This is a very personal assignment, and you are only asked to participate to the extent you are comfortable. It also employs the honor system as it relies on you to perform the tasks and report on them without providing proof that you did.
Assignment Topic:
You are asked to look at yourself in terms of your own prejudices, with or without the aid of external tools. If you are interested in testing your personal assumptions against some external measures, visit the Understanding Prejudice website and take one (or more) of the following self-assessments:https://secure.understandingprejudice.org/demos/
Baseline Survey
Slide Tour of Prejudice
Where Do You Draw the Line
Ambivalent Sexism
Test Yourself for Hidden Biases
Can You Avoid Segregation
Feel free to review Slavery and the U.S. Presidents and What’s Your Native IQ, but do NOT use them for the assignment.
If you choose to take an assessment, please keep in mind they are not perfect, or developed with you in mind, so don?t take the results personally or let them define you in any way. They are just tools to help us compare our results to others.
If you don?t choose to take an assessment, just take a few minutes to reflect.
What prejudices do you have? If you do have one (for instance, you tend to think short people are untrustworthy), when you take a step back, can you see exceptions to that overall view? Do you know why you feel this way? Was it the result of personal experience, what others told you, the media or a combination?
Submission Format:
After you have completed your reflection, write and submit a paragraph with the following information.
Whether or not you chose to use one of the self-assessments. (Don?t identify which one, if you did.)
With or without help, did you (or were you already) aware of prejudices you have? (You are NOT being asked what it/they might be? please don?t.)
Did the reflection point out any preconceived notions that you need to be careful not to allow to color your actions? Have they impacted your behavior in the past?
Did you find this exercise to be useful?
