1. How diverse is your personal circle and what does it look like?
2. Who are the "others" in your life?
3. Who is on your "free pass" list?
4. When do you tend toward non-acceptance and judgments?
These questions are all important to understanding where your blind spots are, what triggers you, and where you can dig deep to overcome your biases. These questions can help us dismantle the stereotypes and assumptions we make about certain groups so that we can be more objective. These questions helped me gain insight to my own patterns and underlying issues - uncovering things I may have been taught early in life that still linger and color my interactions with others. I realize that i sometimes have a tendency to talk over certain people when I intend to speak up for them. While I'm working on being more accepting and understanding of marginalized groups, I can tend to be judgmental of people who seem to be non-accepting, who aren't "doing the work" to overcome racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. I see that, to me, "others" are family, friends, colleagues, etc who don't seem to accept people of different races, religions, ethnic backgrounds or LGBTQ+ people.
2. Who are the "others" in your life?
3. Who is on your "free pass" list?
4. When do you tend toward non-acceptance and judgments?
These questions are all important to understanding where your blind spots are, what triggers you, and where you can dig deep to overcome your biases. These questions can help us dismantle the stereotypes and assumptions we make about certain groups so that we can be more objective. These questions helped me gain insight to my own patterns and underlying issues - uncovering things I may have been taught early in life that still linger and color my interactions with others. I realize that i sometimes have a tendency to talk over certain people when I intend to speak up for them. While I'm working on being more accepting and understanding of marginalized groups, I can tend to be judgmental of people who seem to be non-accepting, who aren't "doing the work" to overcome racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. I see that, to me, "others" are family, friends, colleagues, etc who don't seem to accept people of different races, religions, ethnic backgrounds or LGBTQ+ people.