Understanding human identity to break bias
As we enter into the final month of the year, here are my tools to help you start—or continue—your Breaking Bias journey
The number one question I get, no contest, is: what can I do?
Especially with the recent election result weighing on so many of our minds and the countdown to when Trump officially takes office, it can be so easy to direct our attention and energy outward—to feel like it’s the world around us that needs to change so we can live our lives free from challenges and struggles. This leads us to tell stories about how hopeless and doomed the prospect is: the world is too big, too complex, and too impermanent for us to change everything. Sometimes, the question is asked with a sense of hopelessness. The asker has already decided the answer is— nothing. Many other times, however, the question is asked from a place of motivation.
Breaking Bias is my answer to your question. I wrote my best-selling book after decades of research revealed that breaking bias is the key to unlocking multiple crises in our world—from racism, sexism, classism, and other -isms to burnout, loneliness, and climate change. I don’t just talk about what bias is, where it comes from, and how it unconsciously shapes our habits of thinking and acting in the world. I also share my PRISM Toolkit, a science-backed, somatically informed set of contemplative tools you can use to begin breaking bias right now.
That’s the promise of Breaking Bias, but especially if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve heard that much before. What I’m excited to do over the next few weeks is share more about how my book delivers on that promise.
Breaking Bias is filled with lists—16 in total. Don’t get me wrong, I love lists, but the reason for this is rooted in Buddhist Mind-Science, not an arbitrary choice. Here are three of the lists you can expect in my book.
2 Levels of Human Identity
We’re often trained to think about our identity as something self-evident. We simply are who we are—for example, I am a gay brown immigrant of faith named Anu. This isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s important to recognize that there are different levels to the kinds of identities we might claim or that might get assigned to us by others. The first is our Primary Identity. It’s made up of what I call our “beingness as humans”:
This beingness is our primary human identity. Biologists label it by the name of our species: Homo sapiens. Geneticists have demonstrated it by decoding the entirety of the human DNA sequence, which is 99.9 percent identical in every human being. Spiritual and humanist figures from ancient to contemporary times have termed it our common humanity. And political philosophers and theorists recognize it as the inherent dignity within our being.
Having since spent thousands of hours in meditation, I have come to appreciate that our primary identity is composed of five attributes. In Buddhist mind sciences, they are known as the five aggregates of our human existence.
I discuss these five attributes in depth in my book, especially Chapter 1. Our Secondary Identities, meanwhile, are what makes each human unique. Our Secondary Identities are also what I call the “meat of bias”:
Our secondary identities describe the labels our society assigns to the different manifestations of our human forms and experiences. When we speak about human diversity, we’re referring to our secondary identities…Amid the vast diversity of human cultures and identities, we each have only three forms of secondary identity: biological, experiential, and social.
2 Forms of Bias
Like our identities, two forms of bias are important to distinguish: conscious bias and unconscious bias. Here’s how I define each of these key terms:
Bias is a reaction to the stereotypes stored in our minds. It manifests in our thoughts, words, or actions. Conscious stereotypes are beliefs we hold, rooted in comparing mind, that are known to us; for example, believing light skin is more beautiful than dark skin or rich people are more hardworking than poor people. Unconscious stereotypes, conversely, are due to habits of thought that we are generally unaware of, e.g., the concept of “male” attached to “surgeon,” or the concept of being thin as more attractive.
Just as stereotypes are conscious or unconscious, bias too has two forms: conscious (explicit) bias and unconscious (implicit) bias. I define them as follows:
Conscious bias is learned false beliefs about a secondary identity that are accepted as true and distort how we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.
Unconscious bias is learned habits of thought about a secondary identity that distort how we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.
2 Faces of Internalized Bias
The final pair of concepts I’ll share with you today are the two faces of internalized bias, which I discuss in Chapter 3 of Breaking Bias:
There are numerous permutations for the mental formations that show up as internalized bias, such as the habit of calling oneself “stupid,” or the emotion of feeling unworthy, jealous, or proud in relation to another human. All internalized biases are a function of conscious or unconscious belief in stereotypes and a hierarchy of better-than or worse-than that creates one of two false thought forms: victimhood or entitlement.
Both forms attach to different affects, or vedanas, that we associate with pleasurable concepts, stories, or emotions. However, it’s important to acknowledge that these stories are exactly that: stories. By understanding the two faces of internalized bias, we can also begin to build new habits for unlearning both victimhood and entitlement.
Whether you’re just starting your journey or have been doing this work for a while, I can’t wait to continue sharing tools to support you on your learning journey. This is truly the 21st-century Civil Rights movement, and I’m so grateful to have you working alongside me. This is just a taste—I dive deeper into each of these and more in my book! There are also worksheets and practices you can use to start putting these lists’ concepts into practice right now.
Attend My Upcoming Book Events
Thursday, 12/5, 7 pm ET: Author Talk at Hueman Bookstore, NYC
If you’re in NYC, I would love for you to come see me at the Hueman Bookstore for this book talk organized by the Academi of Life! Please register here to support this wonderful black-owned business.
Dec 7–8, 7 pm ET: International Healing-Centered Education Conference, NYC
Come hear me speak about Breaking Bias during this mainstage talk in NYC! Register now and use the discount code ANU20 to get 20% off.
Watch recordings from some of my events! As you may know, being a lawyer is an important part of my personal journey. My work in law first helped me understand what institutional and interpersonal bias look like, how they function, and how we can work toward Breaking Bias. That’s why it was so gratifying to share this work as part of the Integrating Doctrine and Diversity series for aspiring and practicing legal professionals in September! Watch the recording below or on YouTube.
Some Terms from the Breaking Bias Glossary
Vedana: one of the five attributes of the human primary identity that refers to the bare affect or feeling tone beneath every sensory experience, on the spectrum of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant.
Conscious bias: learned false beliefs about a secondary identity, accepted as true, that distort how humans perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions toward themselves and others.
Unconscious bias: learned habits of thoughts about a secondary identity that distort how humans perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions toward themselves and others.
Internalized bias: a form of conscious and unconscious bias where harmful mental formations influence a human’s thoughts, words, and actions toward themselves, i.e., how they perceive themselves and how they perceive others are perceiving them.
Mindfulness: the practice of noticing and becoming aware or conscious of what is happening in one’s experience—body, heart, and mind—in the present moment; it is the M in my PRISM Toolkit.
Resources and Reflection
Ready to start your Breaking Bias journey? Check out my courses! Whether you hope to build foundational skills, dig deeper, or dive into a Breaking Bias Masterclass, my self-led courses are here for you. They also make a great gift for a family member or loved one! Learn more here.
Some housekeeping…
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