I attended another unconscious bias training as part of my leadership journey and in the first two minutes I couldn't help but raise my hand to ask a question: "How is this going to make a difference? How would you measure the difference that it makes? What metrics would you use? Pardon my cynicism, but time is money. I have attended at least eight of these so-called classes and I can't see any changes around me. Diversity and inclusion is a term we gladly throw around but hardly practice. It's no surprise that I am more focused on racial bias, I am after all a woman of color.

Racial bias is real. I feel it daily. But how do we get past them? We get past them by willing to be uncomfortable. Growth only comes from feeling some discomfort. I feel comfortable having conversations about racial bias but I can understand why the privileged may not be. After all, this bias serves them well. Even though they may know it's wrong, it is still advantageous to them to do nothing and sit in silence. Skin color is something that no-one can control but I know for sure it's no measure of intelligence or worth. I have learnt that racism has very little to do with skin color and much more to do with ignorance.

Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance (Nathan Rustein). If you haven't heard about Jane Elliot and her experiments around race, make sure you familiarize yourself with her work. She will always be a hero in my eyes. Eye color and skin color are two factors controlled by melanin. None of us have any control over them. It makes no sense to reward or judge people on the basis of skin color just as it's ridiculous to do so using eye color.

One of Jane's experiment will always be forefront in my mind. In this one, she simply asked all the white people in the audience who would like to be treated in the same way this society treats black people to stand up. No-one stood up. She asked the same question again. Same response. She said, "That says very clearly, you know what's happening, you don't want it to happen to you but why are you so willing to accept it or allow it to happen to others?"