The Only Use of

bias

in

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Southern white illiterates brought their biases intact to the West from the hills of Arkansas and the swamps of Georgia.†
p. 212.9

Definitions:

(1) (bias)
a personal preference -- especially a prejudice that prevents objective consideration

or:

any tendency to move in a particular direction -- such as a car that tends to want to swerve toward the right
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Specialized meanings of bias include:
- statistics: any of several errors that distort results
- textiles: a line or fold that is diagonal relative to the sides or grain of the fabric
- electronics: a steady-state current that is forced through an electronic device