Be More

BE MORE is a Brooklyn-based social enterprise that applies cutting edge cross-disciplinary research to eradicate bias in key industries to save lives, improve top line performance, and reduce wasted costs. It aims to create a measurably better world where conscious awareness and rationality drive decision making so all of humanity can grow and reach its full potential. 

[bemoreamerica]

Because, this is a time to be thankful for what we have, and equally important, remember that not everyone has lives quite as comfortable. #Thanksgiving #prayfortheworld #mlk #Quotes #Tuesday #thankful #BreakingBias #BeMore #love #peace #prayforpeace #mlkquotes #Thoughts

[bemoreamerica]

Learning how to #fundraise on this #funday #Friday! Thanks to @bklynfoundation and #expert #fundraiser! Here's some scenario playing and getting comfortable with "the ask" 🐼. #BreakingBias #racialjustice #SocialJustice #Nonprofit #donate #giving

[bemoreamerica]

A fantastic group of #leaders and #changemakers! Our half-day #presentation #training for #Hacking #UnconsciousBias with @newyorkinsight's #Board of Directors was a huge success and honestly, a lot of fun!! 🤓🤓 There is so #gratitude #hope #change #learning and #community building possible if we can come together and just #talk #share and be! #Fall #November #BreakingBias #SocialJustice #Diversity #inclusion #change #Dharma #Buddha #Sangha #equity #equality #racialjustice #implicitbias #Mindfulness #GarrisonInstitute #NewYork

[bemoreamerica]

Thursday Spotlight: Rosalind Hudnell, Intel’s Chief Diversity Officer, is helping Intel become a more inclusive and diverse company! She has helped Intel to outline a 2020 workforce goal, so they can attain a certain level of diversity in the company by 2020--one of many new programs that corporations are now consciously trying to implement. Awesome! #BreakingBias #NoGeneForRace #Diversity #Intel #RosalindHudnell #Prejudice

[bemoreamerica]

Happy #HumpDay! Selam the intern here--I'm catching up on some work in one of the MIT libraries before class. Here's to hoping your Wednesday (and mine!) is productive and pleasant :) #productivity #work #BeMore #workflow #fall (at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT))

[bemoreamerica]

#BeMore connecting with the amazing wordsmith @j_ivy @pointsoflight conference. #BreakingBias #ServiceUnites #Houston (at George R. Brown Convention Center)

[bemoreamerica]

It’s #VisionFriday! 

This past Monday was Indigenous People's Day, and one of our Vision2040 videos contains an excellent explanation by Johnny Buck, co-founder of Native Youth Leadership Alliance, helping Native American youth create community based change. His thoughts on ‪#‎sustainable‬communities by 2040 challenge us to move forward in changing the current state of our society. ‪#‎BreakingBias‬ ‪#‎Native‬ ‪#‎NativeYouth‬ ‪#‎Vision2040‬

What's your vision for the future? What can we change by then?

[bemoreamerica]

Could it be that a driver choosing to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk has something to do with the pedestrian's race?

Bias shows up in all facets of our society. Be More is committed to eliminating that bias by training professionals (currently, physicians) to get rid of theirs, and raising awareness that people do, in fact, need that training! One day, bias will no longer be everywhere we look. 

[bemoreamerica]

Be More Monday Lunch Read: A Visit From the Pope and This Week’s News Digest

Be More America serves mission-driven organizations to understand unconscious bias, its causes, its impacts on business decision making, and specific tools to reduce it. Our content and interventions are rooted in leading neuroscience and social psychology.Our goal is to enable mission-driven organizations to fully embody their purpose to do good at home and in the world. Currently, Be More America develops in-person and online training for physicians and other doctors to reduce their unconscious bias and provide adequate healthcare for all. Learn More at www.bemoreamerica.org

Happy Monday Everyone!

Hope Monday’s going well so far, whether you’ve been up since 6AM or are just now rising and shining. Here’s some news to digest while you...well...digest :) during a well-earned lunch break (or maybe breakfast). News this week includes the Million Man March, an interesting racial inequity study, and last week’s Be More blog post.

This Week In News: 

Million Man March: Justice Or Else

(Read the full CNN Article on the Million Man March here)

(Read another perspective--New York Times--article here) 

The Million Man March's 20th anniversary occurred Saturday, 10/10/15. Thousands marched gathered with the theme “Justice or Else” in DC, presenting what’s been a called a controversial, but powerful message about racial inequality in the United States, reminiscent of Malcolm X’s days--and indeed, current Nation of Islam leader  Louis Farrakhan was present and made many remarks. While not everyone agrees with his message, the effects and impact of the march make it clear that racial inequality is a prominent idea on many Americans’ minds in the year 2015, and people across all ethnic groups and cultures have had something to say about it. 

California Bans the Use of “Redskins” for School Sports

(Read the full Reuters article here) 

Particularly relevant as today is Indigenous Peoples Day, an incredibly controversial--to some, downright disrespectful--holiday still celebrated by parts of the United States. But ultimately, we’re glad California’s taking action to create a healthier environment for Native American students and a respectful school environment for all. 

An Interesting Study: Racial Inequality in Missouri--Sobering Statistics and Facing the Reality.

(Read the full New York Times article here) 

(Paraphrased from article:) A commission appointed by Missouri’s governor after the events of Ferguson calls for sweeping changes to racial divides in the state, one of the effects of which includes a 198-page report, containing sobering details on the clear inequalities. Among 47 top priorities, some include that 14.3% of black elementary school students were suspended at least once during a recent school year, compared to 1.8% of white students. Be More is committed to helping professionals eliminate their unconscious bias, and is currently working with professional physicians to address health care inequality--it’s possible one day this goal may include teachers as well, since it’s clear from studies like these that those unconscious biases still exist. 

Be More Blog Post: 3 Things The Pope Taught Millennials on His Visit to America  

Pope Francis safely arrived back in Rome this morning, ending his historic visit to America. His visit enthused people on all sides of the political and ideological spectrum. People with faith and those without. Christians and non-Christians.

To me, what sets him apart from other faith and non-faith-based figures is his uncanny ability to speak to all people based on certain fundamental human values: justice, equality, peace, opportunity, and concern for the Earth. Based on these values, he expressed his opposition to the death penalty, the manufacturing of weapons, economic inequality, mass incarceration, immigration restrictions, and climate change naysayers.

He did not, however, explicitly express his views on marriage, the women's right to choose, and other social issues that are highly political in our nation. Some pundits have read political stances into his broad statements based on certain assumptions about the Church's point of view. Such interpretations I believe are misguided and are antithetical to the Pope's unwavering commitment "to bring the entire human family together in pursuit of a sustainable and integral development."

1. Walk the Talk. 

The Pope repeatedly emphasized the importance of social and economic justice and cultivating compassion, understanding, and concern for our fellow human beings. He complemented his words by spending time with the least of these, those who are most marginalized in our society: the homeless, the incarcerated, the undocumented, and people living in material poverty.

After addressing the U.S. Congress, he had lunch at a homeless shelter. He visited a school in East Harlem, one of New York's poorest neighborhoods. He visited a Philadelphia prison. He even tweeted gratitude for the "help of domestic workers and caregivers."

Many of us millennials share the Pope's values, but how many of us actively pursue those values in our actions?

2. Lead by Example.

 The Pope is the head of one of the oldest and wealthiest political institutions in the world. Yet, he hasn't been subsumed by his institution's economic and political prowess. He chose to sit on a simple wooden chair built by day laborers for his Mass at Madison Square Garden. He drove around in a little Fiat throughout his U.S. trip. Many of us have noted the humility and simplicity with which the Pope carries on the affairs of his powerful position. Yet, these simple decisions speak to the Pope and his faith's larger aspirations and values. How many of us can bring intentionality into the smaller and bigger decisions of our daily lives? How many of us remain caught in the spiral of Keeping up with the Joneses?

3. Think beyond the Single-issue.

 Our political landscape is ridden with single-issue voters. However, our lives are not based on single issues. Rather we are caught in, as Dr. King once said, "an inescapable network of mutuality," of interconnection and interdependence. And the Pope revealed this message of interdependence in the way he chose or chose not to speak about certain issues.

When speaking about respect for life, he called all life sacred, particularly the life of those most condemned by our society, those on death row. When speaking about climate change, he called destruction of biodiversity as a threat to the very existence of the human species. What prevents us from leaping away from our passion for single-issue and fit those issues in our holistic aspirations for our humanity and Earth?

For me, the Pope's visit was incredibly inspiring. As a millennial, I often think about the type of world I will be leaving my children if we continue on the current economic and political path. I also know that as the most populous generation, it is we who will inherit the impending trials and tribulations of the uncertainty of our economy and ecology.

While we did not play a role in creating most of these systems, we certainly will be held responsible for creating solutions to these challenges, whether we like it or not. For this end, the Pope's visit was highly instructive and serves as a guide for our personal and collective path forward.

[bemoreamerica]

Get Excited

...for the week (and the month) to come! 

Be More America is a nonprofit, serving mission-driven organizations to understand unconscious bias, its causes, its impacts on business decision making, and specific tools to reduce it. Our content and interventions are rooted in leading neuroscience and social psychology.Our goal is to enable mission-driven organizations to fully embody their purpose to do good at home and in the world. Currently, Be More America develops in-person and online training for physicians and other doctors to reduce their unconscious bias and provide adequate healthcare for all. Learn More at www.bemoreamerica.org

Hey, Selam the Intern here! It’s almost 11pm on a Sunday right now, and I have some posts planned for tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait--I’m excited for the week (and the month) to come, and here’s why you should be, too!

We have lots of things to share with you at Be More--news on the progress and challenges of the racial inequality field, how to check your own unconscious bias, uplifting stories, and coverage of tragic and controversial news. We’ve decided to start sharing on a regular schedule, so you can stay up to date with the goings on in the world--beginning tomorrow at noon! 

You’re invited to lunch--at any Be More America social media platform. 

At 12 noon, we’ll share news and comparisons to past efforts in the racial inequality field, as well as updates on #BreakingBias efforts today. Catch up on important events of the past couple weeks on your daily lunch break, wherever you’d prefer--Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or Instagram! Be sure to follow us everywhere, so you don’t miss it...:)

Twitter: @bemoreamerica

Instagram: @bemoreamerica 

Facebook: (link) https://www.facebook.com/bemoreamerica?ref=hl

Tumblr: bemoreamerica.tumblr.com (@bemoreamerica)

Website: www.bemoreamerica.org

Mindfulness and Active Thinking

Tuesday is when the week really gets going. Pause for a moment each evening at 6pm to remember what’s really important, with the weekly Be More America Tuesday blog post. We’ll share blog posts and news from the bemoreamerica.org website, including posts and important insights by founder and CEO Anurag, COO Vasudha, and our Social Media Intern, Selam. Life can be busy--but let’s not let it get the best of us. 

Envision the Future

Be More America combines practical action with visionary goals--and keeping sight of the vision is just as important as working hard on our short term goals. Weekends are for setting the meticulous bits of work aside, and thinking (between resting) about long term goals, and reviewing past accomplishments.

Friday mornings we’ll share a #vision2040 video from Be More America’s summer project, some thoughts to go along with it, and some questions--what would you like to see happen in the future? 

[bemoreamerica]

thursday thoughts

Selam the Intern here! Studying this morning for the first exam of the semester this evening....sigh... Especially here at MIT, where I go to school, it's easy to get caught up in work, and forget to think about what goes on in the rest of the world, or the importance of activism and advocacy. Students are usually known to be agents of change, but sometimes, those same students are too busy to worry about change. And that's true of many working professionals or really anyone in any intense occupation. When we ignore the need for change so much, sometimes our biases and prejudices seep into our work, too, because we forget to think about changing them. Then, they start affecting others. Be More America is committed to eliminating bias by training working professionals, helping them eliminate their unconscious bias. It is a an effective way to combine mindfulness and practical action. Here's to a productive--but mindful--Thursday. Don't forget what's truly important! 

Follow us at bemoreamerica.tumblr.com for more thoughts, advocacy, and discussions on race and bias.

#breakingBias #mindfulness #happyThursday #productivity #coffee #socialJustice#mornings #work #priorities #studying # reflections #prejudice #race

[bemoreamerica]

...and you can help! 

Be More America is a nonprofit founded on practical, effective-thinking ideals. We aim not only to present visionary goals, but also, to achieve them. 

Currently, Be More is working on training (in person and through virtual tools) physicians in eliminating their own unconscious bias, to even the healthcare field. As Martin Luther King once said, it is the “moderate” that sometimes is the most frustrating, those who have not actually participated in discriminating against others, but who participate merely by doing nothing. And this isn’t even anyone’s fault--when you don’t know something, you simply don’t know something. 

To all activists on tumblr who want to educate and make practical changes that seem to be missing in the world, join Be More America’s mission by liking and reblogging this post, or following us. Getting the word out is more than half the battle!

[bemoreamerica]

A Wild Intern Has Appeared!

Hey! It’s good to (virtually) meet you all! My name is Selam, and I’m going to be interning at Be More America, Inc. for the next three months! I’ll be handling a part of the social media management and content at Be More. I’m pretty excited to get on board with this mission, since I’ve been rather inherently involved with racial affairs for my whole life, and intentionally read, studied, or worked with social justice ideas since I started high school. Currently, I’m a college sophomore at MIT, studying mechanical engineering.

(^My roommate last year took this beautiful photo of the snow-covered Institvte!)

You may or may not be wondering why a mechanical engineer wants to tweet, update, vlog, or blog about social justice issues. One is that in addition torobotic swarm printing and adhesive circuits (both MIT Media Lab projects), I have, all my life, enjoyed writing. I like especially how in the modern age, narratives can happen in so many different mediums--not only novels, stories, and articles, but blog posts, podcasts, film, television, the entirety of the internet. At MIT, I also blog for MIT Admissions, a platform designed to help prospective students understand MIT culture and the admissions process, or sometimes just provide bits of advice and experience from current students. I find modern forms of writing and social media really powerful, with the ability to change whole communities and ideas. The second, more important reason is that I’ve inherently had to deal with social justice and racial issues my whole life. My mother is Chinese and my father is Ethiopian, and I grew up in Colorado, USA. Furthermore, I’ve always felt that there are very few biracial or multiracial people who are deeply involved inboth or all of their cultures. I speak, read, and write Mandarin Chinese fluently and can communicate in Amharic. I’ve been to both of my parents’ nations multiple times throughout my life, and celebrate all the cultural holidays, eat all our different types of food, listen to African and Asian music chart-toppers. And I have tremendous amounts of state pride for Colorado, where I’ve lived all my life, hiking or camping up and down the Rocky Mountain range at least four times a year. My parents both raised me to be proud of being different, and to take pride in all of the cultures I belonged to. In elementary and middle school, being mixed was awesome. I would bring Ethiopian art for “Show and Tell”; my mom would make dumplings for whatever school function we had, and generally I was just another carefree, happy-go-lucky kid. Nobody really asks little kids hard questions or makes them have serious conversations--they just let me run around and be myself. And little kids don’t always ask hard questions either, or initiate serious conversations. I just ran around, being myself, exploring anything and everything I could reach. I think it was probably in middle school that I was exposed to the more sinister, insidious aspects of racial and cultural differences, and at that time, not noticing became a disadvantage rather than a blissful side effect of youth. I could never articulate why I felt uncomfortable in certain situations, or even understand my own emotions. I did not know why I received so many comments about my hair, or why some of those comments made me feel weird about it. I could not articulate why people saying things like “but you’re not really black” or “you’re one of the asians, though” or “OMIGOSH! You’re blasian??” made me angry or uncomfortable. I did know that the boys at the back of my English class throwing bits of paper into my hair was very upsetting, but I did not realize until possibly even college that they had never done that to any other girls’ hair, curly or not. The curls of my African heritage were uniquely different from the hair types of white people, and my school had very few other black kids. In high school, I often joked there was only half a black kid in most of my classes (me), which, in a school of almost 4,000 students, was a sure sign that there were significant diversity issues, which, unfortunately, I never felt they addressed very well. On discovering Tumblr (yes, Tumblr) as well as just growing more mature and reading more race and discrimination oriented literature, I began to realize that there actually were many other people like me who suffered the same confusions and problems, and these problems were not only my own, internal struggles. I realized more fully that discrimination of many forms still certainly exists. Being biracial presents its own unique problems--biracial people do not have a single unifying culture or attribute, so there’s less dialogue on the topic or group action. As I said before, many biracial people, depending on where they grew up or what their families were like, identify more strongly with one race or culture than another, and I truly identify fully with both. Throw in other things, like gender or socioeconomic status, and it soon becomes apparent just how, well, diverse issues of diversity, race, and social justice can be! While I (and the rest of the nation) (and probably the rest of the world) am still figuring it out, and potentially will always be figuring it out, I think the most powerful piece of knowledge I acquired was simply knowing that I was not alone, and that it was not all in my head. That’s where Tumblr and other social media came in, and the way I discovered how powerful social media can be. To see people who were like me--just teenagers on the internet who, alongside racial dialogue, often re-blog potatoes--rather than a sophisticated study publishing statistics on race was very comforting. Serious academic studies are very important to contribute to racial dialogue, of course, but seeing very normal, ordinary people discussing these topics on the internet validated my own experiences, and made me more comfortable with myself. I hope, throughout my time here at Be More, I’ll be able to lend some of that individual experience to this fantastic mission, and its ultimate vision. See you next time! --Selam  

P.S--look forward to more! I’ll be posting the staff’s own excellent blog posts on tumblr throughout the week! Follow us if you’re into social justice and advocacy discussions (which I know like 2/3 of you are) :D

[bemoreamerica]

We must #BeTheChange. 100 beautiful years of life for this strong and inspirational leader! Her efforts and vision live on today. She is guiding force for us at Be More to make true and lasting change--to speak up, educate, and transform. #BreakingBias #Detroit #Voting #SocialJustice #RacialJustice #Equity #Equality #GraceLeeBoggs #RIP 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙏🏾

[bemoreamerica]

Hey everyone, Selam the intern here. I'm excited to join Be More and it's mission, so much that I wrote a whole blog post about it. Hope you enjoy reading it! :) bit.ly/pokemonForSocialChange #lol #socialChange #pokemon #memesForChange #newbie #intern #bemore

[sensiblefeminist-blog]

If you use hate to “level the playing field” all you are doing is normalizing hatred.

Ideally, the goal of equality is that all people are treated with respect. “All hated equally” degrades the quality of life for everyone.

[bemoreamerica]

Racism seeps into every split and fracture of this broken society.  We must understand the depth of these wounds before attempting to mend them.

Emma Gong, Be More Intern