A few years into my work as an attorney for Humana, I received a call from one of the regional leaders who asked me if I would be willing to travel with him and members of his staff

Unconscious Bias

A few years into my work as an attorney for Humana, I received a call from one of the regional leaders who asked me if I would be willing to travel with him and members of his staff from time to time to meet with physicians on the medical staff of hospitals in his region to discuss potential business arrangements between the physicians and the hospitals. My first thought was to tell him that I could leave within the next 5 minutes! Turns out I had a bit more time than that!

The drill for this work had me get on the company plane in Louisville very early in the morning and travel to the Gulf coast and pick up the regional leader and members of his staff and then travel to a particular hospital to meet with physicians. This was a surreal experience for me and one that God surely ordained and not one I could ever have arranged on my own!

We were usually met at the private airplane hangar by a car and driver and then headed on to the hospital. One trip was slightly different. This was a trip to a hospital in a Georgia city. I won’t share the name of the city, but it hosts a major golf tournament in April each year and gives the winner of the tournament a nice-looking sports jacket! For this trip we rented a car and made our way to the parking garage at the hospital. As we left the car and headed to the hospital entrance, the regional leader was hailed by a man at the other end of the garage. I found this a bit unusual for several reasons. First, the man hailing the regional leader with “hay Jack got a minute” was using the regional leader’s first name which neither I nor his staff ever did. Second, the regional leader was always impeccably dressed. For the regional leader, business casual would have been a sport coat (not a suit), dress slacks, and blue dress shirt (not a white shirt) and tie! But for that day it was suit, white dress shirt, and tie. The man hailing him had a white coat that very much needed to be laundered and pressed; his slacks were about two sizes too small; and a haircut and shave were very much in order! I wondered if custodians at this hospital wore white coats! I was concerned how the interaction between the two would play out, but my concern was unnecessary. As it turned out, the brief conversation had very little to do with business but more about family and recreation. When the conversation ended, the regional leader asked me if I knew the gentlemen. Obviously, I did not. As it turned out, the gentlemen I thought might be a custodian was the highly regarded chief of surgery at this acute care hospital which specialized in treating patients throughout the South who had suffered serious burns! This man’s gifted hands put patients shattered lives back together!

I wish I could say that this experience removed for all time my temptation for unconscious bias. It absolutely did not. Just something about surgeons always fooled me. A dad on my daughter’s club soccer team and a dad on my son’s t-ball team turned out not to be teamster drivers but instead neurosurgeons! What does all this mean for me? Am I guilty of unconscious or implicit bias? Absolutely 100% guilty as charged with no need for a high-priced and high-powered consultant to place me in a small group to show me videos, charts and graphs or ask me “got you” type questions to prove it! So the next time I pull up next to a white guy with shoulder length hair, tattoos, and body piercings on a Harley or a black guy with dreg locks, tattoos, and body piercings on a Harley at the four way stop at the shopping plaza near my home, I can ponder that either rider may be in route to lead a Bible study or work in a food pantry. But until I know that is truly the case, you can be sure that if I stare at them for more than half a second, I will be sure to extend a friendly wave with a big smile on my face!

God bless you and thanks for the privilege of your time in reading my blog.