The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 2, Chapters 4-5

Part 3, Chapters 6-7

Part 4, Chapters 8-11

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3, Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “Builders Opt for Willful Awareness”

Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary: “Keep Your Eyes Open, Anyway”

Chapter 6 begins with the story of Jodi Picoult, a best-selling author of moral fiction. Jodi was unaware of systemic racism and did not engage with issues of racism in her writing until she had conversations with her son, Kyle, and his husband, Kevin, who is of Portuguese and Columbian descent. Kevin invited Jodi to an anti-racism seminar, where they heard from people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, including an Asian woman who found her eyes unattractive, and a Black woman who girded herself every day to cope with racial stereotyping. These stories did not conform to Jodi’s notion of racism. Moreover, they made her realize that she was part of the racist system they described. The seminar alerted Jodi to systemic racism and her own privilege. Rather than avoid the discomfort and ignore the problem, however, she adopted a growth mindset, listened, and learned. She later wrote a book titled Small Great Things, which centers racism in its plot.

Psychologists describe three phases of white racial identity development. The first is characterized by a lack of awareness of race, color-blindness, and a belief in meritocracy. Self-threat is high during this phase, as is the tendency to ignore negative relevant information. The second phase entails redefining how to be white. This includes a willingness to make mistakes, to learn from mistakes, and to discuss mistakes to normalize the learning process. This paves the way for the third phase: willful awareness. Being willfully aware might lead to mentoring (or reverse mentoring in cases when young people teach older people), starting conversations about race with various people to gain a well-rounded perspective, reading books about race, donating to social justice causes, and participating in online learning opportunities.

Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary: “Look Out for These Four “Good” Intentions”

Chapter 7 starts with a personal anecdote. Chugh describes being nervous before her first meeting with a transgender person, Mel Wymore. The anecdote serves as the point of departure for Chugh’s discussion of gender identity. Sex is a biological category, while gender refers to how people identify with the socio-cultural features associated with each sex. In cisgender people, sex and gender align. In transgender people, they do not. Neither term refers to sexual orientation.

Chugh uses Mel’s story to explore key aspects of gender identity. Mel was assigned female at birth but transitioned to male as an adult (after marrying a man and having children). After struggling with the limitations of binary categories—such as male and female, gay and straight—Mel came to understand his gender as part of a continuum. Being excluded prompted Mel to prioritize diversity and inclusion as PTA president at his children’s school, start a meals program for seniors, and support small businesses fighting zoning battles. Much of Mel’s advocacy work involved going door-to-door, an effective approach to build connections, humanize others, and combat exclusion.

Four modes of behavior promote otherizing: savior mode, sympathy, tolerance, and typecasting. These behaviors, though well-meaning, are dehumanizing. For savior mode, Chugh describes the example of Mel using his skill set and knowledge to advocate for his elderly neighbors with local government instead of “saving” them—a mindset that centers the “savior” rather than those who need help. Similarly, sympathy exemplifies what Mel calls a “charity mindset,” centering the feelings of the person observing the problem rather than focusing on a solution for the person who has the problem. Sympathy places those without the problem in a high-power position compared to those who have the problem, which can impact the self-esteem of those who need help. Sympathy otherizes, in contrast to empathy, which focuses on what others are feeling. Like sympathy, tolerance does more harm than good because it otherizes difference by its very definition, positioning the believer in contrast to an “other.” A common form of tolerance is racial colorblindness, or claims of not “seeing” race, which brackets out key aspects of people’s identities and experiences because they contrast with one’s own. Colorblindness prevents privileged people from seeing inequality by ignoring headwinds and tailwinds. Typecasting is equally problematic, as it dehumanizes individuals by subsuming them into groups. To combat otherizing, Chugh recommends having open discussions with people who are different than you. Dialogue creates connections, which has a humanizing effect.

Part 3, Chapters 6-7 Analysis

In Part 3, “Builders Opt for Willful Awareness,” Chugh again employs the formula of two anecdotal models—one of author Jodi Picoult, and one of herself—interwoven with statistics and studies to address the themes of white racial identity development and otherizing modes of behavior. Chugh presents Jodi’s journey as a model for white readers, who are themselves developing their racial identity. When readers first encounter Jodi, she is in the first phase of developing her racial identity—she lacks an awareness of race, claims not to “see” color, and believes in meritocracy. Readers follow Jodi’s arc toward willful awareness. Like many white people, Jodi was shocked to learn about systemic racism and her role in discriminatory systems. Instead of giving in to self-threat, however, Jodi activates her growth mindset, and faces her sadness, anger, and shame head-on. She educates herself by speaking with others, reading books, and attending workshops, ultimately writing a book centered on racism. Thus, Jodi serves as an exemplar—a person with whom readers can identify as they navigate their own journeys of white identity development, or as they encourage family members and friends to do the same. Indeed, Chugh explicitly encourages readers to see themselves and others in Jodi, stressing the universality of her experiences:

Jodi is not alone. Our default mode is willful ignorance. Our psychology will not naturally lead us to see what is different than what we believe and what is contrary to what we want. Our geography will not naturally lead us to people different than us. Our sociology will not naturally lead us to diverse networks (138).

Jodi overcame her willful ignorance by opting for willful awareness. By implication, readers can do the same.

Chugh uses the story of Jodi both to reiterate her earlier argument about the importance of a growth mindset in anti-racism work and to inspire readers to action. By describing Jodi as a motivated learner who seeks out information from multiple sources, including books and workshops, and discusses her missteps with her friends, Chugh reemphasizes that mistakes are a normal part of learning. By talking about her mistakes, Jodi normalizes this aspect of learning, which Chugh identifies as critical to becoming a builder, and wields Jodi’s example as an impactful call to action:

All of us make these mistakes though most of us do not talk about them. What if we did, even with one person in our lives? Who could that be in your life? What if we shared our good mistakes? Imagine how much that person would learn, both from our mistakes and from our willingness to learn (137).

Consistent with her structure throughout the book, Chugh weaves in studies to support her claims about the enabling function of mistakes, notably, an experiment measuring electrical activity in the brain, which showed that people with a growth mindset who paid attention to their mistakes showed improved performance (136).

In Chapter 7, Chugh uses a personal anecdote as a point of departure for a discussion of gender identity. As in previous chapters, including the personal allows readers to identify with the author as an equal, rather than reading her tone as pedantic or condescending. Chugh admits to being nervous before meeting Mel, who is transgender: “Being nervous and ignorant is not the person I mean to be, but that was the person I was that day” (143). By admitting to self-threat, Chugh normalizes the feeling for readers. By overcoming self-threat, moreover, she models the behavior of a builder: “I brought a growth mindset along with my ignorance and nervousness to the meeting. I did not know much, but at least I knew I did not know much” (143). Chugh entwined Mel’s story with facts and statistics about the transgender community, highlighting their high rates of depression and suicide: “Among transgender and gender-nonconforming adults whose families no longer speak to or spend time with them, 57 percent attempt suicide” (144). Raising this statistic not only stresses the urgency of humanizing people who are different, but also effectively highlights the importance of avoiding otherizing behaviors.