One of the first things one learns as a social psychologist is that everyone is capable of bias. We simply are not, and cannot be, all knowing and completely objective. Our understandings and views of the world are partial, and reflect the circumstances of our particular lives. This is where a discipline like science comes in. It doesn’t purge us of bias. But it extends what we can see and understand, while constraining bias.
-- Claude Steele (Chapter 1)

Importance: The topic of Steele's book is bias, both explicit and implicit, but never outright hatred. He says here that everyone has biases, because it is the nature of the human brain to look for and patterns, and often, to overapply them. In Whistling Vivaldi, Steele does not set out to eradicate bias. In fact, he says that it would be impossible to do so. Rather, his goal is for people to recognize their biases and...