Review: The Bias Inside Us, A Smithsonian Online Exhibition
While the physical exhibition currently touring the country through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) will not reach the northeast until late 2025 and early 2026, the online equivalent of The Bias Inside Us can be viewed at any time from anywhere in the world. This succinct and informative conversation piece on understanding bias comes with an educators toolkit and links to research used when created the exhibit. The experience includes a brief introduction, a six-part online exhibition, and a thorough “About” section to learn highlighting the many contributing voices.
Introduction
A clever scrolling digital art piece at the start of the introduction gave the definition of bias as used in the exhibition along with the increasingly familiar quote, “We are all members of the same race… the human race.” Unfortunately, because I usually set my browser font size to “large” due to visual impairment, the bottom of each card in the section overview was cutoff, and adjusting the page zoom did not help. I had adjust the “Font size” settings of my browser, which made the text harder for me to read. Even then, about half of the “Explore” buttons were cut off. I did not have major access difficulties for the rest of the exhibit.
Online Exhibition
Bias Inside Us
The sentences in the opener — “We can all be kind and well-intentioned humans. At the same time, we can all be biased.” — were an excellent choice in explaining bias in an empathetic, non-combative way, along with reminding the viewer that bias developed as “a survival shortcut”, not because people were trying to be cruel. Audio clips further explaining bias were read by a cheerful American woman and included an easy-to-read transcript. A scroll activated animation showed the dangers of uncontrolled bias and reviewed the definitions of stereotype, discrimination, and prejudice.
The Science of Bias
This section included the reminder that “The brain relies on shortcuts… You can’t always trust your brain.” I learned a new term, “mindbugs”, meaning “engrained patterns of thought” or “Our eyes play tricks on us”. This was demonstrated by the somewhat overused optical illusions of the Titchener circles and checkered shadow. Next, the exhibit explained the psychological development of babies who learn trust through familiarity with people around them, similarity to others in their social group, feeling a sense of belonging, and confirming that they fit in, which cause the development of an “us versus them”.
A quick review of parts of the brain, complete with colorful illustrations, showed how this development occurs. The amygdala controls fear, the hippocampus controls memories, and the prefrontal cortex controls reason, each working together to protect the person. To what they had learned, viewers could take a little quiz with more cute pictures in the unique art style. Afterwards, a series of three short videos featured a conversation between Dr. Tessa Charlesworth and Dr. Kwame Appiah who spoke of oppressed people mobilizing to build an identity against oppression and members of a dominant culture becoming allies to help others. The video player included English language captions.
Bias IRL* (*In Real Life)
While fairly short, this section explained the bias “baked in” to everyday systems. Stereotype threat and internalized bias occur when people think negatively about themselves, while microaggressions occur someone subtly or inadvertantly insults someone from a different cultural groups. This section included an animated choose-your-own adventure segment but often did not give realistic or enough conversational choices.
Serious Consequences
At the beginning, a collection of eight spoken word pieces described different types of discrimination. The section explained power, priviledge, and systemic bias that allow members of the dominant culture to receive additional support from built-in systems. A video coproduced by TEDTalks, iTVA, and CPBS appearing at the end of the section combined live action and animation to demonstrate the school-to-prison pipeline, showing how Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be disciplined in school. While the video was well-produced, I thought this section could have used a stronger ending.
#Retrain Your Brain
The opening of this section included a quote from Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of Cherokee Nation: “We all have to try to figure out a better way to get along”. Next came a list of twenty questions to think about when considering bias, followed with a collection of brief stories about allies. A quiz highlighting research on changes in bias challenges users to determine if biases have improved or worsened over the past few decades. However, the answers are based only on statistics from the Implicit Association Tests at Project Implicit. Having taking this test, I know having poor visual processing that affects reaction time prevents the tester from properly complete the test, and I imagine this skews results for other people with disabilities or difficulties with technology.
Conclusion
The main portion of the exhibition closes out with an artsy poetry video based on the poem “What Do We Do with a Difference?” by James Berry, along with an overview of the portrait project “Humane” by Angélica Dass, which compares skin tones to Pantone colors. These beautiful works of art were a great way to ease out of the sometimes distressing exhibit.
About
A huge number of people worked together when creating the online and in-person exhibit. Leaders included Dr. Tessa Charlesworth, a postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard; Laura Zelle, a guest project manager at SITES and Holocaust education expert; Marquette Folley, a content director at SITES who previously worked at the National Museum of American History; Joanne Jones-Rizzi, VP of Science, Equity, and Education at the Science Museum of Minnesota; and Dr. Corey Yaeger, a licensed therapist who works for Detroit Pistons in the NBA. Many additional contributors were listed with their photographs at the bottom of the page.
My Conclusion
Overall, this online exhibit was beautifully designed and had a clear vision. I was amazed by the thought and artistry that went into the production. The text and audio were easy to understand, although I have the advantage of specializing in this field. The exhibit did have a few noticeable flaws. Besides the lack of accessiblity for a larger-than-standard font size set in the browser, the sections occationally settled for too long on what I assume were pet projects of the exhibit designers, like microaggressions choose-your-own-adventure, the school-to-prison pipeline video, and the quiz using statistics from Implicit Association Tests at Project Implicit. Otherwise the pacing was excellent. I would happily share this exhibit with anyone interested in learning more about bias.
Abby Epplett’s Rating System
Experience: 8/10
Accessibility: 6/10