By Juliet Rotondo
The Rye Free Reading Room’s Community Meeting Room was transformed into a maze.
Tall panels folded like accordions stand throughout the room, covered in text, floor-to-ceiling images, and interactive displays. Visitors were confronted with bold black writing on a purple panel that reads: “Bias lives inside all of us.”
Other panels illustrated the point. One panel broke down the science of bias; another defined unconscious bias; a third played a recorded conversation on implicit bias between two experts.
“The Bias Inside Us,” a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian, was on display until July 27. The exhibit has made stops at museums, science centers, and libraries around the country. The exhibit acts as a “centerpiece for local programs and activities that raise awareness about the science and history of bias and what people can do about it,” according to the Smithsonian.
While having bias is natural, the exhibit encourages viewers to be aware of their own bias and its impact on their behavior and worldview. Awareness of implicit bias can limit explicit bias and acts of discrimination.
The Smithsonian’s message about implicit bias reached Greenwich Country Day student Lily Breitfelder in February 2024, when she was researching equality in the U.S. education system for a history assignment. Breitfelder came across the online interactive version of the “Bias Inside Us” exhibit, found out the Smithsonian was accepting applications for host sites in New York, and submitted an application with her friend Hayden Souza, who attends Rye High School.
The pair was “thrilled to hear that they were selected as the very first teens to host the exhibit,” Souza said. The girls requested the Rye Free Reading Room as the site of the exhibit, because of its central location in Rye. Next, they began planning community events in conjunction with the exhibit.
One of those was book talk by Mahzarin Banaji, who was scheduled to discuss her book “Blindspot.” The book, Souza said, focuses on three key points: the hidden biases everywhere, stereotypes as unavoidable mental shortcuts, and the way implicit bias affects behavior. Banaji coined the term “implicit bias,” a key concept featured in the exhibit.
Throughout July, the nonprofit CURE (Coalition for Understanding Racism through Education) hosted conversation groups and readings to prepare for Banaji’s talk. Helen Horsham-Bertels, a CURE board member who led those discussions, praised “Blindspot” for doing “an excellent job in helping readers understand unconscious bias and appreciate how (unintentionally) consequential it can be for individuals and groups.”
For many, exposure to stereotypes and bias begins at a young age. That was the case for Breitfelder, who recalls an exercise from sixth grade when her teacher asked the class to draw a scientist. Nearly everyone in the class drew a man in a lab coat. That moment opened her eyes to how powerfully unconscious bias can shape judgments and expectations.
Souza and Breitfelder hoped the exhibit would similarly be eye-opening for its audience in Rye; Souza wants to “help people become more aware of their biases and possibly learn how to counteract them.”
While the conversation about bias is a difficult one to have, Souza hopes the exhibit “will make it easier for others to have those discussions.” The goal, she says, is to “help our community become more open-minded and accepting.”
