What Does My Headscarf Mean To You Analysis

In “What Does my Headscarf Mean to You,” Yassmin Abdel-Magied is speaking about unconscious biases. Which is when we, as humans, make assumptions about people based on their gender, skin color, appearance, and even age. Yassmin Abdel-Magied expresses that making these assumptions does not make us less of a person, it is natural. However, it does make one realize how ethnocentric we actually are. Although, when it begins to affect your occupation or career or even one’s existence in society, is when it starts becoming problematic. Yassamin Abdel-Magied discusses an example at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in the seventies and eighties, acting biased against women’s roles in orchestras differ from male orchestras. In this time, men were perceived to be 95% better than women in the orchestra. Blind auditions were then held which lead women earning spots in the orchestra. This forced the Boston Symphony …show more content…
From placing your hair behind your ear to judging someone based off of their appearance. This is what is called unconscious biases. Even if it is without intent, I am confident that most everyone is guilty of it. As Yassmin Abdel-Magied said, it makes us human to do so. In my opinion, the first step is to recognize the problem. When trying to think of an example of unconscious bias , I think of something more related to pop culture. In the television show The Voice, during the blind auditions, the judges are making their choices strictly based off what they are hearing versus seeing the person. They are often shocked of the gender, race, age or ethnicity of the artist which. I fully believe that often times if the judges were able to visualize the artist a different decision may be made in regards to choosing them or not. I really appreciate Yassmin perspective on this and found it to be very thought provoking which will only continue to benefit me throughout my college and adult