Pathways to Positive Peace: Racial Justice and Sustainability
Psychologists, social scientists and neuroscientists have determined that all of us, regardless of race, have cognitive biases that influence how we perceive and make decisions about other people. Human behavior is often guided by racial, gender, and class stereotypes embedded in our unconscious. Research has shown that “people continually use cognitive shortcuts—exaggerations, oversimplifications, generalizations, reductions—to allow them to prioritize and organize the overwhelming amounts of cognitive data we are expected to process moment to moment. These cognitive filters and shortcuts distort social perception, judgment, and decision-making. This often occurs beyond the decision-maker’s awareness, and without the specific intent to favor members of a particular social group. Racial stereotyping is one method that people in the United States employ reflexively to understand and organize their surroundings. Mind science concepts can offer employers and businesses non-threatening ways of understanding bias, addressing racialized workplace conflict, increasing diversity and managing risk.
This training explains the cognitive and sociological underpinnings of bias, explores the cultural and historical processes that create and replicate bias in the sustainability industry; and offers counter bias tools to help leaders and stakeholders develop and implement workplace equity practices grounded in empathy, transparency, and restorative justice.
Speaker
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Lisa HolderLaw Offices of Lisa HolderLisa is a nationally recognized, award-winning trial attorney who has been identified as a “Super Lawyer” by Los Angeles Magazine for four consecutive years. She began her career as a criminal trial attorney in Los Angeles in 2000 providing skillful and effective representation to hundreds of individuals in a wide range of criminal matters. She currently operates a civil rights practice that focuses on police abuse cases, workplace discrimination, wage and hour law, and severance package negotiations. Additionally, Ms. Holder is a recognized racial justice scholar. She teaches the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic at UCLA Law School. She serves as a legislative consultant on institutional bias elimination, drafting California bias elimination laws and testifying as a subject matter expert in the California Assembly. In 2019, Ms. Holder drafted AB 241 and 242, the laws that now require all judges, attorneys, court staff and health professional to undertake continuing education on bias-elimination. She currently steers the California ballot initiative campaign to repeal California’s ban on Affirmative Action. Ms. Holder has designed and implemented counter-bias trainings for Stanford University and the American Bar Association. She has dedicated her career to racial justice and systems change. The Open Society Foundation, recognizing this commitment, awarded her a Soros Justice Fellowship. Ms. Holder graduated from New York University School of Law after obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree at Wesleyan University