Our starting point perception comes from our past experiences: people they remind us of, knowingly or unknowingly; information, correct or incorrect, remembered or just a vague feeling, that we learned about the group or identity we attribute to them; feelings and images we associate with who/what we see at first glance; perceptions and portrayals we consciously or unconsciously picked up from family, friends, and our larger communities and societies; our familiarity with aspects of their self-presentation; the context of our meeting. All of these things affect our "first impressions" of every single person we meet, and left unexamined, will continue to influence all further interactions with them and others we deem like them.
More difficultly, all of those initial perceptions can and often do conflict with what we intellectually know and think. Any of us may know and truly believe it's wrong to judge people by how they look, yet still react differently to people based entirely on their appearance. Studies have shown this, but we can even demonstrate it in ourselves. Side by side images of the same person, one of them in a suit in an office and one in a t-shirt and jeans at a party create very different impressions and bring up very different feelings, even though they are both real expressions of the person's identity and personality. Or two different people wearing the same thing can bring up different feelings. Don't believe me? Take this example of one of the Daily Show correspondents and honestly pay attention to your feelings and impression of him.
Now take a look at another person from the same segment with a similar expression:
There's a good chance you won't feel the same about both (and this reaction isn't exclusive to comparisons of race, gender, or even just general appearance; any two people will elicit different responses simple because they're different people and each of us picks up on more makes associations to different aspects and elements. However, it's usually more apparent when between groups our society makes significant distinctions between, which is why I use race here. You may notice it more in yourself with a different comparison.)
Reacting differently to different people because of your experiences does not make you a bad person. It is not a character flaw to have been influenced by stereotypes and societal assumptions; everyone is because we are social and learn from and influence each other. We all come to see the environment we live in as normal and pass that on into the future. We also navigate the world and manage information by condensing and simplifying things we don't need to know regularly or that are not a priority in our personal day-to-day life. This helped up survive in the past, and sometimes even now.
But our societies have changed, and we have changed. We interact with a range of people in large, multicultural societies in a way that makes tribalism a liability that prevents us from seeing others as full people like ourselves. We have statistics and research that can help us uncover our subconscious thoughts and compare them to reality. We have the ability to be introspective, assess ourselves and where our initial perceptions come from, and actively counter our gut reactions when they are not helping or develop those that are. We can recognize our own cognitive dissonance of valuing anti-bigotry while still feeling bigoted things and re-train our intuition and our outward reactions to be in line with how we want to be. We can update or question information and ourselves. We can look at ourselves and listen to others and actively decide how we want to define community.
Most people hold subconscious biases, stereotypes, and inappropriate or unfair gut reactions towards at least some others. Most people also want to deny this fact because realizing it hurts our inner sense of self-worth. Wanting to protecting our identity, self, and value is not unreasonable or wrong. It's hard to be vulnerable, even if it's only to yourself. But denial and refusal to really uncover and understand your deepest, inner influences is not real protection and hurts others, even if it may seems to hurt the individual less. Having a real grasp of yourself and why you are the way you are is how you work to be the person you think you are and want to be. And because we're social - we need and care about each other for survival and wellbeing - we're all counting on each other to do the hard inner work so we can all thrive.
Simply stating we're anti-bigotry or anti-discrimination doesn't make it so, no matter how sincere we are, unless we're willing to honestly assess ourselves, and not just others, in the process and takes steps, internally and/or externally, to counteract whatever negativity and bias we unfortunately will find.
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