I grew up in a background where it was OK and sometimes even expected to have negative feelings about those who are different than I was. Until I was an adult I never really challenged these assertions by my parents. I cannot make excuses for this any more than I can change the past. This was simply the way it was.
Without getting into a somewhat involved story of how things changed and why they changed, I will just say that I moved away, met some really great people who were not at all like me and who accepted me and I lived in a house with them. I learned a lot from these people, especially how to accept myself. I think the root of hatefulness is self-loathing or lack of self-awareness or acceptance.
All these things aside, there is still an "automaticity" in thought of which Blink speaks with regard to preference of one race or another. Part of this, in my opinion, deals with the fact that we are generally more comfortable in groups of people with whom we are more familiar. I never had a black friend until I was in college, so it makes a certain amount of sense that I might be more comfortable around those of my own ethnicity. What doesn't make much sense to me is why even as a little I was so interested in foreign languages and cultures, but I digress.
The other aspect which trains these automatic tendencies is the mass media. I believe we either see more instances of young black men depicted negatively that other races or those instances for some reason stick out in our minds. So it is not much of a stretch for me to think that possibly, at least with this particular group, that I may harbor some sort of subconscious dislike, as depicted in Blink. However, I never really knew what to do about it. The book suggests that we must actively pursue opportunities to interact with diverse groups in order to become more comfortable with them and habituate these tendencies such that we are not as preferential to our own previous groupings.
As someone who serves a university community, I know that I have good intentions and that in terms of my official interactions I try to treat everyone fairly. However, I cannot exactly know what I am doing on an automatic level. The director of our diversity office is someone I have been helping recently with some technical issues. I plan on asking him his opinion about some of these issues.
The IAT I took was an ongoing study related to the acceptance of fat people versus those perceived to be thin. I am a guy who could stand to lose about 50 pounds. I am aware that society has some pretty high expectations for weight, especially among women. Moreover, my IAT results said that I have a strong preference for think people.
This is a little more difficult for me to accept in one sense. I believe that I treat everyone fairly and render excellent customer service to anyone who asks me. I realize the IAT is chiefly speaking to how my brain responds. It bothers me to think that I may not have treated someone fairly on any basis, but especially this one because I am fat. I guess I want to hear about more experiences here. Do you think that having a strong preference to one group means that you are not treating the other group fairly?
How does this fit into the educational milieu? I can think of a few implications and am borrowing from the questions posed in activity five:
Firstly, education is about learning to work with and learn from others. The tools of society is partly comprised of developing a skill set which will make one a willing worker within a global marketplace. it is important that we set the stage early on as being one of diversity, fairness and cooperation.
Second, Learning in part is definitely a matter of building a common reference of associations. We want children to draw from experiences which capitalize on basic native reactions and cultivate a more robust curiosity from the presentation of new information. Behaviorism and automatic responses are the catalyst which begin students on the path to higher levels of discourse. Students, therefore, must be conditioned to accept these linkages. Early grades in my mind serve the important objective of acclimating the student to the schooling process. Simply being part of a classroom and following directions ensures smoother classroom operation in the years to come.
The quote I select from James makes me think of my son. I want to make sure that he treats everyone with respect and judge them according to their character and not with regard to how they look. I therefore need to be a good example such that he might imitate my behavior:
We become conscious of what we ourselves are by imitating others—the consciousness of what the others are precedes—the sense of self grows by the sense of pattern. The entire accumulated wealth of mankind—languages, arts, institutions, and sciences—is passed on from one generation to another by what Baldwin has called social heredity, each generation simply imitating the last.
I think it seems possible to have a strong preference to one group and still not allow it to cause you to treat the other group unfairly. One could say that the important factor is to realize you are doing it. People may have a tendency to prefer thin people rather than overweight ones, but keeping this in mind when they make decisions can help keep things fair. Let’s say you are interviewing a possible new hire, and they are overweight. Perhaps your unconscious may assume that this person will be slow and lazy, and give you the inclination to not hire them because of it. I think you would need to take a step back and decide whether your unconscious associations were causing this reaction. Is there anything on the individual’s resume that made it seem they may be lazy? What were their hobbies? They may actually be incredibly active and energetic, and their weight has nothing to do with it. You would want to be hyper-aware that you might make judgments based on weight, and make sure that you do not let them affect your final decision.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think this can also lead to problems. For example, you might choose a less-qualified, overweight person over a more-qualified, thin person because you do not want your possible unconscious bias to impact the decision, and you overcompensate. This can still be an unfair bias. These ideas can be related to learning as well, as teachers and students should make sure that they keep associations that come from the media or experience in mind when making decisions. As Gladwell said, just because these associations are outside of our consciousness does not mean they are outside of our control.
I think you raise some good points. Based on my knowledge of public administration and hiring processes, I know that any good hiring process will attempt to quantify certain data. As a former hiring manager in IT, we would score interview questions. It served us for discussion purposes, but it also settled some differences of opinion.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the things Blink tried to related is that we may treat people differently without even knowing it. Say I automatically avert my eyes when approaching a group of young black college students wearing a certain style of clothing? If they perceive that I am aloof or indifferent to them, how might that taint their future interactions with university employees or with me if I am in a position to serve them?
This is what troubles me. In my heart, and especially with students, I want to be present and helpful to everyone. But what if this automatic mind of mine is betraying this desire?