Today we’re joined by Rima Dib, a good friend of Tasha and Jeff’s who also happens to be an expert in unconscious bias and anti-oppression education. Rima teaches workshops about difference – race, age, gender, sexual preference, ability – to people around the planet. She makes it fun. Is this possible? Yes, it turns out. We laughed our asses off. In Rima’s words, “If it gets too heavy, we’re gonna want to put it down. By keeping it light, we can carry it longer.”
Fun doesn’t necessarily mean comfortable. Her acting and word association practices are very revealing. We go with our first flash or gesture, before we have time to edit our responses for popular consumption. Gulp. Thus Jeff squirms in his seat as various juvenile biases are uncovered. Fortunately, we also learn how our unconscious biases are NOT the same as our chosen values. So there's a lot of healthy normalization here. For Rima, everyone has biases; healing and change begin by bringing them into our awareness.
Our conversation is very lively! We explore everything from “cancel culture” to Mr Clean to educating your kids about bias and dealing with racist babies. This is good medicine my friends. Thank you Rima, we love you.
The first practice of identifying our embodied biases begins at 10:50 and ends at 19:25. The second practice, where we visit “the attic of our imaginations,” begins at 32:53 and ends at 37:56.
Links
• Rima Dib’s "Harmony at Work" website: https://harmonyatwork.ca/team/rima/
• The Harvard Implicit Bias Test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
Unconscious Bias with Rima Dib