Unintended Bias

This would come as a shock to some people, but when I was little, I wanted to be a CNN anchor. I did not understand the news at all and I knew very little about politics. My PawPaw just watched CNN nonstop every time I went to see him and I wanted to be on CNN so he could watch me report the news.

A little over twenty years later, I know, just as you do, that mainstream news, even more so than it did in the 1990s, faithfully promotes political bias. No matter what side of the aisle you may find yourself on, there’s a station or news source you can follow. Your news source of choice will then tend to say how your party’s collective view on issues today is right and how everyone else’s is wrong.

While I never got to be an anchor for a mainstream news network, I did get to be a reporter once, for a school newspaper at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, CO. It was there that I learned a very basic and simple lesson about bias.

I did several stories about people that I knew who went to school with me at Colorado Mountain College. These people were people that I went to church with and participated in bible studies with. One was a missionary and one was even a national ping-pong champion.

I interviewed them and asked them questions, following the style of interviews I had seen on TV. The articles appeared in the paper and I was proud for having contributed.

Yet, there was one day when I got a very unexpected reaction from a professor who had been keeping up with my writing.

“Jacob,” said the professor, “You need to write about people who are not your friends, people who are different from you.”

“Ok, thank you,” I said back to her as she walked away.

I did not set out to show any sort of prejudice or bias against anyone. The only reason I mainly interviewed my friends was because they were easier to talk to. As someone with a severe mental illness, it is very hard to talk new people, or even approach them in a group setting.

Yet, I could understand, that by only interviewing my friends, all of whom were Christians, and only writing articles that almost all had the same theme, many people could easily think that I thought anyone who was not a Christian and who did not believe as I did was unapproachable and not worth my time.

That is just one example of more simple acts of bias I have committed. Yet, if you just clicked away from my blog right now, returned to scrolling on Facebook or Twitter, you would instantly find far more complicated issues of division and bias, nonstop 24/7.

I do not have the solution for ending the bias and division in our country. I know that God is in control and that ultimately with and through us He can bring healing and change.

However, perhaps the first, and most basic step we all can take, is just to step outside our comfort zone, approach someone on the bus, in an Uber, at a restaurant or a coffee shop, engage with him or her, and just listen to him or her speak and then love that person, just as they are, with no agenda of our own. Then, just walk away, ask God for His guidance, and for next steps, on how to love that person, and all people in our lives, just as He would.

In conclusion, may we all heed the words of the late Martin Luther King, Jr:
“Yes, it is love that will save our world and civilization, love, even for enemies.”

Until Next Time,

Jacob McGowen