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Danielle Slaughter

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How many times have you seen a meme of a Black child embracing a White child with a caption about children being innocent and not seeing color, or reminding us that they aren't born racist? These memes tend to come out in droves when discussions about racial bias are happening. A discussion that has been ongoing in the wake of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Renisha McBride, Sandra Bland, and the list goes on.

People high-five one another in the comments section and talk about the next generation giving them hope, but we all skirt around the reality that one day those same two children will likely distrust one another. None of us want to talk about how children actually learn prejudices. Instead, we all sit around pretending that everything will be okay in the future.

If we're really honest with ourselves, we will admit that things are not going to be okay in the future and that we're part of the problem. It's a hard to pill to swallow, but we need to acknowledge how we continue to perpetuate prejudice and/or racism in our everyday lives. Prejudice is an unfavorable opinion of a person due to their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc. Racism is what happens when you mix prejudice with power and use the two to discriminate against a group of people in a systematic manner.*

While dismantling systematic racism is a daunting task, here are five ways parents pass down prejudice, which can lead to the perpetuation of racism:
1. We Say One Thing, But Do Another
We tell our children not to judge a book by its cover, yet how many of us actually follow through with this when it comes to people? We stereotype and judge other parents on the playground all the time. I'm not talking about shaking your head because a mom is on her phone or because they're hovering over their children. Have you ever prevented your child from playing with certain kids at the playground because they have a single mom? Have you ever turned down a play date because you're worried about their same-sex parents? It's easy to think that they're not paying attention, but we know that children are sponges and are always paying attention.

We cross the street and lock our car doors when we see someone that we deem dangerous. Do you explain to your kids that you're locking the car door because you're in a parking lot alone at night? Or do you make a scared face and hurriedly lock the door with no explanation? You could do the latter because you're in an urban city and two Black teenagers walked by with hoodies or there are a group of white teenagers dressed in Goth-like attire. If you did the former, you'd prevent your children from drawing their own conclusions about your fear and later doing something similar.
2. We Blurt Out Offensive Things During Tense Moments
I'll admit that I'm guilty of this one. When they announced the no indictment for Darren Wilson after the death of Michael Brown, I was heartbroken and livid. I yelled at the television and openly discussed my disdain for "those white people," while talking to my husband. My then two-and-a-half-year-old looked on as I cried and my husband tried to comfort me. The next morning, I felt an intense guilt and hoped I hadn't passed down this form of prejudice to my child.

I've since learned to change the channel and avoid those triggering moments when he's present. My husband and I will give one another a look that signals needing to curb the conversation. While we know the realities of racial issues in America, we both are committed to providing our son with the information from a more neutral standpoint and allowing him to come up with his own ideas based on his experiences.

3. We Whitewash History

" Why is everything we learned in school a lie?" One of my college freshmen asked me this in class one day during a discussion about popular culture and social movements. His question was certainly an exaggeration, but also pretty true.

When we whitewash or diminish aspects of history as a means of protecting our children, we're not providing them with all the information they need to truly understand the systems of oppression that affect us all. We do our children a disservice when we pretend that racism and/or prejudice no longer exists. Instead, we must share the truth with them if we intend to dismantle the system in our lifetime. We can do this by finding age-appropriate books and movies that share the truth of these difficult moments in our history, and then answering our children honestly when they ask questions. We can expose our children to diverse cultural activities that expose them to both the good and bad parts of history. So, don't just celebrate the Fourth of July, but celebrate Juneteenth as well.
4. We Promote Respectability Politics
When we tell Black children that they must wear button-ups instead of hoodies if they want to be respected. When we make comments about same-sex couples flaunting their love in public or these relationships being shown on television. When we focus on what young women wear that "tempt" men. When we promote laws that place gender non-conforming people in danger.

We are teaching our children that only certain people deserve respect. We're telling them it's okay to show bias to someone who does not perform their roles in society the way we deem appropriate. We're teaching them to stereotype groups and leading them down the road of prejudice even though we think we're just protecting them.

The dangers that we are concerned about are definitely real, but we must explain those dangers to them. Instead of saying that hoodie makes you look like a thug or those shorts make you look like a hooker, we must sit down and explain to them the ways they may be viewed by people who are racist, sexist and/or prejudiced. Put the shame on society instead of the victims.
5. We Stay Silent During Uncomfortable Moments
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silences of our friends." This famous quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. always comes to mind when I'm tempted to stay silent in an uncomfortable moment. If you stay silent when your family and/or friends discuss hot button issues and state their prejudice loud and clear in front of your children, you're silently agreeing with the sentiments. Sure, you could talk to your children about it later to let them know that you disagree, but if you want to raise a social justice advocate, you need to model that behavior by speaking up in front of everyone.

I remind my family and friends often that I will not allow them to express prejudice against any group in front of my child. It's counter-productive to the person I want him to become. I recently found myself engaging in conversations about Target's gender-neutral bathroom stance and despite wanting to just walk away because the situation became a bit hostile, I didn't. I kept talking and providing facts about the issue because it's what I would want my son to do as well. I also know that not so long ago people who looked like me weren't allowed to use whatever bathroom they wanted, and I'm grateful to those who didn't stay silent in those moments.

Ask yourself if you want your child to be the one preventing a young girl from using the girl's restroom at school because her hair is short and she's not wearing a dress, or do you want them to be the child standing up for that little girl? Our prejudices can make the difference between our children being bullies or advocates.

Raising children is hard. Raising children who are socially conscious and aware is even harder. Admitting that we are part of the problem is probably the hardest thing ever. If we can all work to remove these five things from our parenting, I think we'll be further along on the journey towards acknowledging our privilege, checking our prejudice, and putting down our pride. The good thing is we don't have to do this work alone, we can do it together. Join me and other parents for Raising an Advocate's inaugural course, " Exposing The Three Ps: Privilege, Prejudice, and Pride."

*If you're interested in learning more about systematic racism and prejudice, check out Privilege, Power, and Difference.
Danielle Slaughter is the voice behind Mamademics, as well as the creator of Raising an Advocate, where she shares resources and offers courses on social justice advocacy in parenting. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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5 Ways Parents Pass Down Prejudice and Racism

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How many times have you seen a meme of a Black child embracing a White child with a caption about children being innocent and not seeing color, or reminding us that they aren't born racist? These memes tend to come out in droves when discussions about racial bias are happening.

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The knife fight experiment hints at the language gap. Some whites confine racism to intentional displays of racial hostility. It's the Ku Klux Klan, racial slurs in public, something "bad" that people do.

But for many racial minorities, that type of racism doesn't matter as much anymore, some scholars say. They talk more about the racism uncovered in the knife fight photos -- it doesn't wear a hood, but it causes unsuspecting people to see the world through a racially biased lens.

It's what one Duke University sociologist calls "racism without racists." Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, who's written a book by that title, says it's a new way of maintaining white domination in places like Ferguson.

"The main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits," says Bonilla-Silva.

"The more we assume that the problem of racism is limited to the Klan, the birthers, the tea party or to the Republican Party, the less we understand that racial domination is a collective process and we are all in this game."

As people talk about what the grand jury's decision in Ferguson means, Bonilla-Silva and others say it's time for Americans to update their language on racism to reflect what it has become and not what it used to be.

The conversation can start, they say, by reflecting on three phrases that often crop up when whites and racial minorities talk about race.

It's a phrase some white people invoke when a conversation turns to race. Some apply it to Ferguson. They're not particularly troubled by the grand jury's decision to not issue an indictment. The racial identities of Darren Wilson, the white police officer, and Michael Brown, the black man he killed, shouldn't matter, they say. Let the legal system handle the decision without race-baiting. Justice should be colorblind.

Science has bad news, though, for anyone who claims to not see race: They're deluding themselves, say several bias experts. A body of scientific research over the past 50 years shows that people notice not only race but gender, wealth, even weight.

When babies are as young as 3 months old, research shows they start preferring to be around people of their own race, says Howard J. Ross, author of "Everyday Bias," which includes the story of the knife fight experiment.

Other studies confirm the power of racial bias, Ross says.

One study conducted by a Brigham Young University economics professor showed that white NBA referees call more fouls on black players, and black referees call more fouls on white players. Another study that was published in the American Journal of Sociology showed that newly released white felons experience better job hunting success than young black men with no criminal record, Ross says.

"Human beings are consistently, routinely and profoundly biased," Ross says.

The knife fight experiment reveals that even racial minorities are not immune to racial bias, Ross says.

"The overwhelming number of people will actually experience the black man as having the knife because we're more open to the notion of the black man having a knife than a white man, " Ross says. "This is one of the most insidious things about bias. People may absorb these things without knowing them."

Another famous experiment shows how racial bias can shape a person's economic prospects.

Professors at the University of Chicago and MIT sent 5,000 fictitious resumes in response to 1,300 help wanted ads. Each resume listed identical qualifications except for one variation -- some applicants had Anglo-sounding names such as "Brendan," while others had black-sounding names such as "Jamal." Applicants with Anglo-sounding names were 50% more likely to get calls for interviews than their black-sounding counterparts.

Most of the people who didn't call "Jamal" were probably unaware that their decision was motivated by racial bias, says Daniel L. Ames, a UCLA researcher who has studied and written about bias.

"If you ask someone on the hiring committee, none of them are going to say they're racially biased," Ames says. "They're not lying. They're just wrong."

Ames says such biases are dangerous because they're often unseen.

"Racial biases can in some ways be more destructive than overt racism because they're harder to spot, and therefore harder to combat," he says.

Still, some people are suspicious of focusing on the word bias. They prefer invoking the term racism because they say it leaves bruises. People claiming bias can admit they may have acted in racially insensitive ways but were unaware of their subconscious motivations.

"The idea of calling it racial bias lessens the blow," says Crystal Moten, a history professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

"Do you want to lessen the blow or do you want to eradicate racism? I want to eradicate racism," she says. "Yes I want opportunity for dialogue, but the impact of racism is killing people of color. We don't have time to tend to the emotional wounds of others, not when violence against people of color is the national status quo."
'But I have black friends'
In the movie "The Godfather," the character of Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, hatches an audacious plan to kill a mobster and a crooked cop who tried to kill his father. Michael's elders scoff at his plans because they believe his judgment is clouded by anger. But in a line that would define his ruthless approach to wielding power, Michael tells them:

"It's not personal. It's strictly business."

When some whites talk about racism, they think it's only personal -- what one person says or does to another. But many minorities and people who study race say racism can be impersonal, calculating, devoid of malice -- such as Michael Corleone's approach to power.

"The first thing we must stop doing is making racism a personal thing and understand that it is a system of advantage based on race," says Doreen E. Loury, director of the Pan African Studies program at Arcadia University, near Philadelphia.

Loury says racism "permeates every facet of our societal pores."

"It's about more than that cop who targets a teen while 'WWB' (walking while black) but the system that makes it OK to not only stop him but to put him in a system that will target and limit his life chances for life," she says.

Racial bias is so deeply engrained in people that it can manifest itself in surprising places, says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at La Salle University in Philadelphia. He gave a hypothetical example:

"A white police officer in Ferguson may be married to a black woman and have black and Latino friends, but that doesn't mean the officer is above racial profiling," Gallagher says.

These old and new ways of talking about racism can be seen in how some whites and blacks perceive the events in Ferguson.

Many have already looked at them as something beyond a personal interaction between a white police officer and a young black man. They point out that two-thirds of Ferguson's population is black, yet the mayor, police chief and five of six city council members are white -- as are 50 of the 53 people in its Police Department.

Ferguson is like countless multiracial communities, they say: calm on the surface but seething with racial disparities beneath.

But those disparities are invisible to many whites, who often see themselves as victims of discrimination, writes Jamelle Bouie of Slate magazine in a recent essay, "The Gulf That Divides Us."

"Median income among black Americans is roughly half that of white Americans. But a narrow majority of whites believe blacks earn as much money as whites, and just 37% believe that there's a disparity between the two groups. Likewise, while 56% of blacks believe black Americans face significant discrimination, only 16% of whites agree," he writes.

"Many whites -- including many millennials -- believe discrimination against whites is more prevalent than discrimination against blacks."

But as Nicholas Kristof recently pointed out in The New York Times, the U.S. has a greater wealth gap between whites and blacks than South Africa had during apartheid.

Such racial inequities might seem invisible partly because segregated housing patterns mean that many middle- and upper-class whites live far from poor blacks.

It's also no longer culturally acceptable to be openly racist in the United States, says Bonilla-Silva, author of "Racism Without Racists."

Overt racism is so widely rejected in America that a white supremacist in Montana recently announced that he is creating a new inclusive Ku Klux Klan chapter that will not discriminate against people because of their color or sexual orientation. Instead, according to one report, the chapter's new mission will be to prevent a "new world order" where one government controls everything.

Another recent article revealed how white supremacists in America are facing such hostility at home that some have moved to Europe in an attempt to link up with far-right groups.

"The new racism, like God, works in mysterious ways and is quite effective in maintaining white privilege," Bonilla-Silva says. "For example, instead of saying as they used to say during the Jim Crow era that they do not want us as neighbors, they say things nowadays such as 'I am concerned about crime, property values and schools.' "
'Who you calling a racist?'
When protests erupted in Ferguson after the shooting this summer, various white and black residents tried to talk about race, but such discussions didn't bear fruit because of another reason:

People refuse to admit their biases, research has consistently shown.

Ross, author of "Everyday Bias," cited a Dartmouth College survey where misinformed voters were presented with factual information that contradicted their political biases.

There were voters, for example, who were disappointed with President Obama's economic record and believed he hadn't added any jobs during his presidency. They were shown a graph of nonfarm employment over the prior year that included a rising line indicating about a million jobs had been added.

"They were asked whether the number of people with jobs had gone up, down, or stayed about the same," Ross wrote. "Many, looking straight at the graph, said down."

Ross says it's even more difficult to get smart people to admit bias.

"The smarter we are, the more self-confident we are, and the more successful we are, the less likely we're going to question our own thinking," Ross says.

Some of the nation's smartest legal minds aren't big believers in racial bias either, and that could complicate efforts in Ferguson to reduce racial tensions.

Some say they could be eased by hiring more officers of color in Ferguson's police force.

But the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has been suspicious of efforts to achieve diversity in workforces, believing that they amount to reverse racism or racial preferences, legal observers say.

Some fear the court is about to get rid of one of the most effective legal tools for addressing racial bias.

The court recently took up a fair housing case in Texas where the conservative majority could very well rule against the concept of "disparate impact," a legal approach that doesn't try to plumb the racist intentions of individuals or businesses but looks at the racial impact of their decisions.

Disparate impact is built on the belief that most people aren't stupid enough to openly announce they're racists but instead cloak their racism in seemingly race-neutral language. It also recognizes that some ostensibly race-neutral policies could reflect unintentional bias. A disparate impact lawsuit, for instance, wouldn't have to prove that a police department's white leaders are racist -- it would only have to show the impact of having all white officers in an almost all-black town.

Roberts distilled his approach to race in one of the court's most controversial cases in 2007. The court ruled 5-4 along ideological lines that a public school district in Seattle couldn't consider race when assigning students to schools, even for the purposes of integration.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts said in what is arguably his most famous quote.

Roberts has equated affirmative action programs with Jim Crow laws, says Erwin Chemerinsky, author of "The Case Against the Supreme Court."

"Chief Justice Roberts has expressly said that the Constitution and the government should be colorblind," Chemerinsky says. "He sees no difference between government action that discriminates against minorities and one that benefits minorities."

What that means for Ferguson is that any aggressive attempt to integrate the police force could be struck down in court, says Mark D. Naison, an African-American Studies professor at Fordham University in New York City.

Unless a lawyer can find smoking-gun evidence of some police department official saying he won't hire blacks, people won't have much legal leverage to make the police department diverse, he says.

"Once the doctrine of disparate impact is weakened, you have to prove discriminatory intent in order to declare a practice discriminatory," Naison says. "Huge racial disparities in law enforcement can be tolerated if they are the result of policies which are race-neutral in how they are written in the law even through the implementation is anything but."

The courts may ignore colorblind racism, but ordinary people ought to be aware of it when they talk about racism, others say. Ross, author of "Everyday Bias," says being biased doesn't make people bad, just human.

He says people are hardwired to be biased because it helped keep our ancestors alive. They survived, in part, by having to make quick assumptions about strangers who might prove threatening.

"We need to reduce the level of guilt but increase the level of responsibility we take for it," he says. "I didn't choose to internalize these messages, but it's inside of me and I have to be careful."

Part of being careful is expanding our definition of racism, says Bonilla-Silva, author of "Racism Without Racists."

Racism has evolved, but our language for describing it hasn't, he says.

"Colorblind racism is the new racial music most people dance to," he says. "The 'new racism' is subtle, institutionalized and seemingly nonracial."

How long before another Ferguson erupts is anyone's guess. But if and when it does, the knife fight experiment suggests that before people look at videotapes, read police reports and listen to radio talk shows to form their opinions, they should do something else first:

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the new threat: 'racism without racists' - cnn.com

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The new threat: 'Racism without racists'

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The knife fight experiment hints at the language gap. Some whites confine racism to intentional displays of racial hostility. It's the Ku Klux Klan, racial slurs in public, something "bad" that people do. But for many racial minorities, that type of racism doesn't matter as much anymore, some scholars say.

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Anti-racism became racism a while back. But most lefties aren't as open in discussing the implications of that.

The outgoing chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison student government ripped her college upon departure, saying it "lacks the capacity, courage, and integrity to protect communities of color."

"Racism is a system designed to disadvantage people of color and create inequalities in each pocket os society. All white people are racist. Not only by upholding a system of disadvantage but being born into a conditioned environment where you are many steps ahead. Being a racist is not an option, it is a condition."

Let's, as the social justice left likes to say, unpack that knapsack.

We think of racism as a hatred or bigotry that you feel toward people because they are different. However the left's contention is that racism, like class, is a function of society. You are "born" into a class or into a race. And if your race is white, you're a racist. Just as if you're born rich, you're a capitalist oppressor.

If you understand that, you understand why the left is so violently racist. Their talk of "white supremacy" is the new capitalism. White people have to be destroyed for a progressive utopia (or abandon their whiteness the way wealthy people had to redistribute their wealth) the way that capitalists had to be destroyed to smash capitalism.

Being racist is a "condition". It's what happens when you're white. It's not an option. It's a skin color.

This is the intersectional left's own total racism in a nutshell. It's the most pernicious racist ideology in this country in over a century. And it's backed by the full weight of academia, the media and the entertainment industry.

It is one of the left's assaults on America that we are fighting.

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"All White People are Racist... Being a Racist is Not An Option, it is a Condition"

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Anti-racism became racism a while back. But most lefties aren't as open in discussing the implications of that. The outgoing chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison student government ripped her college upon departure, saying it "lacks the capacity, courage, and integrity to protect communities of color."

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'Stop and Frisk' is a threat to public health on a large scale.

Trial in the federal class action lawsuit on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy, Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al, begins on March 18. At stake is whether the controversial tactic is a racial profiling practice, which violates civil and constitutional rights. Filed by four plaintiffs who were stopped and frisked, the suit represents the entire class of people who have been racially profiled.

But racial profiling is not only a danger to a person's legal rights, which guarantee equal protection under the law. It is also a danger to their health.

A growing literature shows discrimination raises the risk of many emotional and physical problems. Discrimination has been shown to increase the risk of stress, depression, the common cold, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and mortality. Recently, two journals -- The American Journal of Public Health and The Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race -- dedicated entire issues to the subject. These collections push us to consider how discrimination becomes what social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger, one of the field's leaders, terms " embodied inequality."

"The scale and scope of stop-and-frisk practices in communities of color have left many residents feeling that they are living under siege," the CCR authors write. When we read the NYCLU's 2012 report on Stop and Frisk, it is easy to see why. In 2011, there were 685,724 stops. In 70 of 76 precincts, greater than 50 percent of stops targeted blacks and Latinos. In 33 precincts, that number skyrockets to over 90 percent. Perhaps most shockingly, the number of stops of young black men (168,126) actually exceeded the number of young black men in New York City (158,406).

However, supporters of Stop and Frisk argue that it is an effective crime control tool and, if you want to avoid a stop, then do not commit a crime. The problem is that 90 percent of black and Latino men stopped were innocent. What might this mean in terms of heightened vigilance and stress? Not only must black and Latino people in New York anticipate acts of prejudice from the police, but they also must know innocence does not reduce the risk of harassment.

Related Story

These are ways that discrimination becomes embodied during one person's life. But no person discriminated against is an island. When conditions of social injustice affect this many people, and prompt poor health outcomes, risk passes down generations. And this damage isn't going away any time soon. Even in the absence of discrimination, Nancy Krieger argues that populations "would continue to exhibit persistent disparities reflecting prior inequities."

"At a time when the first generation of African Americans born in the post-Jim Crow Era is only 40 years old," Krieger wrote in 2005, "it is probably not accidental that current life expectancy among African Americans resembles that of White Americans 40 years ago."

Racial profiling should be considered a social determinant of health, because it exposes people to discrimination and the fear of discrimination. Race may be a social construct, but racism materializes in poor health.

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'Stop and Frisk' is a threat to public health on a large scale. Trial in the federal class action lawsuit on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy, Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al , begins on March 18. At stake is whether the controversial tactic is a racial profiling practice, which violates civil and constitutional rights.

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Physiological and Psychological Impact of Racism and Discrimination for African-Americans

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The Ethnicity and Health in America Series is raising awareness about the physiological and psychological impact of racism and discrimination as it relates to stress during Black History Month.

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Decades after Martin Luther King fought and died for racial equality in America, racism is still very much alive. Now one study says there's yet another disturbed side effect, and that's how racism can affect your health. (In positive mental health news, have you heard about the latest mental health bill called Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act?)

Previous research has found racial discrimination to have negative effects on your mental and physical health (duh, right?), but researchers from Manchester University in the UK specifically looked at how repeated and systemic racism over time could impact your mental health. Using data from Understanding Society, a tool designed to help researchers gather statistics and answers from study participants over time, the scientists examined feedback from ethnic minorities in the UK. This included their experiences being shouted at, being physically attacked, avoiding a place, and feeling unsafe because of their ethnicity.

In the findings published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers concluded that continued racism has very real mental health effects. They found that minorities who had experienced repeated incidents of racial discrimination were significantly more likely to have mental health problems such as depression and anxiety than minorities who hadn't faced the same repeated incidents. Feeling unsafe and avoiding certain spaces or situations because of ethnicity had the biggest negative impact on mental health.

What's more, Laia Bécares, Ph.D., one of the study authors went on to say in a press release that even "awareness of racial discrimination experienced by others can continue to affect the mental health of ethnic minority people." So if you constantly see discrimination on the news, you could be impacted secondhand.

Previous research has shown that persistent anxiety can cause very real physical symptoms like muscle pain, fatigue, headaches, and insomnia. See your doctor if you're experiencing increased anxiety or symptoms of depression.

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Racism Actually Affects Your Mental Health

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Decades after Martin Luther King fought and died for racial equality in America, racism is still very much alive. Now one study says there's yet another disturbed side effect, and that's how racism can affect your health. (In positive mental health news, have you heard about the latest mental health bill called Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act?)

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Since we don't learn in a vacuum, today's training environments are as varied, as the trainee's themselves. Unlike Pre-K - 12 educational systems, adult learners bring a different set of variables and challenges to the experience. Oftentimes as facilitators in the technical field, employers have gleamed candidates after a series of online technical diagnostic and Behavioral Analysis testing tools. These tests, while useful, are not conclusive of the candidates ability or desire to learn new skillsets necessary for working in a given technical field. And while hands on task driven processes are in many cases chronological in orientation; it is in the analysis and application of precepts and standards to diagnose and repair problems which require a better understanding of learning intelligences.

My personal experience from High School was driven by peer pressure, and cultural acceptance. Teen learners are very easily impacted by peer pressure, and the need to be accepted as part of the social diaspora. Labels such as Nerd, Geek, Brain, are well known and used to more often denigrate, rather than celebrate the student's ability to understand and learn certain skillsets. In the 1970's, my experience with High Schools' counselors in the urban educational setting in a General Motors "GM" town were slanted towards vocational education and not Higher Ed. At that time, my hometown "Saginaw Michigan" proudly hosted 9 Automobile Parts Factories, a Pickle and Sugar Beet factory. From brake parts to sugar beets, the middle class sector thrived! With the Post World War II veterans being able to send their children to public and private universities both in and out of state. Yet even with access to better education and employment opportunities, some of my peers fell through the cracks in the Public education network. Young men with athletic ability in sports such as Football or Basketball were considered heroes, regardless of their ability to solve algebraic equations, or write short stories effectively. "That was something that the "White Boys" did" was a common mantra overheard in predominately African-American school systems! From Public Speaking events at the Rotary International Club or Chamber of Commerce to Science club field trips to Midland Dow, a huge employer in the county, it represented a racial disparity that wasn't reinforced due to imposed racist intent, it was a direct result of social conditioning and misperception on role development of the individual.

Even the City had a history of racial disparity amongst the French Trappers and the indigenous Ojibway, Saginaw and Chippewa tribes. East side verses the west side. Today's workplace is dynamic and ever changing. It's workers are just as dynamic, having to deploy a variety of skillsets, intellectually diverse, technically capable, and interpersonally skilled at meeting the needs of all customers. Regardless of racial makeup, languages spoken, age or social leaning. Companies are asking more of their employees, which means that employees are being asked to create and take responsibility for their own knowledge and career progression! Skills certifications such as in the cable industry thru the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers are essential for advancement. They represent completion of a valued course of study, in addition to the individual drive for advancement and technical competency.

Having a racist attitude in learning can give you a jaded and very short career. Many companies are multinational, liken unto those within the call center industry. The prerequisite technical knowledge and ability for meet standards do not require the ability of foreign owners to speak the queens english, however cultural differences in work ethnic and social norms do matter. Today's new hires and long term employees should embrace change within the workplace and never stop learning!

(Learned behaviors) Behavior or behaviour is the range of actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with their environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

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Since we don't learn in a vacuum, today's training environments are as varied, as the trainee's themselves. Unlike Pre-K - 12 educational systems, adult learners bring a different set of variables and challenges to the experience. Oftentimes as facilitators in the technical field, employers have gleamed candidates after a series of online technical diagnostic and Behavioral Analysis testing tools.

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A new study shows that the pressures associated with discrimination contribute to the achievement gap.

For 15-year-old Zion Agostini, the start of each school day is a new occasion to navigate a minefield of racial profiling. From an early age, walking home from elementary school with his older brother, Agostini took note of the differential treatment police gave to black people in his community: "I [saw] people get stopped ... get harassed ... get arrested for minor offenses." Almost a decade later, Agostini said he now faces the same treatment as a sophomore at Nelson Mandela School for Social Justice in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. "Me being a black male, I'm more likely to be stopped and frisked by a cop. Then, [I'm] going to school with more cops ... [messing] with me at 7 in the morning."

The strain of these interactions is heightened by the daily routine of passing through a metal detector, emptying pockets, and removing clothing that frequently makes him late to his first-period class. "The fact is now I'm [tardy] because I'm being scanned four times because of the metal in my necklace or my keys. I missed whatever [the teacher] was explaining ... a lot goes on in [chemistry], and because of that I'm behind." All of this combined takes a toll on his schoolwork, he said. "It does make it extremely hard to focus on the classwork ... You're upset, or sad, or just emotional about what just happened. It takes a while to settle."

A recent study from Northwestern University corroborates Agostini's experience, suggesting that the stress of racial discrimination may partly explain the persistent gaps in academic performance between some nonwhite students, mainly black and Latino youth, and their white counterparts. The team of researchers found that the physiological response to race-based stressors-be it perceived racial prejudice, or the drive to outperform negative stereotypes-leads the body to pump out more stress hormones in adolescents from traditionally marginalized groups. This biological reaction to race-based stress is compounded by the psychological response to discrimination or the coping mechanisms youngsters develop to lessen the distress. What emerges is a picture of black and Latino students whose concentration, motivation, and, ultimately, learning is impaired by unintended and overt racism.

Emma Adam, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern and the study's senior author, said prior research had established racial differences in levels of cortisol-a hormone that increases when the body is stressed-between black and white youth, and linked this to the impact of discrimination. In the current research review, she and her co-authors set out to connect the dots. "We had observed these [dissimilarities] and knew that sleep and stress hormones have strong implications for cognition ... we also knew that there was a strong racial gap in academic attainment."

Two sources of stress encountered by black and Latino students and examined in the report are perceived discrimination-the perception that you will be treated differently or unfairly because of your race-and stereotype threat, the stress of confirming negative expectations about your racial or ethnic group. According to the paper, among this population of students, perceived discrimination from teachers was "related to lower grades, less academic motivation ... and less persistence when encountering an academic challenge." The study also found that the anxiety surrounding the stereotype of academic inferiority undermined students performing academic tasks.

Over time, Adam said, children develop strategies to reduce the racial stressors, but these, too, have consequences for academic success. Students might devalue the importance of doing well on tests or decide that doing well in school isn't a part of their identity-"If you don't care, then you're not going to feel as stressed in those academic circumstances," she said, "but obviously that [affects] your performance."

While conceding that many factors contribute to academic achievement-school quality and teacher quality among them-Adam said knowing how race-based stress affects the body holds possible answers to addressing achievement disparities. "Promoting positive ethnic racial identity would be one way to reduce those feelings of separation or exclusion and improve students' ability to focus in the classroom. Reducing student exposure to racial discrimination and improving race relations in the U.S. more generally are the ultimate solutions to this, but in the meantime, there are ways to help students deal with the stress."
"Being a person of color, you're constantly ... being targeted just because you're a person of color."
L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy, an associate professor of sociology and Black Studies at the City College of New York, said exploring the role that stress plays in the lives of black and Latino youth is a good addition to much of the research literature on academic gaps that focuses on socioeconomic factors, family background, and neighborhood characteristics. He added that the paper's conclusion-negotiating racial indignities leads to stress, and in turn, makes it harder for students of color to sleep and stay on task-is a useful contribution to the educational dialogue.

"It opens up the door for us to think about some of the interventions that we can do at the school level ... talking to children about how to process stress ... as well as the interpersonal work that we have to do [thinking] about what everyday racism looks like," Lewis-McCoy said. "Not just race as an institutional practice, or racism in terms of [school segregation], but the [routine] experiences of those people who are black and Latino."

He expressed some concerns, however, with the study's premise that black students confronted with racial hurdles regularly disconnect from school or no longer desire an education. To the contrary, he found in researching his book Inequality in the Promised Land -a look at race and suburban schooling-that black children often sought ways to circumvent race-based obstacles. "Young people are facing discrimination on the playground ... in who gets called on in the classroom and what type of feedback they receive ... in which colleges or post-education opportunities they're offered," Lewis-McCoy said, noting that children living with discrimination learn to pivot when "they don't have adults who acknowledge that or work with them to change the arrangements." The CUNY professor said the common belief that race-based stressors lead black students to disassociate from academic achievement is "actually a wrong interpretation of their actions. We can't assume that every blocked opportunity leads to someone retreating. In fact, I think the narrative and the arc around black education is often finding success in spite of barriers."

Agostini, the New York City teen, identifies with the stress of racial inequity-or what he calls the "psychological trauma" of constant racial harassment. He said it can take him up to a day to recover. "It's not something that easy to shake. Being a person of color, you're constantly ... being targeted just because you're a person of color. It makes it hard to deal."

But as Lewis-McCoy states, Agostini has found tools to combat the racial discrimination he's experienced, channeling his emotions into action. He is a member of the Urban Youth Collaborative, a citywide coalition of youth organizers working on school-based social-justice issues. Looking ahead, he hopes to break the cycle of racial targeting for future students like himself.

"I hope to be an example [via] protests, and actions, and rallies, and whatever I have to do," he said. "I don't want other black and Latino students being pushed out of school ... I want them to be able to go to school and get their education ... I want them to be able to walk home from school ... I want them to be able to just chill in the park and just hang out with their friends ... I want to change people's lives for the positive."

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How the Stress of Racism Affects Learning

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A new study shows that the pressures associated with discrimination contribute to the achievement gap.