Overcoming Implicit Bias when working with the Homeless Population

Everyone has similar and different opinions about the homeless population here in the United States. Also, there are new studies that are being done, new hypotheses that are being created and new facts that are constantly being proven and disproven about the homeless population. Now all this affects internal biases because your brain picks up and stores this information. Even if you consciously know that the information is wrong or false, your brain and body will react to that information unconsciously as if the information were true. Now, to overcome this bias, we first must acknowledge all the correct and incorrect information we were told about the homeless population. This will increase our mindfulness of what we need to look out for. Second, we need to step away from generalizing and over generalizing. Everyone is homeless for their own specific reason. Acknowledging that will help you, again, become more mindful of your thoughts whenever you come across someone that is homeless. Third only focus on the facts of the situation. Assumptions and opinions are just those, assumptions, and opinions. Assumptions and opinions are formulated on something that is 100 percent true, the person being homeless, and jumps to something that may or may not be true (the person lost his money to drugs, the person doesn’t want to work, the person got screwed over by his family, the person lost all their money in the stock market, etc.…). Lastly, disprove your wrong thoughts. Ask yourself, do I know this to be a 100% fact? If there is anyway you can disprove the thought, then kick the thought out of your head. As you continue to call yourself out on your thoughts and disprove them you will only be left with either no thoughts on the matter or what is 100% true. Hopefully this helps give you guys a better understanding of implicit bias and how you can overcome your own implicit biases.