One of my favorite professional responsibilities is teaching about culture, often for people serving in Christian ministry. I’ll venture to say that my courses and workshops are creative, transformative, and fun.
But lately, in places where I used to stand in carefree confidence, energized by the sunshine of happy students and the breeze of Holy Spirit blessing, an undertow has been dragging at my ankles. The sand beneath my feet has been slipping away in an invisible current, and though I haven’t lost my footing in this surprising turn of the tide, it has definitely been distracting.
The change? Fairly suddenly, it has become tricky to talk about a basic principle–cultural bias–in a straightforward way. It’s an unfortunate problem because bias is an unavoidable topic for anyone who wants to succeed cross-culturally, whether across the globe or across the street.
I felt the pressure of this new zeitgeist recently when I was invited to speak about cultural bias for a missionary association. Rather than diving right in, as I would have done a decade ago, I realized that I’d need to begin by convincing my listeners–fellow followers of Jesus–that I was not an ideological enemy. That’s a discouraging step backwards.
Why is everybody so afraid of bias all of a sudden? How has it gotten such a bad rap? I’ll start with this question and then break down what cultural bias really means.
Landmines
Although cultural bias has become a landmine, it used to be a pretty safe topic, especially among missionaries and cross-cultural workers. Of course, self-critique rarely comes naturally to anyone, but usually, people who have devoted themselves to intercultural work are open to the possibility that their perspectives and values may not be the universal norm, especially if they’ve already gained some hard-earned experience living and working in another culture. They show up to the task of considering bias with enough pain tolerance and humility to be able to adjust their ways of seeing things, as necessary. Concepts like bias and embeddedness neither surprise nor trigger them.
However, times have changed. The warfare of US politics and the well-funded broadcasting of ideological rancor have weaponized ideas that have been basic to the social sciences for over a century. Even the entire fields of sociology and anthropology have become suspect in some circles of late. Discussion of topics like bias have always implied the importance of intellectual humility, listening to other points of view, and critical reflection on taken-for-granted perspectives–disciplines of self critique to help people relate to one-another more honorably. But until now, a mention of bias has not automatically marked someone as a political liberal or as an antagonist against a particular brand of traditional values.
Ironically, political rivals of all stripes have appropriated cultural bias as a synonym of intolerance, ignorance, and selfishness. One side recklessly lobs accusations of bias at the other, blaming them for a list of allegedly deliberate and mean-spirited woes. The other side then hotly denies it: “We’re not biased!” they yell, galvanizing their base by adding, “And anyone who talks about bias or embeddedness is advancing a woke, liberal agenda!” The pathos and oversimplification on both sides are stunning, and it’s no wonder people are nervous.
Enter the culture teacher, showing up with games and colored markers to help thoughtful adults be more satisfied and skillful in their cross-cultural work but discovering that she first needs to prove that she’s not a Marxist. Fortunately, this one can handle herself, but the situation is not ideal.
The really nonsensical twist is that the awareness of bias that is so essential for success cross-culturally has very little to do with ideology at all. This conversation about bias is not the type that gets people tuning into the pundits or lathered up in indignation. Its hallmark is humility, not outrage. In fact, this type of bias–cultural bias, both conscious and subconscious–is a reality that the most successful and satisfied missionaries and other cross-cultural workers have sought to recognize and manage for decades.
Its hallmark is humility, not outrage.
So what is cultural bias, actually? Consider first what it is not, and then take a look at its components.
What Cultural Bias Is Not
Let’s take bias out of the ideological boxing ring and state what it’s not. It’s not a sin. It’s not a character defect. It’s not a sign of allegiance to a certain political viewpoint. It’s not intolerance or narrow-mindedness. It’s not an affliction exclusive to the non-circumspect, ignorant, or non-self-aware.
In fact, it’s really not even reasonable to talk about bias itself as being either right or wrong. Of course, there is such a thing as consciously chosen bias, or the decision to hold unswervingly to one’s perspective as the right perspective and all others as wrong–but even that choice cannot be viewed universally as right or wrong. Someone might, after all, be holding fast to something unshakably true (gravity, for instance) or false (a flat Earth). Bias would be laudable in one case and laughable in the other. Likewise, a bias toward generosity is qualitatively different from one toward hatred. So, regardless of whether someone is aware of them, biases can be true or false, noble or destructive, and it’s simply not reasonable to say that bias, in and of itself, is a good or bad thing.
To the contrary, bias is simply a human reality. Every person has cultural bias. Yes, it can cause problems. Yes, it can be bad. But not necessarily.
And yes, unfortunately, imprudent people can throw the word around in overgeneralized and accusatory ways, and others can claim that they don’t have an ounce of bias at all. But such people don’t know what they’re talking about. Instead of letting all that bluster discourage helpful circumspection, ignore it. As my husband’s wise grandmother used to say, “You just have to let the little birds twitter.”
What Cultural Bias Is
In its essence, cultural bias is a predisposition to approve of our own ingrained viewpoints and perspectives, whether we are aware of them or not. Big surprise: we all think we’re right! The inevitability of cultural bias makes sense when considered in its two obvious parts: one, culture, and the other, bias.
Culture. So what is culture? In his wisdom, God did not create human beings in neutral or uniform space; rather, he designed human life so that individuals would be born into specific environments. Even Jesus himself was born into a very specific physical and social setting, which shaped the circumstances and interactions of his 33 years in a Jewish community in first century Palestine within the Roman Empire.
Physical settings differ everywhere because of topography, climate, and natural resources. Social settings differ, as groups of people actively and collectively make sense of those differing physical environments. Culture develops within the constraints and possibilities of those unique contexts.
For example, consider two groups: one that fishes for a living in the sweltering tropics, and another that raises mountain goats in cold, rugged places. In those two distinct environments, all kinds of differences develop: language, tools, clothing, food, religion, frequency and patterns of interaction, and more. Even perceptions, logic, and basic categories for organizing elements within the environment are affected by the need to survive and thrive within the unique realities of each specific location.
As the unique realities of these environments shape life for each group, the differences that develop are not only consciously chosen (like words, customs, and tools) but also subconsciously formed (like how to express love). The more isolated two groups are from one another, the more distinctly they differ over time.
The complex system of interconnected elements of a people’s way of life together is what culture means. Cultural embeddedness refers to the fact that someone growing up within a culture is unavoidably shaped by it (even though that shaping isn’t absolute).
Anthropologists classically point out the multi-layered nature of culture. A well-known metaphor proposed by Edward T. Hall is that culture is an iceberg with only its peak visible above the water and with most of its mass hidden beneath the surface.
Missiologist Paul Hiebert expands on this metaphor by identifying four helpful categories to describe how much of a culture or worldview is easily recognizable to those who are shaped by it. From top to bottom, these are behaviors, beliefs, values, and perceptions. Generally, the aspects of culture that are closer to the top are more consciously accessible to us than those at the bottom. We can usually explain far more of our behaviors and beliefs than our values. Perceptions, the very ways we notice and interpret the world around us (like colors, logic, and categories), are so deep that most of us are unlikely ever to become aware of them at all.
All of these layers make up culture. (See another post, *Four Layers of Culture Playing Out at Your Church,” to read more).
Bias. A clear understanding of culture helps to clarify the term bias. Bias is the predisposition to perceive and value things in ways consistent with our cultural background.
Consider the earlier example of fishing and mountain communities. What happens when the fishing people eventually come into contact with the mountain people? They probably find one another to be very strange, indeed. Even with the best of intentions, they are unlikely to be able to anticipate and appreciate the myriad ways that they differ, especially at the deepest levels of values and perceptions. They themselves don’t notice much of their own culture because it merely seems to be the obvious and normal way that life works for everyone.
This comfortable familiarity with our own ways is in large measure what constitutes subconscious bias. “We” are always normal, and “they” are always different, no matter who the people are. This universal reality predisposes different cultural groups to regard one another with curiosity, skepticism, and even pity. Someone from the mountains on a short-term missions trip to the fishing people might come home and exclaim, “Those poor people don’t even know what a mountain goat is!” Her own limited exposure and her bias for viewing her own perspective as normative never occur to her.
That’s why considering bias is valuable. Bias is not a dangerous ploy to insult or deconstruct anyone’s political and ideological viewpoints. More than being good or bad, right or wrong, conscious or subconscious, bias simply is.
In short, because we all have culture and brains, we all have cultural bias. That’s not an insult. It’s a basic description of how human beings make sense of the world and how that framework stays with them throughout life. As far as we’re concerned, our way is quite obviously the universe’s default setting to normal.
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If everyone had the same default settings, we’d be all set for successful and satisfying intercultural relationships. The problem, of course, is that we don’t. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to try to understand our defaults and those of others?
Can we overcome cultural bias? If not, why not? And if so, how? I’ll discuss these questions in my next post.
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