The Historian Dilemma: “But Isn’t That Biased?”

It's time for another historian dilemma post! Today, it's on the statement "But isn't that biased?"

This actually relates very closely to a conversation I had with a neighbor when I told her I'm getting my history BA and plan to actually do something with it. We started talking about biases and how we can go about dealing with them.

"But isn't that biased?" is actually gets under my skin every single time I hear it. Usually, I can hold back the sarcastic response that first comes to my brain. Typically, that response is something like "What isn't biased when it comes to human interpretation?"

This is something that I feel like we all need to acknowledge. Everything that revolves around the human species - art, language, literature, interpretation, communication, etc. - has some underlying bias. The bias isn't always obvious, especially if it's one you grew up with without someone identifying it and calling it out for you.

So if you're studying history, either as a class or a first-year undergrad history major, I'm about to let you in on a secret if you're asking "Isn't that biased?" Everything, as I mentioned above, is biased. We, as historians in some capacity, have to learn to work with that bias. There are multiple ways to do this, but we can't get rid of it.