Healing Bias Your Guide to Individual, Interpersonal, and Institutional Change

Blends CBT and interpersonal therapy principles for implementable actions to reduce bias.

Everyone has biases, yet most people are unable to discuss them openly without feelings of shame, stigma, and defensiveness. Although perceived as flaws or a question of one’s character, these biases should be viewed as socially constructed coping mechanisms shaped by trauma, stress, and the need to survive. Only when redefined will we be able to have honest conversations about and reductions in bias, race, and prejudice.

Dana Crawford’s Crawford Bias Reduction Theory & Training (CBRT) invites readers on a transformative journey to understand, research, and reduce bias at the internal, relational, and systemic levels.

She offers a three-pronged approach:

• The awareness phase which focuses on self-reflection and group interaction through empathy, compassion, and accountability.
  
• The investigation phase that will help readers recognize and dissect bias within themselves, with others, and in society.
• The reduction phase further develops skills to confront and mitigate bias with exercises like role-play and real-play scenarios.
  

 

With reflection prompts, personal stories, actionable advice, and examples inspired by actual events, Healing Bias translates complex ideas into relatable, empowering solutions that can be used on your own or in group settings.

This guide can be used with the Racial Awareness Conversations for Everyone (R. A. C. E.) card deck to enhance self-reflection and group discussion with questions based on the CBRT model.

Dana E. Crawford, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who leads between one hundred and two hundred workshops annually on reducing bias, while also maintaining a thriving private practice. She enjoys reading about zombies, Afro-futurism, and self-development. She resides in New York City.