On birds and bias
and the children at the table
What’s the big deal? Don’t they come back to the house they had in the first place? Doesn’t it also show them working together? Aren’t they living happily ever after, with a new baby bird?
“Have they started hatching?” says my spouse Janyce peeking her head into the living room.
“No. And I don’t think they will today,” I say.
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m having a green tea break on the couch, sipping from my hot mug, and watching Youtube on our flat screen TV hung on the wall. I have it cued up to the Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam where Jackie, the female bald eagle, is sitting on two eggs in her nest of branches high atop a pine tree in California, overlooking a grand vista.
I usually don’t care much for my high definition television—I find that everything looks like a made for TV special or a daytime soap opera, except when it comes to nature videos. Here’s where the technology really shines. It’s as if I’m right in the nest with them. I can hear the wind blowing through the needles, shaking the tree, and even feel the sun on my face.
Everything is calm in the nest until suddenly Jackie starts screeching and Shadow, her mate, comes swooping in from offscreen and lands on the edge of the nest. I can hear Janyce’s footfalls on the basement stairs as she comes running up from her office.
“What happened?” she says.
“Looks like a changing of the guard,” I say. We both silently watch, Janyce still standing in the doorway as the mother eagle launches off the side and soars with outstretched wings into the expanse of sky, turning into a small wavy line against the blue gray hills in the background, and leaving her mate to settle in over the eggs and take his turn. After she has left the nest, Shadow pokes around at the straw and twigs with his sharp beak, moving them around, re-fluffing up the bedding.
“Good, clean up when you get home,” says Janyce.
At that moment, I remember clearly one of my favorite childhood books called The Best Nest. I have often wondered if that picture book I read by myself when I was probably in first grade is why I have this thing about birds now, and why I grew up wanting parakeets, and why I put up bird feeders in my yard as an adult and take great pains to attract as many different backyard species as I can.
But that’s not why I’m thinking about it now. I’m remembering something else, jogged in my memory by Janyce’s derisive tone and offhand comment, that the male eagle in this pair should “clean up when he gets home.” I’m also wondering if that little book has in any way influenced some of my unconscious biases over time. I have a hunch that it has.
Here’s the other thing I like about technology. I no longer have this book but the Internet does. In a couple of quick key strokes, I can pull up the book and watch a video of someone reading it aloud. I’m shocked by it, actually. As page after page turns, there’s Mrs. Bird yelling at Mr. Bird. “I hate my house,” says Mrs, Bird. “You’re wrong,” says Mrs. Bird. “You make too many mistakes,” says Mrs, Bird. They build the nest together, collecting all the items from various places, like a team, just like this eagle pair is a team. But when Mr. Bird questions the suitability of the last place they pick (Mrs. Bird’s choice) she dismisses him and overrides him. Turns out she is wrong in the end and they both wind up back in the house they originally had. Mrs. Bird doesn’t apologize, because it’s her prerogative as a new mother to change her mind.
Okay, okay. I can hear the “cancel culture” critics right now. This is a children’s book from the 1960s and a specific point in time. And there are plenty of books out there that have it the other way around.
What’s the big deal? Don’t they come back to the house they had in the first place? Doesn’t it also show them working together? Aren’t they living happily ever after, with a new baby bird?
A colleague of mine sent me a video today of Vernā Myers doing a TedTalk on bias. It’s an arresting talk, full of humor and illustrated examples of why stereotypes are so harmful, and why, if we ever want to affect change in the world, if we want to stop perpetuating racism through generation after generation, we have to get past our denial and look at our own unconscious biases.
Here’s an old one of mine: I was married for the first time when I was 23 and a new mother at 25, and my husband Jim couldn’t do anything right. Looking back, I sounded exactly like Mrs. Bird. I don’t actually see things this way anymore. But for years, I think I believed unconsciously that mothers were more discerning than fathers. It justified my relentless criticism. It also contributed to our divorce. Did I get this idea from my constant reading of this beginning reader book when I was about six or seven? I don’t know. But I have a hunch that maybe it did.
Vernā Myers says: First we’ve got to get out of denial and see our own biases, and we’ve got to move toward things that make us uncomfortable and not away, and finally, we have to call it out when we see it happening because there are children at the table. Those same children will hear the remarks, the sexist joke, the racist slur, the gender stereotype, the flat out falsehoods, and take them in. Unconsciously.
It’s Saturday morning, the first day of spring, and I’m about to press publish on this blog post, and get myself outside on what is looking to be a nice day. But first, I press play on the Eagle video cam, and watch the sun rising over the hills in the distance, listening a few moments to the sounds of crows and shorebirds calling out. One of the Eagles flies back into the nest and they take turns again. Is it Jackie or Shadow? I can’t tell. Turns out, it doesn’t matter much either. It’s just how it is.