One of my early memories of my mom is watching her being arrested on the evening news. She and several friends were “sitting in” at the Trailways bus station lunch counter in Dallas, Texas. My mother, who designed and sewed her own clothes, always dressed up for marches and sit-ins. Even as a young child, I appreciated the performative aspect of her appearance—wearing a Chanel-inspired suit with matching handbag, shoes, and leather gloves, eating lunch at a counter where she might never have eaten voluntarily in a desegregated world.

Unconscious bias is everywhere. Whether or not we take notice, bias is present in our daily lives, in our relationships, at work, and in interactions with complete strangers. Bias is what happens over time – we take in millions of pieces of information every day and categorize them into different patterns, or familiarities. And that is how bias helps us make decisions daily. However, by definition, bias is “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.”