1. Blacks - Mostly due to American media, I had stereotyped all Blacks in my head. My second roommate was a black kid and he was a nerd. He hated how blacks were represented in media and especially hated how popular Black artists acted gangster. Getting to know him and his friends really shook off that negative stereotype I had.
2. Jews - Growing up in Saudi, it was easy to assume every Jew is evil. First semester in the US, my best friend was American Jew. Both of us had negative stereotype of each others but somehow we became friends through mutual friends. First, it was mostly political and philosophical debates but turned out we had similar believes. We just called our books/prophets/god by different names. Almost like we were fighting over variable names, not even logic of code.
3. Gays - Being Muslim, I thought being gay was a choice and even if it wasn't a choice, people should not do it. We used to argue that people want to have sex all the time but they got to have self-control. One of my friend in college was in the closet. When he came out, I was really sad. But that led me to discuss this more with friends and read more and realized that it is not a choice.
4. Women - I was hardcore believer in traditional roles. Not only that I really thought logic was not something women are good at. And I thought that women should not do anything too physical. A lot of female friends in college showed me how wrong I was. I met amazing female programmers, I had female friends who were stronger than me. I had female friends who were more well read than many of my male friends and were more fun to discuss deep topics with.
5. My own people - I felt once I got "Americanized" and stopped being racist/sexist, my own people felt very racist and I started to run away from them. I felt alone among my people, my people simply labeled me as I have forgotten my "roots" and my religion. It was very hard but slowly I learned that there many people like me in the Muslim world. I found internet forums for liberal and Athiest-leaning Muslims. And I learned a lot of Muslims act a lot more conservative than they really are especially when meeting someone for the first time.
I had a smart mom growing up and stories of an amazing grandma. I grew up _knowing_ woman are smarter than men and men made up for it with physical strength. This was largely reinforced in high school where many girls held top academic positions and few boys matched them. Heck, I can recall the first time I met a “dumb girl,” I was in my late teens or early twenties and she was a stoner chick who dated a friend of a brother in law. It was mind warping as I thought girls were incapable of being as dumb as guys.
Fast forward to getting my teaching credential, and I was exposed to the concept that many held the bias that woman were worse at math. Queue studies of poorer math performance for girls and some of the reasons behind it. I talked to my neighbor, a former college math and physics professor, and he agreed that woman couldn’t keep up with men, especially when 3d visualization came in. This did not jive with my biases and required time to process.
Given data and studies, I can academically see the issues that could negatively affect woman’s performance and presence in math and math-focused fields. But emotionally, I have trouble accepting it due to how I was raised.
I did not fully abandon my bias on woman being smarter than men, but through education and bias training, I’ve come to learn about issues that negatively affect woman esp. around math education. Meeting people who don’t match a prejudiced model and learning about the historical reasons why the bias exists are important.
Related, I have a bias that older people should be wiser and more experienced. As an interviewer, we took some bias training and I learned that many hold that older candidates often fight agism. I learned I was unconsciously expecting more from older candidates and that was unfair. I had to combat my bias and temper my expectations and know it was ok if an older candidate only did as well as a younger candidate.
- When I traveled outside my country for the first time and saw foreigners.
- Then when I started working for an international company, full of Americans, Chinese, Indians and Europeans. I met them in person, talked to them and realized they are mostly people who want to have a honest job and support their families, grow up in their careers, etc. Yes, there are differences, but we're way more alike than different.
- Then I moved to the USA and it killed a few more prejudices I had.
What I realized is that I hate a lot of governments, not the people those governments govern.
Until one day I played an airplane simulator with VR. Looking up to the horizon on a dive, looking at the runway when approaching at an angle, gripping my seat when the airplane stalled. Bought a VR set on the same day.
I do not use Facebook, own their stock or have any interest in the company at all. The conference was a good while ago (six years maybe?) and I hope they have the same technical culture and talent today as they did back then.