Weed out Bias.

I think some of us misunderstand what it means to be biased.

We may have one friend from a marginalised community; you know, that one friend from the LGBTQIA+ community, or a sprinkling of friends from a minority community.

We're nice to these people, we spend time and share stories and shower them with affection.

Because they are familiar.

Because we consider them friends.

We are not biased towards "them".

But when we tell stories and only make sure to mention the religion practised by the antagoniser if they are Muslim, don't the alarm bells go off?

When we wring our hands and fret about our children turning out to be gay because apparently that's the "trend these days", doesn't the red flag whip about in the wind?

When we reserve our for-women-by-women-feminism only for the women we like and unleash the misogyny within upon the women whose pages have been ripped right out of our good books, doesn't the little voice pipe up then?

This goes for everyone; when our righteousness is reserved solely for the people we like, it is selective righteousness and not the sort to be relied on.

It is grounded in nothing.

It will float on by whenever the wind changes direction.

Bias.

That is rooted.

In the lack of exposure.

In the lack of knowledge.

In carefully, consciously and deliberately nurtured ignorance.

In fear.

In stubbornness.

In indifference.

Deep down in the conscience of those of us unwilling to accept difference.

If we don't consider you exactly like us, you can't sit with us.

You can't sit near us.

You can't breathe near us.

You certainly can't breathe our oxygen, how dare you!

You definitely don't deserve the same rights we believe are owed to us by virtue of the high horses on which we rode in here.

Bias is that weed, it steals the light and the nutrition and will thrive while the rest of us wither away.

It is planted in our filth and we take it in, some of us feel the alien within and reject it.

Most of us adapt to it, accept it, give it a place of pride alongside the oxygen that flows in our bloodstream.

It takes over us.

We become it.

Biased.

And as a godforsaken consequence, we act on it.

Again and again and again.