Racism & Educational Inequality in the Lives of African-American Youth Week 5: Racism and Inequality in the Classroom Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016

Reminders/Announcements Proposals due via Canvas at 11:59 on Friday, February 26 (or sooner!) Next week: students from Boston Arts Academy to discuss their experiences with YPAR No Ewing/Ralph reading Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016

Today Lecture: the [early-childhood] psychology of race Reading Response Discussion Break Sharing Paper Ideas, Resources, and Feedback Activity: Designing a Policy Intervention Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016

Where does racism come from?

When does prejudice arise? Teachers & parents may assume their children do not have racist beliefs because they do not witness it explicitly, but children as young as three demonstrate pro-white/anti-black implicit bias in white children as young as three (Aboud, 2003) Studies demonstrating race-based prejudice in young children date back to the 1930 Stereotype threat has been observed as early as kindergarten (Ambady et al., 2001) Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016 From Hirschfeld, L.A. (2012), “Seven Myths of Race and the Young Child,” Du Bois Review 9(1),17-39.

How Children See Race Children understand race as more than skin deep They understand that race is heritable, and that other traits such as body shape/hair color are less so (Hirschfeld, 1995) They understand that race is constant across the lifespan (as opposed to other categories like occupation) Race is also, from an evolutionary perspective, extremely recent “I don’t want any boys to sit here.” Children may understand racial categories before they understand racial markers Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016

“In playmate choice or in deciding whether to accept a toy from someone, it may not be that race doesn’t matter, it may be that race is still undecipherable at the level of the individual. When young White children make such ‘errors’ they appear to be color-blind since their choices do not reveal the tacit, underlying racial prejudices they already endorse.” (Hirschfeld, 2012)

Race as “Inappropriate” for Children These findings contradict our social idea of children as tabula rasa People feel uncomfortable talking about race with young children, particularly white parents (Katz, 1983) Colormuteness—the intentional exclusion of explicit racial terms from public dialogue, and the concomitant belief that to mention race is to reveal oneself as racist (Pollock, 2009) Challenge: children are influenced as much or more by social norms as by parents Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016 From Hirschfield, L.A. (2012), “Seven Myths of Race and the Young Child,” Du Bois Review 9(1),17-39.

What’s to be done? “The literature on social stereotyping and prejudice reduction is enormous; it spans multiple countries, disciplines, and decades. If a single point might be gleaned from this vast literature, it is that prejudice reduction is exceedingly difficult to achieve and maintain via short-term intervention.... Interventions often produce effects among only a subsample of participants... [and] when successful interventions include multiple measures of prejudice, they routinely produce significant effects for only a subset of the measures employed.” (Bigler and Hughes, 2010)

Reading Response: Big Questions What are the long-term effects of energy spent on resilience/coping? (Catherine) I am left wondering how a culture and system that does not even view my children as human or worthy can adequately serve them? (Edverette) How do we provide students with Aronson & Steele’s “human motives” (p competence, appearing competent, and social belonging) (Tony) How do we help people account for their real personal experiences that contribute to bias? (Kabrillen) How do we deal with microaggressions without putting onus on students? (Evan) Can create “unwanted visibility” (Noah) How do we understand & respond to real and justifiable anger? (Jakina) What is the role of/relationship to the juvenile justice system? (Kristie) How do we understand dehumanization even when it doesn’t lead to physical violence? (Natalia)

Designing Policy Solutions Choose an empirical finding presented in one of the readings Identify potential root causes Choose 1-2 potential causes for a policy intervention. Who should do what, at what level? How would your policy intervention account for intersectional identities? Why might this be effective? What potential challenges might you face Eve L. Ewing - A-111M - Harvard Graduate School of Education, Spring 2016