On my Facebook:
艋舺臺灣 Enjoy an exciting and interesting article - free!
(Padding on my own shoulder: What an accomplishment of today!!!!!)
IAT, IAT, IAT! Do you like to know some stories behind the IAT??
The new article of mine- " Some classroom stories behind the Implicit Association Test (IAT)" was
published on my blog: https://ci8395.blogspot.com/…/aug-22-w-2019-story-of-studen…
艋舺臺灣 If you are interested in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) - though, not without controversies, here is the link provided by Harvard University. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.
艋舺臺灣 Just added an episode to the above writing (an hour ago).
Long and meandering, again, beyond 280 words, absolutely violated the Twitterature spirit
- very "exciting", isn't it? :)!
Testing your patience- free of charge. No pains, no reads.
艋舺臺灣 Do you watch James Town on PBS (Thursday nights from 9 to 10 pm. Wisconsin schedule)? (Strangely speaking, the last 2 episodes were not on the air? Any friend knows what's going on?) I am addicted to it.
This year is the 400th anniversary (based on the year of 1619).
Project 1619 is available. Here is a brief:
https://www.cbsnews.com/.../the-1619-project-nikole.../
CBSNEWS.COM
"The 1619 Project": Nikole Hannah-Jones on confronting the truth about slavery
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The following casual (non-academic) writing is a reminiscence of assignment activities related to a learning competency: Examine the impact of bias and behavior on relationships (personal and group) of my Diversity Studies classes.
A while ago, in my Diversity Studies classes (face to face, online, blended/hybrid, and the night class), one of the assigned readings was titled "Blink in Black and White" by Malcolm Gladwell.[1] A student jokingly responded with a quick question, "Another race article, again? Can I choose a different theme?" (See, can this be counted as an example of instant "Explicit" Association? You will know what I meant if you are able to continue browsing through this meandering writing.)
Here is a note to explain the undertone of this student's request (I suspected some other students having a similar question). There are six major diversity themes in this course: race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability and their intersectionalities. Among them, the race theme is the least favorite across all the classes, throughout all semesters.
I learned a lesson about why I had to assign some of the 59 readings in the book, in particular, regarding the race and class themes. About twelve years ago, I started teaching this course. As semesters went on, I realized most students, if let them choose their "favorite articles" to do assignments, approximate 50% of students would choose "disability" theme, about 30% related to gender theme, 10% sexuality, the rest of 10% spread over Race/ethnicity or Class, not to mention the intersectional topic, even though most of the main theme intersecting with other hidden themes which were not easily detected by students.
The lesson-learned told me that I had to assign some readings related to race and class which almost interface with each other in most human conditions in the US. However, they are so easy to "be neglected", whether "explicitly" or "implicitly" skipped through students' minds. Apparently, there are several reasons embedded in students' prior knowledge, experience, and upbringing to understand why these two themes are so "unpopular". This article is getting too long. I need another writing to explain it from my observation. Stay tuned.
The student's question prompted me to realize the title of this assigned reading, obviously tagged with a heavy-contrast of “Black and White” which might immediately associate with racial issues in students' minds. I needed to do a quick brief about this reading. I emailed everyone to broadcast that it was an interesting article going beyond human consciousness. It was about the implicit association test (IAT). Then, I gave a brief introduction before they tackled this assignment.
The IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998) is a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person's subconscious association between mental representations of objects/ concepts in memory. It is commonly applied to assess implicit stereotypes held by test subjects. The test's format has been expanded and used to investigate biases in different situations, such as racial groups, gender, sexuality, age, and religion, as well as assessing self-esteem.
It was developed by social psychology researchers Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji in 1995. They pointed out that the idea of implicit and explicit memory could apply to social constructs. Memories inaccessible to awareness can influence actions. Its associations can also influence attitudes and behavior. This enables researchers to understand attitudes that cannot be measured through explicit self-report methods due to a lack of awareness or social-desirability bias. Nevertheless, the IAT is the subject of much controversy regarding the validity, reliability, and whether test results are an accurate representation of implicit bias.[2]
With this basic understanding, I suggested students that there be a full test available https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. After completing the assignment worksheet, if they felt interested, they could take it, in addition to the simple experiment provided by the article.
The outcome of this assignment was complicated but was not unexpected. I will share it after the following episodes are delineated with an aid of psychology/social psychology.
The main reason that I started assigning this reading during that time was also triggered by my Contemporary American Society class. A discussion regarding the death of Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida brought forth heated debates. Though that was not a conflicting event between the police force and civilians, it caught the media’s attention. All my Sociology, Diversity classes paid attention to it. The discussion turned into quite sensitive with regard to the racial contents.
Here is a brief of Trayvon Martin event. He was a 17-year-old African American high school student. The shooter, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man was the neighborhood watch coordinator for his gated community where Martin (with a hoodie on) was visiting his relatives at the time of the shooting. Zimmerman shot Martin to death for an unclear suspicion. Martin was unarmed, with a physical altercation between the two, Zimmerman injured. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted.
Having been teaching Diversity Studies for more than a decade at a 98% white/Caucasian faculty-student-body Technical College setting, I understood the pedagogical challenges related to where students came from and their learning conditions. Facilitating with balanced information was a must, which never lacked disputes. For rendering the Confirmation Bias was challenging. How did you detect that? Surely, most of them were implicit, and the main source to find them was from the writing assignments with an occasional discussion in the classroom or online. Since being "politically correct" became part of the no-harm awareness, some learners quickly adopted the "norm", no matter how I emphasized the first amendment and a safe-n-warm, respectful learning environment which was meticulously nurtured. This condition made some "straightforward, say-what-I-believe" students valuable for teaching and learning, yet vulnerable.
As aforementioned, most students were white (so as the faulty body, 98%), coming from working-class backgrounds, mostly, supported by government financial aids. As mentioned above, adopting information to fit one's own belief system was a common phenomenon reflected in some students’ writing assignments (doesn't it also exist in most people's mindset, including myself?) On the issue of police and African Americans, I naively hoped the concept of implicit biases could help explain at a deeper level of understanding to reduce or ameliorate the emotional charge implicitly or explicitly, and “save the messenger”.
After Trayvon Martin event, later, Eric Garner in New York City was choke held by an NYPD officer and then dead. Less than a month later, the unarmed teenager Michael Brown was killed in the police shooting at Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s tragedy set off numerous protests and demonstrations across the country. They caught the nation’s attention regarding police force vs. minority issues. But before Martin, Garner, and Brown, tragedies started earlier with fewer media’s attention.
To understand why learning theories and practices of implicit biases might help further policy-making and training to ameliorate the severity of the problems, let me trace back the controversies with a timeline[3] regarding some major conflicting events:
July 5, 2011, the 37-year-old mentally ill and homeless man Kelly Thomas, beaten by police officers, 5 days later, on July 10, he died. In a video shown in court, he was seen laying on the ground being kicked and punched by the officers as he screamed for his father and help. Both officers, Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli were found not guilty of second-degree murder and were acquitted of excessive force and involuntary manslaughter.
October 6, 2012, Gil Collar, an 18-year-old student shot to death under the influence of drugs. A University of South Alabama police officer, Trevis Austin was cleared of wrongdoing due to self-defense and did not bring up any charges.
October 22, 2013, the 13-year-old boy Andy Lopez Cruz was shot dead due to a deputy sheriff in Santa Rosa, northern California believing that Cruz was carrying a real rifle.
It turned out Cruz only holding a replica of a rifle. Police declared that Erick Gelhaus shot Cruz for “fearing for his own life”.
July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed after a New York police officer used a banned chokehold technique to restrain him, despite being unarmed. Garner was complained about selling loose cigarettes illegally. In a viral video, the black 43-year-old said: "I can't breathe". Daniel Pantaleo, the only officer that was investigated by a grand jury, was not charged.
August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was an unarmed black teenager shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer on the street Ferguson, Missouri. Some said he had his hands up in the air and the shooting led to protests and some violence for 10 days. In November, a grand jury said the officer should not face criminal charges in the case that led to a nationwide discussion about the treatment of black people by white police officers.
November 22, 2014, the 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by Ohio police in a public park as he was playing with a BB gun. He died on November 23. In the lawsuit, the family accuses officers Frank Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann of acting recklessly and failing to provide first aid and also name the city of Cleveland as a defendant.
December 23, 2014, a black teenager Antonio Martin, was shot and died on December 23 in Berkeley Missouri after police said he pointed a handgun at a white male police officer. The police added that the suspect was “known to them" but in the aftermath of the shooting, protests took place as relations between the black community and police deteriorated further.
February 6, 2015, Sureshbhai Patel was beaten by police in Alabama. His family said that he was left partially paralyzed after the beating. In a video released by police, it shows an officer throwing Sureshbhai to the ground after officers stopped him. The police officers tried talking to Mr. Patel who spoke little English. Larry Muncey, Madison Police chief, announced last month that officer Eric Parker would be fired, and he has pleaded not guilty to assault. His trial would be continued.
After these highlights of conflicts involving the police force and minority civilians, we might question why things happened this way. Observing from the classroom and students' assignments, a sense of supporting police's actions was slightly over sympathizing with African American victims. I still vividly remember one student who was a faculty member taking courses as part of the teaching-contract requirement. This student strongly accused the media's biases on issues which were no sensational values to be reported when black suspects attacked white policemen. Obviously, news reports (both from the conservative and the liberal camps) were revealing just a tip of an iceberg. As an "instructing educator" (I tend to call myself, just an educator), even being neutral might not be perceived as objective. Did some police officers deliberately discriminate against African Americans and the rest of the minority, or were there other invisibly rooted issues unrecognized by the mundane eyes and mind? Were these policemen outliers of this profession, or was it a pattern of such an occupation? If so, what were the remedies to reduce such tensions and conflicts? What were perceptions and reactions of the minority when confronting the police force? To what extent was the racial profiling understandable by most people, and why?
Being a racial minority myself (Asian, speaking with a cute accent which differentiates the American born Asian and the non-native English speaking "Alien" Asian), I did experience some “manageable", "unintended/implicit” biased events as a sociologist and artist, if not self-accused of being sensitive. More importantly, I would be able to decode it "sociologically and artistically" without being a "coward", and "laugh it off" without making a fuss, since you were the only Asian minority faculty in this school.
As human beings, we are still evolving. Our roots were not fully truncated from the animal kingdom. Like most mammals, human beings have two lima bean-sized neural clusters, called the amygdala, in charge of fear, rage, and aggression, in coordinating with the rest of the neural activities in the whole brain. Fear of uncertainty, unknown, strangers and threat from outsiders (others) is part of human emotions. This bio-psychological reality, indeed, makes thrilling movies, tyrannical oppression, law-n-order (most of the time), and the political fearmongering not just possible, but appealing.
Psychology explains that fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger. It is part of the human evolutionary process. “If people didn’t feel fear, they couldn’t protect themselves from legitimate threats, which in the ancestral world frequently resulted in life-or-death consequences”. [4]
Without adequate human interactions or social contacts, when encountering different races, genders, sexuality, faiths, languages and the rest of Others, individuals may react with suspicion, discomfort, unconscious fear, distrust, or even hostility (either explicitly or implicitly). There are numerous cases studied by sociologists and psychologists regarding abused, isolated children who were detoured, or missed the crucial importance of social experiences, show irreversible emotional and behavioral problems. With inadequate socialization processes and proper socialization agents. personality development was jeopardized. Most of them endured hardship and were unable to properly function in society.
In contemporary society, the social-fear goes beyond the bio-psychological aspects where the stakes turn into different forms. Not like the precarious struggles in ancient times against the voracious beasts, natural calamities, and power domination, the body and brain may still sense different types of threats continuously existing as lethal as long as resources are limited. From today’s perspective, as population incessantly increasing, people fight for scarce goods and services, or desirable assets, such as lands, jobs, opportunities for better educations, health care, leisure, fame, wealth, power, etc. "Unwanted and undesirable" competitions may trigger fight-flight-or-freeze responses when people perceive Others coming to share or fight for limited chances, opportunities, and resources. “As a result, people may find themselves avoiding challenges that could benefit them in the long run or hanging back during social interactions for no good reason”.[5] In society, it is not difficult to find people fantasizing about the "good old days", or desire to keep the "status quo". For the Others "cutting into line", no matter what reasons, is intolerable and have to be "curbed" in the name of improper skin color, gender, sexuality, class background, nationality, languages, accents, religions, ancestries, and the rest of non-mainstream bio-cultural attributes.
When people enjoy what is used-to-be part of the "good old time", privileged, or Haves group, the new competitive condition may engender threats. Thus, avoiding the new interactions can be adopted as an approach, because interacting with the new condition does not bring in short-term gains to themselves. In history, prolonging segregation, apartheid, or prohibition of interactions in friendship, marriage, business and the rest of human communications was sustained by a belief system, by laws, or by practices. The long term sheltered privileges, on the one hand, turn into invisible, not being aware, or taken for granted. On the other hand, it might gradually deteriorate the thriving vitality to compete. The long term invisibly privileged "Affirmative Action", may, one day, require to be over the surface and to be legalized for protection. Some stories related to the above mindsets were vividly depicted in the book: Strangers in their own land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right, 2016.
Fear, rage, and aggression are part of the human bio-mental state. But to differentiate human beings from the rest of animals is far beyond the bio-psychological scope of explanation and understanding. Sociology emphasizes the impact of socialization processes happening in families/communities, politics, economic systems, religions, and the rest of social institutions and the roles and functions of the significant socialization agents. As nurture to nature, so is an experience to biology. Nurture works on what nature endows, so human beings can gradually walk out of the animal kingdom to create a culture and manifest in civilization. Competition, conflict, corporation, and integration constantly happen in human societies. Without these dynamics, stagnation is a death toll, and among these interactions, human societies thrive on corporation and integration.
Psychology explains that fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger. It is part of the human evolutionary process. “If people didn’t feel fear, they couldn’t protect themselves from legitimate threats, which in the ancestral world frequently resulted in life-or-death consequences”. [4]
Without adequate human interactions or social contacts, when encountering different races, genders, sexuality, faiths, languages and the rest of Others, individuals may react with suspicion, discomfort, unconscious fear, distrust, or even hostility (either explicitly or implicitly). There are numerous cases studied by sociologists and psychologists regarding abused, isolated children who were detoured, or missed the crucial importance of social experiences, show irreversible emotional and behavioral problems. With inadequate socialization processes and proper socialization agents. personality development was jeopardized. Most of them endured hardship and were unable to properly function in society.
In contemporary society, the social-fear goes beyond the bio-psychological aspects where the stakes turn into different forms. Not like the precarious struggles in ancient times against the voracious beasts, natural calamities, and power domination, the body and brain may still sense different types of threats continuously existing as lethal as long as resources are limited. From today’s perspective, as population incessantly increasing, people fight for scarce goods and services, or desirable assets, such as lands, jobs, opportunities for better educations, health care, leisure, fame, wealth, power, etc. "Unwanted and undesirable" competitions may trigger fight-flight-or-freeze responses when people perceive Others coming to share or fight for limited chances, opportunities, and resources. “As a result, people may find themselves avoiding challenges that could benefit them in the long run or hanging back during social interactions for no good reason”.[5] In society, it is not difficult to find people fantasizing about the "good old days", or desire to keep the "status quo". For the Others "cutting into line", no matter what reasons, is intolerable and have to be "curbed" in the name of improper skin color, gender, sexuality, class background, nationality, languages, accents, religions, ancestries, and the rest of non-mainstream bio-cultural attributes.
When people enjoy what is used-to-be part of the "good old time", privileged, or Haves group, the new competitive condition may engender threats. Thus, avoiding the new interactions can be adopted as an approach, because interacting with the new condition does not bring in short-term gains to themselves. In history, prolonging segregation, apartheid, or prohibition of interactions in friendship, marriage, business and the rest of human communications was sustained by a belief system, by laws, or by practices. The long term sheltered privileges, on the one hand, turn into invisible, not being aware, or taken for granted. On the other hand, it might gradually deteriorate the thriving vitality to compete. The long term invisibly privileged "Affirmative Action", may, one day, require to be over the surface and to be legalized for protection. Some stories related to the above mindsets were vividly depicted in the book: Strangers in their own land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right, 2016.
Fear, rage, and aggression are part of the human bio-mental state. But to differentiate human beings from the rest of animals is far beyond the bio-psychological scope of explanation and understanding. Sociology emphasizes the impact of socialization processes happening in families/communities, politics, economic systems, religions, and the rest of social institutions and the roles and functions of the significant socialization agents. As nurture to nature, so is an experience to biology. Nurture works on what nature endows, so human beings can gradually walk out of the animal kingdom to create a culture and manifest in civilization. Competition, conflict, corporation, and integration constantly happen in human societies. Without these dynamics, stagnation is a death toll, and among these interactions, human societies thrive on corporation and integration.
“No one is born with hatred or intolerance”. I shared the above photo with students of Diversity Studies and Sociology classes. Some research in psychology (Kelly et al, 2008) examines that three-month-old infants demonstrate preference of the facial structure that is racially similar to them, but the study also points out that it is part of the first three months' learning outcome, for it does not occur in the newborn.
It may sound idealizing the easiness of human interaction and understanding. History witnesses how segregation, apartheid, alienation, unfair treatment/discrimination provoke more violence and destruction than ever. They jeopardize the proper functioning of the socio-economic and cultural development in human societies. For the long-term benefits for human species’ survival, genuine social interactions, pedagogy, and lessons supported by educational policy need to be encouraged, if not reinforced.
The following viral video may shed some light on this phenomenon, whether you question the research methodology and its validity. It is fun to watch, though.
Now, I am switching the gear to the outcome of Blink in Black and White reading-reflecting-writing assignment as I promised at the beginning of this writing. Not unexpectedly, around 90% of students vigorously defended themselves that they were not “racist” after having done the assignment, taken the experiments in the book, and tried the Implicit Association Test (posted here again, if you are interested in this test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).
About 5% of students were suspicious of the purpose in this type of test which made them feel uncomfortable or forced the sense of guilt. Approximate 1% of students questioned the legitimacy, validity and reliability of the test. In fact, I was glad to know a couple of students resonating to the controversies regarding the survey method, reliability, and validity after the IAT was published.
Generally speaking, class morale was quite low related to this assignment and the relevant learning activities. Keep in mind: the "unpopular, or challenging" assignments tend to drag down the positive outcome from students' evaluation of your "teaching professionalism"! Teaching, supposed to be a high-art created by the artistic endeavors, nowadays, turns into to compete with flowery-speaking politicians, talk-show mouthpieces, video games, and all sorts of artificial performances... Immediately, I provided more information in addition to the aforementioned IAT research project to emphasize this Unit's learning competency: “ Examine the impact of bias and behavior on relationships (personal and group)”.
About 5% of students were suspicious of the purpose in this type of test which made them feel uncomfortable or forced the sense of guilt. Approximate 1% of students questioned the legitimacy, validity and reliability of the test. In fact, I was glad to know a couple of students resonating to the controversies regarding the survey method, reliability, and validity after the IAT was published.
Generally speaking, class morale was quite low related to this assignment and the relevant learning activities. Keep in mind: the "unpopular, or challenging" assignments tend to drag down the positive outcome from students' evaluation of your "teaching professionalism"! Teaching, supposed to be a high-art created by the artistic endeavors, nowadays, turns into to compete with flowery-speaking politicians, talk-show mouthpieces, video games, and all sorts of artificial performances... Immediately, I provided more information in addition to the aforementioned IAT research project to emphasize this Unit's learning competency: “ Examine the impact of bias and behavior on relationships (personal and group)”.
So far, Blink in Black and White was quite a proper learning material (could be an "implicit bias" of my own?) and related learning activities for the homework to meet the competency. In more details, Implicit Association Test (thought, without controversies as mentioned) was designed to examine the role of unconsciousness or implicit association playing out in our belief system and behaviors. Because people make the connection much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in people’s minds than those between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to them. As mentioned at the beginning of this writing, students associated the title "Black and White" with racial issues initially. In fact, before I knew about IAT, my first browse at the Table of Contents of the newly arrived textbook, the title of this reading was immediately associated with the racial theme to me as well.
In short, the Implicit Association Test result typically reveals two levels of consciousness. The first level is our conscious attitudes which is what we choose to believe and act. It is part of our "waking consciousness".
In psychology, consciousness is our awareness of ourselves and our environment. Consciousness assembles information from various sources, enabling us to reflect on our past and plat for our future (Exploring Psychology, 2015). We try to fit in, conform to the normalcy, being “politically correct”, not to slip the tongue and the rest of “appropriate” behaviors reflecting the waking-consciousness of thinking and behaving. This condition was shown in most students’ assignments. They expressed how open-minded they were, and condemned prejudice, discrimination, and racism as immorality.
But, IAT also measures the 2nd attitude on an unconscious level – the immediate, automatic associations that lurch out before we have even had time to think. “We don’t deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes”.[6] So, what is unconsciousness?
Not all students of my Diversity Studies and Sociology had taken Introduction to Psychology to understand its definition. So, a brief explanation might be helpful.
It was through observing his patients, Freud discovered the unconscious. He questioned that some neurological disorders had psychological rather than physiological causes. Freud assumed that was a chain of mental dominoes connecting patients’ distant past to the troubled present. Through free association, he believed patients could retrace that chain of effects. He developed psychoanalysis and the associated treatment as a part of his theory of personality. He proclaimed that most of the people’s mind was hidden. Our conscious awareness is like the tip of the iceberg. Below the sea level is the much larger unconscious regions containing thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories, of which we are unaware. He stated that some of these thoughts we store temporarily in a pre-conscious area, from which we can retrieve them into consciousness. What interested mostly to Freud was the mass consciousness block which contained unsettling events which we were not consciously aware of them. But those hidden and/or repressed unconscious feelings and ideas powerfully influence us.[7]
Most students agreed that attitudes revealed the two levels of operations. And their conscious thinking and behaving might not be consistent with those of their unconsciousness. However, most students denied that they were a biased or prejudicial person. For students' unsettling feelings, I immediately explained to students from the sociological perspectives that the test result did not intend to expose the negative aspects of being a bad person since most students reported the shocking test result which was against what they believe about themselves.
Now at this moment, how about taking a look at this crash course video, and reflect what you have followed so far:
In addition, the assignment was intended to help us understand the power of unconsciousness or the implicit biases which grow out of individuals’ upbringing affected by different social institutions and economic-political socialization processes, such as social class, race/ethnicity, gender, family, religion, locality and the rest of contributors to the human diversity. The following two videos might shed some light on the power of the socialization process via significant social institutions and socialization agents.
The first one is an old and "blunt style" of racism. In modern time, racism has been evolving from its raw fashion into reverse racism, aversive racism, and current cliche of microaggression:
The second one is the well-known Westboro Church's religious and familial power in influencing its family members and followers. Though this is not a common practice of most churches, here is to serve as an example regarding the power of social institutions (in this case, mainly, family and religion) and its agents in shaping individual's implicit belief system:
In short, implicit biases come from a myriad of sources and most people are not aware of their existence. Furthermore, the vast territory of the unconscious mind is still waiting for further exploration.
After the feedback to students about their assignment, I shared the following videos to illustrate
False Consciousness/ideology, which was covered in the previous competency as examples regarding how ideology is formed, shaped, and "nurtured".
After reading, writing, discussion with applications, seemingly, most students got a further awareness toward the contents of implicit biases which had the roots in the evolutionary psychology, bio-psychological and sociological/ideological aspects of an interdisciplinary understanding. But I was not sure if I could evaluate how much critical thinking could overcome the implicit emotion attached to their unconscious level of attitudes. The fact was that the writing assignment was done through their waking consciousness.
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[1] Students were encouraged to read the whole picture from his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It is about how people think without thinking. It is about choices that seemed to be made in the blink of an eye, which, in fact, aren't as simple as they seem. Why do people make good or inept decisions and hard to verbalize to others? How do our brains work differently under different settings? Yes, it is related to consciousness and unconsciousness.
[2] Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998, 74 (6): 1464–1480)
[3] Raziye Akkoc (2015) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11446472/A-timeline-of-police-attacks-in-the-USA.html
[4] Refer to https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/fear.
[5] Ibid.
[6] "Blink in Black and White" by Malcolm Gladwell
[7] David Meyer, 2015 Exploring Psychology. Chapter 12, Personality.
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At the end of the above writing, I recalled an adversary meeting that I was required to participate in April 2018. I am thinking to add more vivid, real-life stories related to Implicit Association to enliven the above dry-and-cut writing. This event was posted on my Facebook on April 18, 2018, titled “What happens when the hands-on and minds-on are asymmetrical”.
(This Surprised me as well: I did not expect to go beyond 280 characters -thanks to Twitter’s generous conditioning on the parsimonious style of writing. Unfortunately, I violated this digital posting golden-rule on Facebook. Just a kind alert!)
Today’s meeting began at 7:00 am. and ended at 8 am. on April 18, 2018. So, I had a full agenda: my next class began at 1 pm, followed by office hours and then a night class from 6 to 9 pm.
Faculty D and I chatted about implicit biases for sharing right after the meeting. Because of this, I found an empty lab to send some relevant info to her from my last week’s lesson plan and partially intended for a break to reserve some energy for the rest of today’s activities. Who knows - the lesson plan elicited by such a short conversation between her and me brought up the following random thoughts? I found it might interest you. So I shared:
As a faculty teaching art and social science at a Technical College (sounds oxymoronic- even with a Learning Technology background?), and member of different Advisory Committees of the College, attending and contributing to the Advisory meetings become imperative to emphasize the importance of general education to the hands-on/occupational degree programs from the humanity, social/ behavioral science perspectives. After all, during a time when courses engaging with the mind are constantly subject to being eliminated or reduced, such an imperative deserves to be paid attention to.
This is not the news anymore: the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology, and Spanish — while adding programs with “clear career pathways” as a way to address declining enrollment and a multi-million-dollar deficit. So as University of Wisconsin-Superior officials have decided to drop similar to Stevens Point’s, nine majors, 15 minors and a graduate program due to lack of “interest”, whereas, UW- Stout Math-Science department has the highest percentage of the diversity of hiring the non-native born mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists.
The democratization process of using hands to substitute for the minds/brains has been transforming the edutaining-business-technological complex. Liberal art studies tend to be deemed with the positive labeling as the extra-curriculum of the arm-chaired learners, the leisure-class, aristocrats, the brainy, and are beneficial of being the transferable credits, saving credit cost, as well as being a good candidate for the MOOCs/online delivery. Surely, it never lacks the not-so-nice perceptions, such as the target and/or the lamentation of the math-science-phobic, the undecided, the moratorium, the job-market pragmatists, the digital nation, and the “required: otherwise-I won’t- graduate”.
Knowingly, the modern era of rapid economic and technological change has expanded the role of the dual education system in the labor force, in particular, the continuous vocational educational training. Countries such as Germany, Austria, and other similar countries, dual education may help them adapt more quickly to ongoing economic transformation. But the ideal model of hands-on and minds-on is not exactly like the aforementioned dual educational system. So the old question pops out again- - WHO and WHY should study liberal arts? How can liberal art studies enhance human material productivity? Or simply put, as one of my students “challenged” me in one of the early weeks of this semester, “I just want to be a policeman. Why do I need to take Diversity Study which is nothing to do my future career?”
Indeed, to cultivate a well-rounded potential employee and citizen, both hands-on and minds-on programs should be "Equally" emphasized - ideally. Nevertheless, in reality, the learning outcomes of the hands-on programs tend to be tangible, measurable, and quantifiable, that earn much attention, success, and recognition for extra resources or rewards. Whereas, the minds-on subject matters (liberal art learning), face quite a challenge to see those intangible factors ingrained inside learners' mindset brought to the school (even some faculty members as well, including myself...) confounding the liberal art contents and pedagogy. This phenomenon is nothing new over centuries across the globe. Thus, you might question - To what extent can liberal art studies be taught/facilitated? What and how to authentically assess/evaluate the liberal art learning outcomes when so many confounding factors tied to learners’ upbringing (class, gender, race/ethnicity, the rest of identities/ideologies, and their intersectionalities), in addition to those of instructors’/facilitators’, circumscribed in the Technical College environment?
The missions of most Tech Colleges are to provide applied education that supports the regional workforce in the fast-changing economy and empower students for life- long learning to succeed in a global economy. The dual functions manifest in the integrated hands-on and minds-on educational and training curriculum and pedagogy - what a NICE TO HAVE idealism!! But do we have the luxury to HAVE TO HAVE? As so many Advisory committees that I have attended, this morning, no exception: the meeting began at 7:00 to 8 am. for the Dental Hygienist Advisory Committee. At the tech colleges, the partnership with local businesses is a big deal. On the agenda sheet, you see that 50% of the attendees are representatives of local businesses, in this case, such as Eau Claire Periodontics, Oakwood Hills Family Dental, Oral Surgery Associates, Masefield Dental Clinic, Clear water Dental, Menomine Street Dental, Pediatric Dentistry, and the rest are school administrators, department faculty, student representatives and the relevant body.
This type of serious collaboration has its symbiotic significance. Local taxpayers provide a great amount of support to the tech collages, and the big taxpayers' businesses need well-” trained” (vs. educated?) employees to provide community daily services and generate profits. The faculty body is based on the enrollment to offer quality education (often time, “Training”), while administrators rely on the needs of society and recruit capable faculty and adjuncts to engage in high-quality pedagogy with the recruited learners, and the school Board manages the budgets and fulfills the needs of the community and development, briefly speaking.
During the meeting, I was quite quiet. Keep in mind, if there is nothing nice to say, then just keep your mouth shut. But these days I have been reading more in details about W. E. B. DuBois, his philosophy, sociology, politics, activism, poems, writing, speeches...etc. in short, his soul, related to the domestic and global problems in an epitome of "racial line" existing long before his birth, and after his death, still to the present time. In the meeting, at the moment, the dual goals of missions that I care so much seemingly fading into the secondary scene.
I thought about the deeply rooted, conditioned, and reinforced racial ideology presented in the various social institutions, unsurprisingly existing in the academic disciplines, not to mention in the mass society, reiterated by DuBois all his life spotted on my heart when the program director was mentioning the soft skill issues during the middle of the meeting. I talked to my imaginary self: in this very white society, I shall never reveal any vulnerable part of me (not including my skin color and the “cute” accent) and pretend as well act out as tough and strong as possible for being a racial category beyond black and white. Then my thoughts switched back to the dual roles of the Tech College - regarding how DuBois critiqued on Booker T. Washington's thoughts and practices that are still so vividly resonated in contemporary society.
The meeting was going on. As usual, 99% of today's talking and discussion was about the technical training and relevant issues which, in fact, is the "Most Significant" component of the Technical education (or properly speaking “Training”), whether due to necessity, or the common practices. “How Booker T. Washingtoneaque it is !!!”- not just for the default black, but for the increasing working-class white and other colored population as well! (Having said so, I respect Washington’s assimilation ideology based on his slavery background. But I respect DuBois even more, ironically, for his not being the direct victim of slavery, and just because this, his great compassion, keen observations/sensitivities, perseverance, and emphatic capacity truly enlightens and inspires generations to come.)
I don’t like to think of myself as an arm-chaired faculty in many situations, but my thought was still lingering on the last night's read about a particular poem of DuBois when the meeting was close to the end. I thought this would be a smooth and nice meeting, but then I felt like speaking for "DuBois" as an "interrupting urge" to relate to the “soft skill” issues if nothing else was important enough in my mind at that moment. For, suddenly, the light-ball hit the Starbucks' event regarding arresting 2 African Americans popped into my mind. These two black men walked into a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia on Thursday, April 15 afternoon (2018) and sat down. Officials said they had asked to use the restroom but because they had not bought anything, an employee refused the request. They were eventually asked to leave, and when they declined, an employee called the police.
Some of the happenings were recorded in a video that had been viewed more than 8 million times on Twitter. It was even described by their own chief executive of Starbucks as “very hard to watch.”
Later on the Saturday Starbuck announced that they would treat anyone who walked into one of its cafes as a customer, whether they bought anything. It was the latest step the coffee company was taking as part of its ongoing response to the public outcry over the arrest of these black men.
Things kept on evolving more. In the next month of May 2018, Starbucks was in the high profile again after an employee wrote a racial slur on a customer’s cup. In October, two community board members in Brooklyn complained after they saw a coffee shop employee give Halloween candy to white children, but not black children.
Then, another event happened. A video emerged showing a white man verbally abusing a woman who was wearing a niqab at a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf store in Riverside, California. Staff refused to serve the man.
All these events ignited widespread criticism on social media, incited anger among public officials and prompted investigations.
I brought up this current event regarding why Starbucks CEO proposed of an Implicit Bias training for his 8.000 franchised stores to this early morning Advisory committee when the Explicit Bias was still part of the invisible reality. Now is a huge leap into the unconscious mindset which is targeted to be "Trained". Having said so, it is still a hope whether, goodwill, a lip service, business rhetoric, or a piece of a long-overdue-need-to-be mended patchwork...
Before finishing this writing, practically, I would like to share two old videos (can be controversial to students of different upbringing, faiths, class, sexuality…) that I used to show in classes as examples to business management relevant degree programs and the rest of other majors regarding why Diversity matters. It might help or hinder “making profits” in their future endeavors (not in the theoretical sense).
Finally, I would like to share the following well-reviewed documentary - Beyond Our Differences, released in 2008.
Though the film is long and from religious perspectives (not intended to exclude atheists or agnostic faiths), I focus on the good episodes which show how people are working together to enhance human understanding. From a myriad of social interactions and communications, the implicit bias might expose itself to tunnel light. Then, we won't be shocked by this unconscious package, which can be unpacked, learned, and understood. From there, unnecessary harm thus can be reduced.
Being the bridge, not the barrier, is our last resort to continue humanity toward a better future.
