coliberation – Prof Jem Bendell

I had lunch with a Swedish friend last week. Over coffees and his cigarettes, we talked about my upcoming conversation with an anti-racism trainer. He told me of a time when he was in a restaurant waiting to meet his psychologist. Prior to that, he had only talked to her on the phone. After waiting about half an hour he thought that she wasn’t coming. Then a black woman he had not given much attention to, came up to him and asked if he was her client. Telling me this story, it became clear that my friend views his unconscious biases with a mix of embarrassment and comedic self-deprecation, contained by an enthusiasm for learning and changing. During lunch he was in a non-judgemental space, where it felt fine to admit he would probably always have unconscious biases, and therefore it is useful to be open to discovering more about them. After all, this is a man who was married to a black woman, while ignoring his psychologist in a restaurant because of the colour of her skin. We agreed that, like most people, we might always be exhibiting unconscious racial bias.

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