Noticing Race

Of all the essays in the book Are We Born Racist?, about which I'm writing this series of posts, the one I wish everyone would read is child psychologist Allison Briscoe-Smith's "How to Talk with Kids about Race." (Here is a shorter version, as it originally appeared in "Greater Good" magazine under the title, "Rubbing Off").


We can engage in all kinds of efforts to unlearn, reprogram, override and free our adult minds from the bias we've absorbed, but surely one of the most fruitful and effective applications of the new data about how prejudice is formed is to figure out how to prevent it from forming in our children's minds in the first place.

Briscoe-Smith's advice: Talk about race. She cites studies with babies and toddlers demonstrating that when presented with faces of people of a different race, they gaze longer at them, which is how young children process new information and "suggests that racial difference is salient to them." Various kinds of studies indicate that children of all races notice race much earlier than we think they do, and long before they have the language to voice their observations.

Here's why it's so important to talk about race with children:
1. Children do notice race, and sort people based on it, but without the judgment we adults ascribe to those divisions.
2. If we are silent, awkward or anxious about the issue of race, children begin to absorb our tension, the message that it's something to be avoided.
3. When we fail to give our children language for understanding the differences their brains are already processing, we limit their opportunities to build skills for connecting across race.

And the cycle repeats itself.

For those of us who were never given language to address race, and in fact taught that it was impolite, dangerous or wrong to address it, beginning those conversations with our children can be daunting. Briscoe-Smith suggests practicing with other adults to increase comfort with the subject.

It's worth the effort. First of all, it's good for us as adults. Briscoe-Smith's own research suggests that "children of parents who talked more about race were better able to identify racism when they saw it, and were also more likely to have positive views about ethnic minorities."

Best of all, talking about race can make a big impact in children's attitudes. "A study by Aboud and Anna Beth Doyle took 9-to-11-year-old children who held prejudiced attitudes toward ethnic minorities and placed them with other 9 to 11 year olds who held less biased beliefs. They asked the kids to talk for two minutes about some of the race-based beliefs they had endorsed earlier in the study. The results were remarkable: After these conversations, the high-prejudice kids demonstrated lower prejudice and more tolerance. Given this impact of a two-minute conversation with a peer, imagine what a childhood of conversations with parents could achieve."

Here's more on the topic:
"Talking About Race with Kids" on "Wild Thoughts from Uganda"
"See Baby Discriminate" from a 2009 Newsweek

Next posts, how to talk about race with children, and five picture books that might begin the discussion.

We Can Change Our Minds II

Are We Born Racist? (see intro post) offers further insights into how we can affect the prejudices our brains automatically manufacture.

I've gleaned from the book that there are two sources of implicit bias. I'll call them Sorting (the instantaneous calculations our minds use to place people into in-group - "Us" - and out-group - "Not Us"), and Associations (the cultural messages we absorb.)

Sorting seems to be hardwired into human brains and therefore not a function we can turn off. "Conditioned by millennia of tribal warfare and fierce competition for limited resources, we are always looking for cues to help us make snap judgments about others," Susan Fiske writes in the book's title essay.

But an automatic "Not Us" snap judgment about another person doesn't mean an automatic value judgment; it's just data to the brain. We can consciously direct what our minds do with information that is categorized unconsciously.

"In the neuroscience studies looking at race, ... amygdala (vigilance-related) reactions vary by individual, corresponding to other signs of prejudice... (T)he alarms in whites' amygdalae do not go off to famous black faces. Likewise, their brains grow accustomed to new black faces after repeated exposure," Fiske writes. We can affect the brain's recordings by having more interactions with the people it labels "Not Us."

These interactions can also change our Associations. "Years, even generations, of explicit and implicit cultural messages - gleaned from parents, the media, firsthand experiences, and countless other sources - link particular physical appearances with a host of traits, positive and negative," Fiske reports. It is, it seems to me, another form of hardwiring, often invisible tracks laid down throughout the foundation of society, in our manners and mores, our ideals and our institutions.

Choosing to be vigilant about uncovering what we've internalized - rather than denying that those messages are there because they don't match our intentions or our self-image - is a powerful step towards loosening the grip of automatic bias on our behaviors. And building significant cross-racial relationships and meaningful connections, such as working together towards a common goal, can gradually override even the most fundamental prejudices.

The Research on Bias

"(P)eople usually resist the notion that they might be perpetrators of prejudice. Their resistance often rests on the fundamental assumption that prejudice and racism are all-or-none qualities, where one is either racist or not. Yet this assumption leaves no room for the possibility that one might sincerely hold egalitarian goals and simultaneously be at risk for perpetrating racism."

from the introduction to Are We Born Racist? (see previous post)

Over the past several decades, hundreds of studies have been mapping bias of all kinds, including bias based on race. Here's a taste of a few of the findings:

* In 2007, NBA referees were more likely to call a foul against a player of a different race, and MLB umpires were more likely to call a strike when the pitcher is of the same race, despite extensive training on how to make fair calls.

* When white people see unfamiliar black people, their brains show an activity spike in the amygdala, the region that lights up when a person or event is perceived as threatening (see this study, among many).

*Implicit racial attitudes are conveyed through body language and other nonverbal behavior, despite the white subjects' intentions.

What brain research documents is automatic or unconscious racism. You don't have to want it, believe it, think it or feel it to have it - and to act on it. Bias is simply the result of how our brains categorize people.

"Neuroscience has shown that people can identify another person's apparent race, gender and age in a matter of milliseconds," Susan Fiske writes in the book's title essay. "In this blink of any eye, a complex network of stereotypes, emotional prejudices, and behavioral impulses activates. These knee-jerk reactions do not require conscious bigotry, though they are worsened by it."

The research corroborates the witness of people of color who have been calling attention to white bias and its impact for centuries. Because much bias is implicit, or unconscious, it's often undetectable to the person who has it but can be quite apparent to someone who's experiencing the impact of it.

This seems like an enlightening explanation for why people of color and white people so often find themselves on opposite sides of a racial divide, yawning between them like a chasm, seemingly with no way across. It explains how it can be that again and again people of color detect racism in certain attitudes or actions, statements or stands, inclinations or institutions, while white people deny it, absolutely certain that there's not a trace of race in what they say, think or do.

The more we stop resisting and start acknowledging the possibility and prevalence of white bias, the more we free ourselves to examine what we can actually do about it.

Our Brains on Race

Recently I read Are We Born Racist? New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology, a collection of short essays originally published in Greater Good Magazine. It's a highly accessible overview of recent findings documenting the prevalence of implicit, or unconscious, bias, and offering concrete steps to ameliorate the prejudices our brains form.

There are so many juicy ideas packed into this slim volume, divided into three sections: The New Psychology of Racism, Overcoming Prejudice, and Strengthening Our Multiracial Society.

The book has inspired a series of posts sharing some of the information I gleaned from the essays and adding my thoughts to the conclusions reached by the authors and editors.

Here's what I'm planning to post over the next month or so:

1. The Research on Bias

2. We Can Change Our Minds

3. Noticing Race: Conversations and Strategies

4. Reviewing Picture Books About Race (6 titles)

5. Trying Too Hard

6. Smile

7. Getting to Know You: What Groups Can Do

Please join in the conversation.