Can you describe your cultural bias using examples?

Whenever I eat at an oriental restaurant, I still use this wonderful western invention, known as the fork.

I find it highly difficult to have compassion for anyone who blames racism for their condition. I’m sure by generalizing I’m overlooking some situations in which that might be true, but for the most part I don’t buy that excuse. That might be because I’m white.

I’m a poor, white, American who works hard. I think rich people are lazy. I think immigrants are great people. Small things make me happy because I have very little. As far as the lesbian/gay thing I think they can do whatever makes them happy just be respectful.

on a side not: is your picture buttcheeks with tattoos? It’s hard to tell but that’s what it looks and it bothers me a little bit, must just be my cultural lens. Please clarify! ty

I have a prejudice about “typical white people”: unable to admit to their privileges, condescending to those who experience racism.

I have a prejudice about the “typical man”: condescending
toward women, unwilling to
admit to their privileges, aggressive and ruled by the “dumb stick”

I have a prejudice about “typical rich people”: selfish,
uncaring, greedy and wasteful

I could go on… I’ll skip my prejudice about “typical
religious people”.

Let me just say, when I meet
people who fall into
any/some/all of the above categories, I make it a point not to assume they will be “typical”. But, most times they
are.

I am a straight white female, mid-twenties, who’s been financially independent since 18, but as stated in another thread, has never made more than $15 an hour.

I find it very difficult to be sympathetic or want to help people who stay on welfare while having children and not trying to look for a job. Same with people who immigrate here just to take part in our lovely welfare/assistance programs, and also those who are assisted by the government but did not take the legal routes to be a citizen. I’ve worked hard for a long time to make my living. I don’t want to support laziness. Guess that’s my bias.

This probably won’t answer your question directly, but suppliment it.
If I drive down the street, and see someone with a “can you help” sign asking for money, I try to remember that I had advantages they probably didn’t.
I had parents who stayed married, didn’t drink heavily, didn’t fight, and didn’t abuse me. I had a religious upbringing. I went to school in a multicultural environment. I’m white. I’m a man. Because of some of that, I got a good job that I have had for 31 years.
I have been blessed, and that doesn’t make me biased, but it does make it harder to relate to those who weren’t. I try to remember that, and give them a break.

I know I am biased, I just don’t know when.

@qualitycontrol I know :) I asked him about that

Interesting idea but trying to ascertain a cultural bias to understand ones particular slant is like asking someone to tell you why they are a less than wonderful person. The bias is there regardless of the question or context. Why would bias play any less part in the revealing of our cultural biases? We are not even aware of them from moment to moment and they are changing constantly and thus the contextual change that is brought to bear on any empirical or statistical data gathering will always be inherently flawed. As mentioned in that other thread the idea of a code that will be agreed upon will be the closest that we can possibly come to true objectivity. True objectivity is not possible for it implies a sense of separation from viewer to object devoid of context, which is impossible.

I have a prejudice that humans are stupid creatures who do stupid things. It’s not a cultural thing, in fact it extends past race/age/culture/place in the world, it encompasses mostly everyone. Yeah it’s not a rosy pretty picture, but I will admit that this outlook has saved me in many instances so far, instances where if I had assumed that the person was a logical capable human, I would have been met with utter failure/disappointment/injury.

There was a time in my life when I wasn’t so jaded. The best I can say it was that it was a time of ignorance in my life, that time when you still have the fantasy world pulled over your eyes. And sometimes I feel the desire to go back to that simpler time where I didn’t see the disgusting nature of humanity. But not only would this outlook hinder my life, I simply can’t stand the thought of going back to being ignorant.

@dynamicduo: But if that’s how it really is, are you jaded, or realistic?

@dynamicduo

But basically what we are most ignorant of is not out there.

@poofandmook Great question. I guess it, like everything else, depends on your position. I for one consider it realistic, but I do understand that others may see it as being jaded. To each their own.

@SeventhSense, I don’t really know what you’re getting at.

@dynamicduo
We are blindsided by our own ignorance more so than under threat by others’ ignorance. Being ignorant is not only a state of stupidity it is also ignoring aspects of our own personality which drive us to create a particular belief system. The understanding of which will render the threat of disgusting humanity as abhorrent in itself.

@bob_ It’s an oriental rug but an Asian restaurant. I have been eating in Asian restaurants for more than 40 years and also use a fork. However I can’t say I am especially proud of not being able to master a simple skill that half the people on earth can do.

@poofandmook You are very young yet and you may be surprised to find one day that life has a way of sneaking up and biting you on the butt. There was a time in my life when your description fit me to a T. Within 5 years of that time I was dealt a very poor hand. My marriage broke down, I was the single parent with a special needs child, my company closed during the 70’s recession, I was in the subrbs without a car or public transportation, I was only had $20 in my pocket and had nothing to but rice for 3 wks. I was just a weekend away from the welfare office. I was lucky. A job was offered to me in a city 40 miles away, a family member loaned me a car, my siblings each kicked in a few bucks so I could make it to my 1st payday. If anything hadn’t fallen into place, I would have been one of “them”.

Also I can only surmise you have no personal knowledge of immigrants’ lives. I deal with newcomers every day. They are very limited as far as benefits go. Do you begrudge their children a free education? You shouldn’t because an educated population is the only thing that divides developed and undeveloped countries. Should an immigrant’s child be refused medical care?

@galileogirl: I guess I should clarify. I have problems with people who accept governmental assistance without trying. People who don’t bother trying to find a job. People who milk the system.

I do have personal knowledge of a few immigrants’ lives, actually, through my boyfriend. He worked in a soccer shop that was in a town where, for example, city buses were randomly raided by immigration officials, and if you were behind one in your car, you could see the people running off the bus faster than you could blink. He worked with a few. They worked their butts off until they could afford to legally become citizens. Sure, they couldn’t GET here legally, or LIVE here legally, but they worked until they could, and now they do.

And don’t bring my age into this. I hate that crap. I’ve been bitten in the butt more times than I care to think about. A 5 year relationship crumbling… which was just as good as a divorce, being the victim of physical abuse and rape, a miscarriage as a result of that rape, being laid off from my job and being nearly homeless within the month. So don’t talk to me about age and life biting you in the ass. Because I know all about it, and you don’t need to be a certain age for it to happen to you.

I try to tell myself that most of my biases are based on experience and rooted in reality. That’s debatable of course. If certain cultures portray themselves a certain way all the time, in the media etc. are we to blame when we form our biases around it? I’m definitely biased towards those of different cultures based, I think, primarily on their overall mass presentation in media and in my general environment.

@SeventhSense Who is this “we” you keep speaking of?

@dynamicduo
Humanity.

@SeventhSense Well I sure don’t believe in what you’re saying, and I know I’m a part of humanity. With all due respect, I can’t see how any of your argument would lead up to “render[ing] the threat of disgusting humanity as abhorrent in itself”.

I often puzzled or surprised when other people don’t react or respond the way I think is in their best interest. Why would they be so self destructive. I guess you could say that I expect everyone to be more like me.

@dynamicduo
Humanity is not disgusting. That is a belief system you have.

@SeventhSense How is my belief that humanity is disgusting in any way less valid or incorrect compared to your belief that it is not? I can just as equally say your words right back to you, but I don’t because I am not an instigator and I respect people’s rights to have whatever beliefs they want without having a quarrel.

@dynamicduo
It’s not any less valid… just counter intuitive to the idea of a collective discussion. If we are nor here to learn and grow in knowledge through our discourse, then what if any is the purpose of this forum?

I’m biased against people who whisper – there’s something passive aggressive about it that bugs me ;-)

@KalWest
I hate that too..:)

@SeventhSense
right?

I hate 99% of all rap… it just seems vastly ignorant to me, granted there are rap songs that I like, but those are few and far between… go figure a white kid with long hair and a guitar doesn’t like hip hop…

I can’t seem to think of many cultural biases I have, I assume small things every now and then as when I hear that there was a fight at my school, I assume the people involved must have not been white and I’ve been right every time. I tend to think that many people are over-medicated and try to blame everything wrong in their life on “bipolar disorder” or some other mental condition. I hate to say “people are too sensitive these days”, but that’s what I think sometimes, that people are getting weaker mentally as the times go on. I tend to think the same way as @poofandmook regarding people who come to America only to be on welfare. Sometimes I even pre-assume that straight men are going to be homophobic, even though I haven’t met that many homophobic ones, at least not around here. I also think sometimes that non-rich people are going to automatically have negative feelings about rich people. Unfortunately, that one I have been correct in assuming many times.

I agree with ABoyNamedBoobs03 concerning rap. I am so biased that it is difficult to listen to rap with an open mind regardless of the message. I agree that I share a bias against wealthy people (which I have never really thought about until now). I grew up in Texas. You know riding a horse to school, with my boots and my cowboy hat, while enjoying country music and voting Republican… *sarcasticly sighing

I am very biased against uneducated, Bible-thumping, straight-ballot voting, simple-minded country folks. I’m trying very hard not to be. Always trying, never succeeding.

@daloon I like your ass-thumb. Don’t let them judge you.

Okay, well, aloss just inspired another of my own, I am definitely biased against uneducated, Bible-thumping, straight-ballot voting, simple-minded country folk.

But I’m a well-off city-slicker, what do you expect…

@SeventhSense, in his conversation with @dynamicduo, wrote: ”Humanity is not disgusting. That is a belief system you have.” @dynamicduo replied: ”How is my belief that humanity is disgusting in any way less valid or incorrect compared to your belief that it is not?.” @SeventhSense agrees, saying: ”It’s not any less valid…”

This conversation shows, to me, the difficulty we have in struggling with the issues of perception and bias. We are aware they are there. We are aware that everyone has their own view of reality. Yet we struggle, as @SeventhSense does, with our instincts to establish a consensus reality (“humanity is not disgusting” (italics mine)).

@SeventhSense relents later on, and I’m sure that he is sincere. I’m not picking on them at all. I use their conversation because it gets at exactly what I wanted to talk about when asking this question. As an aside, it did not need to be in ‘whisper’ mode.

I think we have an urge to believe we are all talking about the same reality, and yet we are constantly faced with the realization that everyone else’s reality is different—some more than others.

Even in the United States, there are subcultures (say religious and atheists, for example) who do not share a reality. But when we travel overseas; when we get into tribes in the Amazon who can’t count, or women in India who use female infanticide as a method of family planning; we are dealing with outlooks on life that are so different, we might not even consider them human.

Perhaps you remember the concerns when the world found out that Indians were using sonograms to identify female children, and then aborting them. The ideal family in India is three boys and one girl.

India outlawed sonograms when used to check for sex and determine who to abort. But this throws the people back to the old method: have the kid, and if it’s the wrong kind, kill it. So which is better: killing a girl at birth, or sometime before? It’s going to happen no matter what anyone does.

This is because, for a number of reasons I can’t go into here, this outlook, this prejudice or bias that boys are worth more is endemic in Indian society. Further, it is an issue of economics; dowrys and bride prices, and burning women in their kitchens.

With such a sharp difference in culture, I think it is much easier to see how our biases affect the way we interpret the information we get from what we call reality. However, as we see from the discussion above, there are plenty of differences within a fairly homogenous group of people, so that for me to call it “homogenous” is absurd. Yet, I am biased to see things in terms of age, gender, race, and class. My bias is for two genders, instead of the many that Tinyfaery would find. I, to some degree, believe in race as a cultural construct, even though I know it is absurd if you try to examine it in any quantifiable way.

And age—back in the time of the Romans, they had a very different idea of the significance of age. Below 18 you were a child, and above that, a man. Now we divide it up into infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, elementary schoolers, tweens, teens, college kids, twenty-somethings, and on and on.

At least one sociologist argues that there is no fucking way we can get around our biases. We are who we are. So, when conducting our studies, the best we can do is to try to describe our biases (hence this question) and let others make up their own minds about how reliable our observations —and interpretations of what we see—are.

We do this every day, on fluther. We get a variety of opinions on a subject, and we decide which ones make sense to us, given our understanding of other people’s biases, based on what we know of—or what they say about—their experience. When an atheist talks to a religious person, each is correcting for what they see the other person’s bias to be. Sometimes they try to convert that bias to another one, but that rarely goes over well.

I think this idea about culture and bias affects us in all aspects of life in ways we rarely become conscious of. How many of you know how the expectations you were born to because of the class of your parents affects your personal relationships? Some may, but I bet the majority don’t know. Then again, maybe my academic biases are what make me create a whole lot of hooey about nothing.

Whatever. We live for a while, and then we die. Isn’t that true for all of us? Well, not in all cultures.

@tinyfaery I’m with ya on that

I’m not comfortable around extremely wealthy people

@daloon
Yet as aware as we are of differences,
I don’t think we have the luxury anymore of not coming to consensus for to do so only exacerbates class, racial, religious and cultural differences, the likes of which may in fact destroy us.
The situations in Israel and the African continent for example are intolerable. The enormous and very fixable situation which exists of hunger, starvation and preventable diseases around the globe. We rally around these causes like Live Aid for a season and then quickly forget. The basis at the root of it though is glossed over. I think that we must come to a place where we realize that if it doesn’t serve all of humanity it won’t work. The economic models, sociological experiments, religious intolerances and outdated militaristic governments have run their course. The future is dire if we continue to look at things from a nationalistic or cultural divide. Cultural differences which add to the collective should be celebrated. The focus should ultimately focus on the most basic of all. First how can we create a world wherein every person has access to food, water, housing and health care. Are manufacturing concerns on one side of the planet to hold precedence over entire communities starving to death on the other? Should one country like Japan consume 25% of the world’s seafood? Could we learn to live in harmony with our environment-eating local foods and maybe not getting strawberries in February. Can we get our desires in check and not have to hunt swordfish, Chilean sea bass and anything else we desire to extinction? Do we really need 250 different types of plastic plates and could we sacrifice one cafe latte to fund a world relief fund. Could you imagine the billions society could raise overnight? I think if our focus is to serve the bulk of humanity we can at a grass roots level transform the entire model from the bottom up.

Implicit Association Test

This is pretty interesting as it can gauge subconscious bias.

Bias is just caused by a person’s cultural environment. There’s not much we can do to change the fact that bias occurs. Who’d want to be in a world where everyone agreed anyway? Sounds boring to me.

@Shuttle128 I would. There is a fine line between everybody being agreeable and having identical ideas.

@poofandmook Like many Americans you seem to be misinformed about what benefits immigrants are eligible for. Since the mid 90’s basically the only immigrants who are eligible for AFDC or SSI (cash payments), are long term green card holders who have been contributing to the system like any citizen, women and children who have suffered severe domestic abuse or someone who has been granted political asylum (a few dozen people a year) Some programs like disaster relief are open to anyone who is a legal resident and there are some temporary programs that might help an immigrant family if for example one of the breadwinners was a victim of violence. In my city we include permanent residents in public housing sometimes after being on an 8 year waiting list. Nobody comes to the US for the “good life” I don’t know any adult immigrant who is jobless-most of them have 2 jobs and most of the teenage children contribute to the family.

http://www.nilc.org/immspbs/special/imm_elig_for_pub_bens_aila_0305.pdf

“I am a straight white female, mid-twenties, who’s been financially independent since 18, but as stated in another thread, has never made more than $15 an hour.” If you don’t like having your age referenced then don’t put it up as the first sentence of your answer. And before you start questioning how hard other people are “trying” you might want to ask yourself how hard YOU are trying. I only pointed out that I was in a similar situation at the same age. A couple of years later I decided not to settle for a 2 X minimum wage job but instead I tried for something better. I got a college degree and have continued updating my education for the last 30 years and made myself recession proof. Having the advantage of being an American citizen are you really trying or did you luck out and are now just settling?

@SeventhSense: I think that if we don’t acknowledge our cultural biases, and if we can’t talk about them, then there is no way we can solve the problems you mentioned. We have to be conscious of where we come from, and how that affects our points of view. Otherwise, we’ll keep on butting heads with misunderstanding.

The only way to understand one’s own cultural biases, I believe, is to see someone else’s and to note the differences. Fluther contributes to that process, because it allows all kinds of people to talk to each other, and it forces us to talk nice. I wish we could take this technology, and develop a real-world analog that isn’t expensive, and that entices a lot of people to participate.

@galileogirl: Get off your high horse. I referenced my age because it’s pertinent to the question. I did NOT reference my age so someone could basically tell me I don’t know about life because of it.

Do you want to pay for my college education? I have been rejected for financial aid because I make too much, even though I can’t afford even one class for one semester. I have been rejected for personal loans because my credit is poor, since I was forced to move into my own apartment at the age of 18 with no financial skills to speak of and made mistakes. I am paying for my mistakes now by having to settle for what’s available to me. My other choice is being picky and cutting my hours and not having a roof over my head, since I don’t have anybody to provide that for me if I lose my job or can’t make rent.

Aren’t you just special that you had people who could help you out? I have had NOBODY who could help me out. EVERY dollar I’ve had to earn myself. EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR. So I don’t know who you think you are, implying that I’m not trying.

And, while we’re on the subject… I didn’t ask you to correct my view on the world, thankyouverymuch. This question wasn’t about trying to fix peoples’ admittedly flawed views of the world.

I’m biased against people who have large tattoos. It’s silly really, because I don’t see a correlation between tattoos and the friendliness of people.

@mattbrowne
i know! i used to think it was a little rednecky – but then I met a few really awesome people with tattoos all over their freakin bodies – and I got over it

@mattbrowne Oh no. You might not like me. I have a vine of flowers and leaves on my arm, down to my elbow and a rather large bird on my rib cage. I am really awesome, and sexy too. :)

@tinyfaery I’m biased against teasers. Pictures?

@poofandmook Maybe in the future you should explain to the community which parts of your answers we are not allowed to address. Lol

What makes you think anyone helped me financially in college. I come from a large working class family. My father held two jobs until he got his 9 children out of the house. He was in no position to pay for anybody’s education. The way that family helped was when we were in the straights I discussed in my answer was that everybody kicked in $100 apiece and then when the crisis passed every penny would be paid back. 5 of us got degrees on our own (the 3 guys had the GI bill).

The way I managed was by building a nest egg over 5 years, taking 20+ units at a time and graduating with a double major in 36 months, working 20 hrs/week and not spending a penny on nonessentials. They looked at my income for the year before college so I only qualified for work/study and loans-no grants.

The point is I can match most people hardship for hardship but I don’t judge them by my life and that’s what I tried to convey to you. I don’t know what kind of family dynamic you had. My parents expected things from us that that I knew were not expected of others. How can you say what is trying hard enough without knowing that? Don’t have expectations of others based on your experience, as you don’t want me to have preconceived notions about your efforts.

Will somebody help me off Trigger?

Ageism, as in being too old to know what the younger generation is going through, or being too young to have enough experience to know what they are talking about, or he/she is too old/young for him/her.

@daloon
I agree we need to acknowledge our differences but I would only hope that we can acknowledge them and then focus on collective solutions.

@YARNLADY Ageism also is thinking that experience is not as valuable as ones own personal and limited view. Each older person has experienced youth and some, myself included, listen to and connect with youthful ideas every day.

@galileo: is that while you’re making fun of your students, as you stated in a past thread? That’s connecting with youthful ideas?

Everybody likes to have fun, poofy.

@galileogirl Especially women, it seems.

@bob_ Is that a sexist calling an ageist biased?lmao

@galileogirl I’m just presenting the available evidence :)

@KalWest – Yes, I’m trying hard to get over it and maybe I’m 80% there. My rational brain is clearly sending a message in the way you’ve just described. The objections must come from my primordial brain regions. Some people are afraid of spiders probably for the same reasons.

@tinyfaery – I’m getting there. And I do like birds. What species features your rib cage?

@daloon
I didn’t relent and I still contend that humanity isn’t disgusting but beautiful.
I simply allowed room for another’s error. :o)

@SeventhSense If we don’t acknowledge our biases, there can be no resolution of our problems. If we do, there’s a chance.

I didn’t understand the post above, so I can’t comment on it.

@daloon
We’re all biased. That’s given but one can’t even reflect on bias without being biased. So at best we can agree upon a code to get closer to objectivity.

Damn! There’s another question to ask (How, if we are all biased, can we find anything close to a concensus reality (objectivity)?) But I don’t have any room to ask this, under the new rules. Bummer.

@daloon
By a code- such as a numerical code-10010100101010 we can all agree upon. We’re using one as we type.

@daloon You mean like this?

Our biases are caused by our experiences, but there is an underlying structure that we can all relate to. We can be reasonably sure of objectivity by comparing our subjective views of objective reality. The problem is, that many things that are classified by humans are completely subjective, such as value systems and feelings. These things can never be objective….unless everyone has the exact same experiences.

@Shuttle128
Nothing can truly be said to be objective. All is subjective.

I would say that cultural biases have less to do with our experiences than our lack of experiences. Bias usually arises from ignorance rather than knowledge. I responded to “Same with people who immigrate here just to take part in our lovely welfare/assistance programs, and also those who are assisted by the government but did not take the legal routes to be a citizen “ by providing a link to a site about immigrants’ rights to welfare (they don’t have rights to welfare). So I would say that poster now has one less bias to revel in. (Although not being able to distinguish between immigrants and undocumented aliens might be a problem)

@galileogirl: I’ve stopped responding to you. So continuing to dig is completely unneccesary.

@SeventhSense Yes, but we can be reasonably sure, through logic, that the inter-subjective evidence we’ve collected can be attributed to an objective reality.

@poofandmook The comments made by other members are read by us all, and as such, as not ‘necessarily’ a dig at any particular person. You may see elements in an answer that refer to your answer, but that does not make them about you. I read all the comments with an attempt at not being biased towards any member or answer.

@Shuttle128
Essentially

I am biased towards the extremely wealthy. I’m a college sudent and it makes me sick when I see students that don’t have a drop of responsibility. They’ve never had a job and couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to actually have to pay for something with money they earned! Whew that feels better! I hate it when I see that though, I amlmost feel bad for them.

@mattbrowne
I’m with you on the tattoo thing. It’s still just to me a type of impulsive thing or a general lack of self esteem. And as an aesthetic 99% of it is just like a big velvet painting of Elvis on skin. Fun while you’re drunk but then you can’t even get rid of it at a garage sale.

@katieweimer yeah, it makes me sick that college students HAVE to work as much as they do ! i wish it was normal to just go to college, completely focus on education and THEN get a job.

@katieweimer We all have to grow up sometime. Working your way up the socio-economic ladder is always going to mean hard work. The career you embark on will be much harder than working your way through college. In a way it makes you value your education if it doesn’t come free or easy. Or is it going to make you sick that you HAVE to take care of a home, family and community responsibilities and wish you could just focus on a career.

Get in shape, life only gets tougher.

@katieweimer

haha…that’s going to be me…oh man…

:P