Session 2: Our Emotional Brain and Its Role in Unconscious Biases

In this session we will examine the lizard brain and its role in bias and fear learning. While protective and efficient for life-threatening situations, in most modern life situations it activates more than is necessary, often unconsciously.  Although current mainstream cultural norms stress equality and fairness as paramount to our society, this is juxtaposed with pervasive negative media representation of people of color. This leads to the lizard brain's automatic “learning” of negative stereotypes of people of color further perpetuating implicit bias. In this session we will examine what is happening in the brain during a stereotypic fear response and examine our cultural assumptions in the light of actual systemic constraints.