and opportunities as others, taking into account the headwinds they face, which may mean differential treatment for some groups.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.” —Sydney J. Harris

Challenge yourself to hear their experience without questioning its expression. Avoid being the tone police.

We redefine what it means to be a good person as someone who is trying to be better, as opposed to someone who is allowing themselves to believe in the illusion that they are always a good person.

We need to be willing to own our impact regardless of our intent.

Believing in diversity and inclusion does not mean we are building diverse and inclusive organizations.

None of us are only one thing.

Winning the argument is not what breaks the norm. Breaking the norm breaks the norm.

Hell is not a place where we ourselves suffer. Hell is where you watch people you care about suffer and do nothing about it.

From a distance we (literally) do not see people as individuals.

Media acts as both windows and mirrors.

The less we worry about being good people, the better people we will be.

If you are in the sun and I am in the rain, why is it divisive for me to point out this difference? What is really divisive is telling someone who is standing in the rain that it is not raining.

Research shows that reading fiction increases empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, which we need for becoming the people we mean to be.5 In addition, fiction has been shown to change beliefs more effectively than nonfiction6 because reading fiction with social content activates specific parts of the brain.7 Look at the last three books you read. If the authors all share your identity, you may be missing an opportunity to peek through the window into other perspectives and develop the broader perspective you mean to have.

The differences of the past still form a gap in the present.

Inclusion is what happens before and after the official decision sin which people are formally brought into a group.

The more we care about something, the more likely we are to willfully ignore negative relevant information about it. The more we care about something, the less we want to know.

Words are less important than intentions, and if your intention is to be supportive, silence is rarely the way to go.

When we feel sorry for someone, we inadvertently put ourselves in the high-power position.

No one wants to be someone else’s learning curve.

Loving America is the most American of things to do. Why does loving America preclude an honest understanding of our history and its influence in our lives?

It is easy to write off anger as sour grapes… it was not about the grape; it was about the inequity.

Light is not an alternative to heat in social movements. It is a necessary partner.

While no individual action is a revolution, the sum of their daily efforts leads to real revolution.

America is not always the country it means to be.

The person I want to be, the kinds of people we all aspire to be, are better than we actually are.