This month, we're inviting you to engage in DAY 2 of the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge: Exploring Bias. Remember to follow along for weekly posts on social media, too.

Understanding unconscious bias helps us to understand ourselves, and when we know more about ourselves, we can be more aware of others and open to their experiences. Learning about our own implicit biases—the positive and negative attitudes, stereotypes, and feelings we have about people and groups that are different than ourselves—is an important part of everyday life. This understanding also impacts the ways we interact with guest families. The biases that we hold, even those that are unconscious, cause us to act in ways that are preferential or sometimes offensive or discriminatory.

Check out the videos below, and consider the reflection and action ideas to help identify your unconscious bias.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

What messages did you learn about race from your family, school, or friends?
How might awareness of your implicit bias affect your future actions and decisions?
What biases do you have about families facing homelessness? Are they rooted in assumptions regarding work ethic? Parenting choices? Finance management? What else?

ACTION IDEAS

Take the Project Implicit Bias Test from Harvard University (select Race after agreeing to terms)
Pay attention to assumptions and associations that occur in your brain when you see or encounter people who are different than you in the grocery store or on the street. Where do these thoughts come from? Are they true? Do you want to maintain these biases or make an effort to change them?