DESI FORUM

IT’S OUR UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

Over the years, without knowing or thinking, we have retained our class/caste system to a large extent. It has become ‘unconscious acceptance’, writes Dr Chandrakant Shah. Image credit: EHIMETALOR AKHERE on Unsplash.

By DR CHANDRAKANT SHAH

I read with interest Shagorika Easwar’s My Take on caste discrimination in Canada (April). It is naïve to think that there is no caste discrimination in Canada. Sure, you and I may not have witnessed it, but that does not mean it is not there, that we have left all our prejudices behind in coming to a new country. Many of us are not aware of our ‘unconscious bias’ which happens outside of our control. It happens automatically and is triggered by our brain making quick judgments and assessments of people and situations, influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences. 

If you ask members of the diaspora what samaj or association they belong to, many of them will say Brahmin , Kshatriya, Vanik, Jain, Vedic, etc. Over the years, without knowing or thinking, we have retained our class/caste system to a large extent. It has become ‘unconscious acceptance’.

At a party a few years ago, I mentioned that I had attended a wonderful gathering of Gujarati poets in Toronto. On being asked by a guest who the poets were, I said many were Vora or Khoja and that they were the finest Gujarati poets I ever met, keeping the language and culture alive in North America. This person said without any hesitation, that they were “Muslim poets, not Gujarati”. He implied that only Hindus born in Gujarat were Gujarati. I was shocked! I asked a rhetorical question, did he consider himself a Canadian even though he was not white, nor born in Canada. He was dumbfounded.

Unless we introspect our beliefs and actions, which few of us do, we retain biases and need education, and in some situations legislative processes, to make us aware of them.

• Dr Chandrakant Shah, MD, FRCPC, Dr. Sc. (Hon), O. Ont., is a tireless advocate for Indigenous peoples and a champion of equity and inclusion.