Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one's tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.Unconscious bias is far more prevalent than conscious prejudice and often incompatible with one's conscious values. Certain scenarios can activate unconscious attitudes and beliefs.
George Washington University has an entire set of resources on defining and combating implicit bias.
Yet at this same GWU campus you can see these signs, in public, today:
"Students will leave when Israelis leave. Students will go back home when Israelis go back to Europe, US, etc. (their Real homes.)"
Now, who are the "Israelis" in this scenario?
Are they referring to the Jews who escaped - and who didn't escape - the Holocaust to go to the only place they could live in safety. Obviously.
Does this include the millions of Israelis whose ancestors were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands? Of course it does. They are the "etc."
Are they referring to the two million Israeli Arabs? Clearly not. They are referring to Jews, and only Jews.
Even though many if not most Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs proudly trace their own family histories back to Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere, they are not being told to leave to their "real homes."
Only the Jews must be ethnically cleansed from the Middle East. "Israeli" in this case is a code word for Jews and only Jews. And no one can deny that.
Now, hundreds of GWU students and faculty are walking past these signs every day. These are people who claim to be attuned to the evils of implicit bias. These are the people who give courses in the topic.
And not one of them has said, hold on - we are guilty of the same crime we accuse everyone else of.
Those who are reading that sign and thinking that this is an acceptable political viewpoint, and not a call for ethnic cleansing of a group of people based on their heritage and religion, is guilty of implicit bias against Jews by their own definition.
These campus protests are one of the"certain scenarios" mentioned above that can activate subconscious bias. Jews see this and are calling it out. But the very people who claim that they work on themselves to erase this implicit bias are the ones perpetuating it - and they they try to gaslight Jews by saying that there is no antisemitism in their movement at all, disregarding the Jews' own feelings.
Many of the leaders of these protests are dyed-in-the-wool antisemites. But most of the students and faculty who join in for the ride are only implicit antisemites - they swear they don't have a hateful bone in their bodies.
But they walk past this sign every day. And they are not saying a word about it.
