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This article was informative on what Cultural Competence is and how to develop it with advice like practicing openness, being flexible, demonstrating humility, and practicing positive change or action.

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This article will help better understand cultural competence and its components. Adopted cross-cultural attitude strategies will help to develop and enhance the ability to practice effective communication in intercultural situations.

Working and living in a global society requires the ability to create interactions and relationships with people who are different from oneself. It is critical to know how to assess our cultural competency and evaluate our own cultural behaviors. Globalization and diversity lowered the barriers that once separated cultures both internationally and domestically (Garneau & Pepin, 2015). Cultural competency skills can help businesses run more productively, and efficiently. Practicing cultural competency skills can also elevate your customer service skills. Exceptional customer service gives you the ability to set your business apart from your competitors and keeps your customers returning to your business.

What is culture?

In 1951, Kluckhohn explained culture as sharing a pattern of thinking, feeling, reacting, and problem-solving. Culture is a dynamic relational process of shared meanings that originate in the interactions between individuals (Carpenter-Song, Schwallie, & Longhofer, 2007). In 2010, Gregory and colleagues emphasized that culture must be considered in historical, social, political, and economic contexts. Betancourt (2004) defined culture as a pattern of learned beliefs, values, and behavior that are shared within a group; it includes language, styles of communication, practices, customs, and views on roles and relationships. Edgar Schein (2010) described a culture as "shared beliefs, values, and assumptions of a group of people who learn from one another and teach to others that their behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives are the correct ways to think, act, and feel." Psychologists argue that unfamiliar culture negatively affects an individual's sensemaking mechanisms and determine their behavioral responses. As a result, individuals cannot accurately perceive, interpret, explain, and predict the behavior of people with different cultural background(s) (Muzychenko, 2008).

What is cultural intelligence?

Cultural intelligence is the ability to interpret the stranger's behavior the way the stranger's compatriots would (Muzychenko 2008). For example, if employees don't feel as if their manager understands or respects their culture, employees may find it hard to trust the leader or work as a team.

What is cultural competence?

Current research on cultural competence focuses on sensitivity to cross-cultural differences and the ability to adapt to other cultural environments (e.g., Hansen, Pepitone-Arreola-Rockwell, & Greene, 2000), or reflective awareness of cultural influences on one's thoughts and behaviors (Chao, Okazaki, & Hong, 2011). Muzychenko (2008) defined cultural competence as the appropriateness and effectiveness of one's behavior in an alien cultural environment. Wilson, Ward, and Fischer (2013) defined cultural competence as "the acquisition and maintenance of culture-specific skills" for very practical reasons:

function effectively within a new cultural context.

interact effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds.

Williams (2001) defined cultural competence as " the ability of individuals and systems to work or respond effectively across cultures in a way that acknowledges and respects the culture of the person or organization being served" p.1.

Why do we need to develop cultural competence?

Developing cultural competence helps us understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures. It gives us the ability to compare different cultures with our own and better understand the differences. Unconsciously, we bring our own cultural frame of interpretation to any situation. This is not to say that culture alone determines how one interprets a situation. One's own unique history and personality also play an important role (Hofstede, 2002).

How do we develop an attitude and components of cultural competence?

Developing cross-cultural attitudes allows one to develop skills for better engaging with people from all kinds of cultures. Cross-cultural skills demonstrated through the ability to communicate with respect; recognize others' values, accept knowledge, skills, and talents; and tolerate, engage, and celebrate the success of others. Deardorff defined competence as " the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations based on one's intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes" (Deardorff, 2006, pp. 247-248). We adopted Deardorff (2006) cross-cultural attitude strategies that help you to develop and enhance one's ability to practice effective communication in intercultural situations:

Practice openness by demonstrating acceptance of difference.

Be flexible by demonstrating acceptance of ambiguity.

Demonstrate humility through suspension of judgment and the ability to learn.

Be sensitive to others by appreciating cultural differences.

Show a spirit of adventure by showing curiosity and seeing opportunities in different situations.

Use a sense of humor through the ability to laugh at ourselves.

Practice positive change or action by demonstratinga successful interaction with the identified culture.

Borchum (2002) described cultural competence as " a non-linear dynamic process that is never-ending and ever expending. It is built on increases in knowledge and skill development related to its attributes" p. 5. We synthesized and adopted Williams's (2001) and Martin and Vaughn's (2007) studies that can assist in better understanding of components of cultural competency. These attributes will guide you in developing cultural competence:

Self-knowledge and awareness about one's own culture.

Awareness of one's own cultural worldview.

Experience and knowledge of different cultural practices.

Attitude toward cultural differences.

In conclusion, our global society necessitates interactions and relationships with people who are different from oneself. By developing one's own cultural competence, productivity and efficiency may increase and in turn improve one's customer service skills. Customers who feel valued and understood will return for repeat business.

Resources

Burchum, J. L. R. (2002, October). Cultural competence: An evolutionary perspective. In: Nursing Forum: (Vol. 37, No. 4, p. 5). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Carpenter-Song, E. A., Schwallie, M. N., & Longhofer, J. (2007). Cultural competence reexamined: critique and directions for the future. Psychiatric Services, 58(10), 1362-1365.

Betancourt, J. R. (2004). Cultural competence-marginal or mainstream movement? New England Journal of Medicine, 351(10), 953-955.

Chiu, C.-Y., Lonner, W. J., Matsumoto, D., & Ward, C. (2013). Cross-Cultural Competence: Theory, Research, and Application. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(6), 843-848.

Garneau, A. B., & Pepin, J. (2015). Cultural competence: A constructivist definition. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 26(1), 9-15.

Gregory, D., Harrowing, J., Lee, B., Doolittle, L., & O'Sullivan, P. S. (2010). Pedagogy as influencing nursing students' essentialized understanding of culture. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 7(1), 30. doi:10.2202/1548-923X.2025

Hofstede, G. J., Hofstede, G., & Pedersen, P. B. (2012). Exploring culture: exercises, stories, and synthetic cultures. Boston: Intercultural Press.

Hofstede, G. J., Pedersen, P. B., & Hofstede, G. (2002). Exploring culture: Exercises, stories, and synthetic cultures. Nicholas Brealey.

Martin, M., & Vaughn, B. (2007). Cultural competence: The nuts and bolts of diversity and inclusion. Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management, 1(1), 31-38.

Muzychenko, O. (2008). Cross-cultural entrepreneurial competence in identifying international business opportunities. European Management Journal, 26(6), 366-377.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.

Williams, B. (2001). Accomplishing cross cultural competence in youth development programs. Journal of Extension, 39(6), 1-6.

Wilson, J., Ward, C., & Fischer, R. (2013). Beyond culture learning theory: What can personality tell us about cultural competence? Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 44(6), 900-927.

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What is Cultural Competence and How to Develop It?

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This article will help better understand cultural competence and its components. Adopted cross-cultural attitude strategies will help to develop and enhance the ability to practice effective communication in intercultural situations. Working and living i

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This video has good advice to look into the presentations and diversity training seminars before going to make sure they are not just doubling down on stereotypes.

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You're Doing It Wrong: The evolution of cultural competence | Raquel Martin | TEDxRutgersCamden

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Credit to KU CSL for this diagram https://servicelearning.ctb.ku.edu/cultural-competence/

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This article is from the American Psychological Association and gives more advice like attending diversity-focused conferences to get diversity training and interacting with diverse groups to help expand your knowledge of other cultures.

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As a former Asian-American studies minor with an interest in diversity and a minority-group member himself, Ali M. Mattu thought that he was ready to tackle just about any cultural issue when he began doctoral studies in clinical psychology at the Catholic University of America five years ago. As it turned out, the future diversity chair for APAGS was flummoxed by one of his first clients.

"He was going on and on about confession, using a lot of Catholic lingo that I'm not familiar with," says Mattu, now chair-elect of APAGS. "Then he looked at me and asked point blank, 'Have you been to confession here?'" Instead of owning up to not being Catholic, Mattu sidestepped the question and missed an opportunity to explore a topic that meant so much to his client.

Since then, Mattu has taken an intensive course on cultural issues in clinical psychology, which included lectures, self-reflection and community service. But while APA accreditation requires programs to cover cultural competence, and many states require such training for licensure, not all psychology programs offer the thorough grounding Mattu received.

"Traditional models of training don't focus very much on learning how to adapt one's skills to different populations," says Janet E. Helms, PhD, director of the Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture at Boston College. "People still have a tendency to make cultural competence the topic they cover at the end of the semester, so they really don't cover it very well."

That won't do, says Helms, who wants cultural competence integrated into every aspect of graduate training. "We're becoming an increasingly culturally complex country," she says, adding that training in cultural competence should include race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, gender, disability status, and other demographic characteristics.

Fortunately, say Helms and other experts, there are plenty of ways to get that training and experience on your own:

Learn about yourself. Get started by exploring your own historical roots, beliefs and values, says Robert C. Weigl, PhD, a psychologist at the Franklin Center in Alexandria, Va., who described a protocol for such self-reflection in a 2009 paper in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations (Vol. 33, No. 4). The eight-step process includes such exercises as describing your ancestors and their experiences, thinking about how your family functions as a group, and characterizing your most representative style of thought as emotional or rational, "me-centered" or "we-centered," and the like.

Self-assessment makes participants realize the pervasive role culture plays in their lives, says Weigl. It also makes people aware of their own biases while sparking open-minded curiosity about other cultures. Plus, it's fun, he says, adding that students are "sometimes swept away by healthy narcissism" as they explore their own backgrounds.

Learn about different cultures. If you know you're going to be researching or providing therapy to people with unfamiliar backgrounds, seek cultural insight through journal articles and academic books, says Mattu. But don't stop there. "There's a richness to memoirs, for example, that scientific journal articles just cannot capture," he says. He also recommends novels such as "The God of Small Things" - an examination of India's caste system - and such documentaries as "Divided We Fall," about post-9-11 hate crimes against South Asians.

However, one of the best ways to immerse yourself in another culture's worldview is to learn a second language, says private practitioner Pamela A. Hays, PhD, of Soldotna, Alaska, and author of "Addressing Cultural Complexities in Practice: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Therapy" (APA, 2008). "One of the most mind-expanding experiences is to learn a word or concept that doesn't exist in your own language," she says. "Plus, learning a language means you're more able to reach out and connect with people who speak that language."

Interact with diverse groups. Arranging a research project, practicum experience or internship where you work with people from a culture that's unfamiliar to you is a great way to enhance your cultural competence. Depending on the kinds of cultural experiences you're seeking, you may want to volunteer at community centers, religious institutions or soup kitchens, says Mattu. Take a friend or two with you, he recommends, and spend some time afterward discussing how the experience may have changed your views.

It's also important to supplement work and volunteer experience with nonclinical social interactions, recommends Hays. Instead of solely interacting with members of diverse groups who are seeking help, get a fuller picture by interacting with them as peers at parties, religious services and cultural events. "Put yourself in social situations where you're the only one of your cultural group," she recommends.

Attend diversity-focused conferences. Get formal training on diversity-related research and practice issues, learn about the latest research, and meet potential collaborators at APA's Annual Convention, as well as conferences that are focused specifically on diversity issues. Check APA's online events calendar for news about upcoming meetings. One such conference, the biennial National Multicultural Conference and Summit, will take place Jan. 27-28 in Seattle. "We'll be exploring how science can be more sensitive to diversity, as well as how science can have an impact on diverse communities that have been marginalized in the past," says Francisco J. Sánchez, PhD, the summit's lead coordinator and a psychology research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine.

Interested students who are short on cash can often volunteer at conferences in exchange for reduced fees, or apply for a travel grant. Check out APA's searchable database of scholarships, grants and awards.

Lobby your department. If your program isn't giving you the training you need, push the faculty to do better, says Helms. Whether you plan to send the departmental chair a formal letter with concrete suggestions and complaints or handle the matter more informally, be sure to gather allies - students from within and outside your department - to help you make your case. That way, says Helms, "the program gets the message that this is something important to students."

And remember: These steps are just the beginning, says Hays.

"Cultural competence is a lifelong project," she says, adding that competence with one group doesn't mean you're competent with another. "You have to keep finding ways to expand your learning."

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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As a former Asian-American studies minor with an interest in diversity and a minority-group member himself, Ali M. Mattu thought that he was ready to tackle just about any cultural issue when he began doctoral studies in clinical psychology at the Catholic University of America five years ago.

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This video does bring up that it is alright to not be an expert in every culture which is something I find kind of refreshing since while yes, I want to understand as many different cultures as I can, I know I cannot become an expert in all of them. Hearing that is a good reminder that while it is not okay to be willingly ignorant and intolerant of someone else's culture, you can be forgiven as an outsider to the culture if you are willing to learn it and accept them.

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This started with teachers that are black and nonblack talking about different students futures and raised the question of as educators do we pick certain kids and treat them differently because of their skin color or if they look like they are having a tougher time at home. I think its idea to try to switch to a less bias system of calling on children is a unique approach to help combat a teachers bias especially since it would keep things more fair.

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Whether or not a teacher "believes in" her students and expects them to succeed has been shown to affect how well that student does in school, particularly among disadvantaged students. But educators should be aware that those expectations can be influenced by their own implicit racial biases.

In a recent study that looked at interviews involving 16,000 U.S. teachers, Black and non-Black teachers were asked to predict their 10th-graders' future educational attainment. Would she graduate from high school? How about college? When asked about any specific Black student, White teachers were about 30 percent less likely than Black teachers to predict he or she would someday earn a college degree. For White students, the teachers' predictions, or expectations, were about the same.

"We cannot determine whether the black teachers are too optimistic, the non-black teachers are too pessimistic, or some combination of the two," wrote one of the study's authors, American University's Seth Gershenson, in an an August blog post. But, he noted, it is worrisome nonetheless, "as systematic biases in teachers' expectations for student success might contribute to persistent socio-demographic gaps in educational achievement and attainment."

The study also found that the racial mismatch of expectations was stronger for boys, and that the most optimistic group about Black male students was Black female teachers (even more so than Black male teachers.)

"These results are not meant to, nor should they, demonize or implicate teachers," wrote Gershenson. "Biases in expectations are generally unintentional and are an artifact of how humans categorize complex information." Hopefully, the authors suggest, the study's findings will lead to helpful discussions.

Although the U.S. public school system now has more non-White students than White students, White teachers still account for 84 percent of the teaching force.
What is Implicit Bias and Can it Be Fixed?
Implicit biases are defined by the Kirwin Institute as attitudes or stereotypes that are activated unconsciously and involuntarily. They are not the same as biases that a person might try to hide because they're unpopular or socially incorrect. Social scientists believe that implicit biases are learned as young as age 3, and may be fueled by stereotypes perpetrated in the media, or beliefs passed along by parents, peers, and other community members.

"Our belief here is that we all have implicit biases," said Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center working toward equity in schools. And it's not just teachers, she points out. Recent studies, prompted by police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have looked at implicit biases among law enforcement officers and found that both White and Black officers often have implicit biases about Black community members.

The consequences for Black communities policed by biased officers has been tragic, but it can be equally consequential in schools, points out Becki Cohn-Vargas, the co-author of Identity Safe Classrooms: Places to Belong and Learn. "This is not about blaming or pointing fingers," she said, but it clear that the decisions made by teachers also do affect children's life trajectories. Unequal discipline, for example, may fuel the school-to-prison pipeline that has disproportionately affected students of color.

But what's important to know about implicit biases is that, once people are made aware of them, those biases can be successfully addressed. "We can mitigate them. We can interrupt them. You can train your mind to catch yourself," said Costello. "It's like breaking a habit, but the first thing you have to do is become aware of the habit."

Awareness is the first, foundational step. (To take an Implicit Assessment Test (IAT) online, visit Teaching Tolerance's Test Yourself webpage.) The second step, suggests Costello, is developing a sense of reflectiveness. Ask yourself, "Is the way I'm approaching this student affecting outcomes?" And consider the data available in your classroom: Who do you call on, and how often? (Do you need to switch to a randomized technique, like pulling popsicle sticks?) How do you seat students, or group them? Are you treating everybody the same when it comes to homework, or are you giving a break to the kid you think has a bad home life or little chance of getting to college?

Researchers also suggest it's helpful to "refute" and "counter" the negative stereotypes that fuel biases, said Cohn-Vargas. That means recognizing these stereotypes really aren't true, and opposing them with ideas that are: for example, it's not true that all Black boys are loud and disruptive; it is true that students who talk a lot often are enthusiastic.

Cohn-Vargas suggests it's also important for educators to recognize their students as people who are individuals.

Much of this kind of work is done by culturally competent NEA members, trained by NEA trainers, through NEA's National Diversity Training Program. Additional resources to help NEA members work with students who may not look like them are available online, including NEA's Diversity Toolkit and Teaching Tolerance's "Culture in the Classroom" project.

"I'm actually encouraged by some of the things happening in positive psychology," said Costello. "If you end every day by journaling or writing down three things that were great in your class, and give yourself a little time for mindfulness and meditation, you can help retrain your mind to see the positive rather than the negative."
Photo: Associated Press

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When Implicit Bias Shapes Teacher Expectations | NEA

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"It's like breaking a habit, but the first thing you have to do is become aware of the habit," says expert.

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This video is long but it has strong advice on how to spot your own biases and work on them as an educator.

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188: Uncovering Your Implicit Biases: An Exercise for Teachers

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This goes into ways to mitigate the influence of implicit bias and how to "reprogram" your mental associations so that you are not negatively judging your students unconsciously. I believe we could use this information to better reflect and grow upon.

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As a profession, teaching is full of well-intentioned individuals deeply committed to seeing all children succeed. Touching innumerable lives in direct and indirect ways, educators uniquely recognize that our future rests on the shoulders of young people and that investing in their education, health, and overall well-being benefits society as a whole, both now and into the future.

This unwavering desire to ensure the best for children is precisely why educators should become aware of the concept of implicit bias: the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. Operating outside of our conscious awareness, implicit biases are pervasive, and they can challenge even the most well-intentioned and egalitarian-minded individuals, resulting in actions and outcomes that do not necessarily align with explicit intentions.

In this article, I seek to shed light on the dynamics of implicit bias with an eye toward educators. After introducing the concept and the science undergirding it, I focus on its implications for educators and suggest ways they can mitigate its effects.

The Unconscious Mind

Psychologists estimate that our brains are capable of processing approximately 11 million bits of information every second. ¹ Given the tremendous amount of information that inundates this startlingly complex organ in any given moment, many researchers have sought to understand the nuances of our remarkable cognitive functioning. In his 2011 tome on cognition, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman articulates a widely accepted framework for understanding human cognitive functioning by delineating our mental processing into two parts: System 1 and System 2. ²
System 1 handles cognition that occurs outside of conscious awareness. This system operates automatically and extremely fast. For example, let's say you stop your car at a red light. When the light turns green, you know to proceed through the intersection. Thanks to the speed and efficiency of System 1, experienced drivers automatically understand that green means go, and so this mental association requires no conscious or effortful thought.

In contrast, System 2 is conscious processing. It's what we use for mental tasks that require concentration, such as completing a tax form. Rather than being automatic and fast, this undertaking requires effortful, deliberate concentration.

Together, these two systems help us make sense of the world. What is fascinating, though, is how much our cognition relies on System 1. Of the millions of possible pieces of information we can process each second, most neuroscientists agree that the vast majority of our cognitive processing occurs outside of our conscious awareness. ³ Besides its vastness, System 1 cognitive processing is also notable because it helps us understand that many of the mental associations that affect how we perceive and act are operating implicitly (i.e., unconsciously). As such, System 1 is responsible for the associations known as implicit biases.

Because the implicit associations we hold arise outside of conscious awareness, implicit biases do not necessarily align with our explicit beliefs and stated intentions. This means that even individuals who profess egalitarian intentions and try to treat all individuals fairly can still unknowingly act in ways that reflect their implicit-rather than their explicit-biases. Thus, even well-intentioned individuals can act in ways that produce inequitable outcomes for different groups.

Moreover, because implicit biases are unconscious and involuntarily activated as part of System 1, we are not even aware that they exist, yet they can have a tremendous impact on decision making. A large body of social science evidence has shown that implicit biases can be activated by any number of various identities we perceive in others, such as race, ethnicity, gender, or age. Since these robust associations are a critical component of our System 1 processing, everyone has implicit biases, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or age. No one is immune. Consequently, the range of implicit bias implications for individuals in a wide range of professions-not just education-is vast. For example, researchers have documented implicit biases in healthcare professionals, ⁴ law enforcement officers, ⁵ and even individuals whose careers require avowed commitments to impartiality, such as judges. ⁶ Indeed, educators are also susceptible to the influence of these unconscious biases.

Implicit Bias in Education

Research on implicit bias has identified several conditions in which individuals are most likely to rely on their unconscious System 1 associations. These include situations that involve ambiguous or incomplete information; the presence of time constraints; and circumstances in which our cognitive control may be compromised, such as through fatigue or having a lot on our minds. ⁷ Given that teachers encounter many, if not all, of these conditions through the course of a school day, it is unsurprising that implicit biases may be contributing to teachers' actions and decisions.

Let's consider a few examples in the context of school discipline.

First, classifying behavior as good or bad and then assigning a consequence is not a simple matter. All too often, behavior is in the eye of the beholder. Many of the infractions for which students are disciplined have a subjective component, meaning that the situation is a bit ambiguous. Thus, how an educator interprets a situation can affect whether the behavior merits discipline, and if so, to what extent.

Infractions such as "disruptive behavior," "disrespect," and "excessive noise," for example, are ambiguous and dependent on context, yet they are frequently provided as reasons for student discipline. ⁸ That is not to say that some form of discipline is unwarranted in these situations, or that all disciplinary circumstances are subjective, as certainly many have objective components. However, these subjective infractions constitute a very large portion of disciplinary incidents.

There are no standardized ways of assessing many infractions, such as disobedient or disruptive behavior, though schools do attempt to delineate some parameters through codes of conduct and by outlining associated consequences. Yet subjectivity can still come into play. Teachers' experiences and automatic unconscious associations can shape their interpretation of situations that merit discipline, and can even contribute to discipline disparities based on a student's race.

One study of discipline disparities ⁹ found that students of color were more likely to be sent to the office and face other disciplinary measures for offenses such as disrespect or excessive noise, which are subjective, while white students were more likely to be sent to the office for objective infractions, such as smoking or vandalism. (For more about discipline disparities, see "From Reaction to Prevention" by Russell J. Skiba and Daniel J. Losen.) Thus, in disciplinary situations that are a bit ambiguous (What qualifies as disrespect? How loud is too loud?), educators should be aware that their implicit associations may be contributing to their decisions without their conscious awareness or consent.

Second, implicit attitudes toward specific racial groups can unconsciously affect disciplinary decisions. For example, extensive research has documented pervasive implicit associations that link African Americans, particularly males, to stereotypes such as aggression, criminality, or danger, even when explicit beliefs contradict these views. ¹⁰

In education, these implicit associations can taint perceptions of the discipline severity required to ensure that the misbehaving student understands what he or she did wrong. In short, these unconscious associations can mean the difference between one student receiving a warning for a confrontation and another student being sent to school security personnel. In the words of researcher Carla R. Monroe, "Many teachers may not explicitly connect their disciplinary reactions to negative perceptions of Black males, yet systematic trends in disproportionality suggest that teachers may be implicitly guided by stereotypical perceptions that African American boys require greater control than their peers and are unlikely to respond to nonpunitive measures." ¹¹

A recent study from Stanford University sheds further light on this dynamic by highlighting how racial disparities in discipline can occur even when black and white students behave similarly. ¹² In the experiment, researchers showed a racially diverse group of female K-12 teachers the school records of a fictitious middle school student who had misbehaved twice; both infractions were minor and unrelated. Requesting that the teachers imagine working at this school, researchers asked a range of questions related to how teachers perceived and would respond to the student's infractions. While the student discipline scenarios were identical, researchers manipulated the fictitious student's name; some teachers reviewed the record of a student given a stereotypically black name (e.g., Deshawn or Darnell) while others reviewed the record of a student with a stereotypically white name (e.g., Jake or Greg).

Results indicated that from the first infraction to the second, teachers were more likely to escalate the disciplinary response to the second infraction when the student was perceived to be black as opposed to white. Moreover, a second part of the study, with a larger, more diverse sample that included both male and female teachers, found that infractions by a black student were more likely to be viewed as connected, meaning that the black student's misbehavior was seen as more indicative of a pattern, than when the same two infractions were committed by a white student. ¹³

Another way in which implicit bias can operate in education is through confirmation bias: the unconscious tendency to seek information that confirms our preexisting beliefs, even when evidence exists to the contrary. The following example is from the context of employee performance evaluations, which explored this dynamic. Relevant parallels also exist for K-12 teachers evaluating their students' work.

A 2014 study explored how confirmation bias can unconsciously taint the evaluation of work that employees produce. Researchers created a fictitious legal memo that contained 22 different, deliberately planted errors. These errors included minor spelling and grammatical errors, as well as factual, analytical, and technical writing errors. The exact same memo was distributed to law firm partners under the guise of a "writing analysis study,"14 and they were asked to edit and evaluate the memo.

Half of the memos listed the author as African American while the remaining portion listed the author as Caucasian. Findings indicated that memo evaluations hinged on the perceived race of the author. When the author was listed as African American, the evaluators found more of the embedded errors and rated the memo as lower quality than those who believed the author was Caucasian. Researchers concluded that these findings suggest unconscious confirmation bias; despite the intention to be unbiased, "we see more errors when we expect to see errors, and we see fewer errors when we do not expect to see errors." ¹⁵

While this study focused on the evaluation of a legal memo, it is not a stretch of the imagination to consider the activation of this implicit dynamic in grading student essays or evaluating other forms of subjective student performance. Confirmation bias represents yet another way in which implicit biases can challenge the best of explicit intentions.

Finally, implicit biases can also shape teacher expectations of student achievement. For example, a 2010 study examined teachers' implicit and explicit ethnic biases, finding that their implicit-not explicit-biases were responsible for different expectations of achievement for students from different ethnic backgrounds. ¹⁶

While these examples are a select few among many, together they provide a glimpse into how implicit biases can have detrimental effects for students, regardless of teachers' explicit goals. This raises the question: How can we better align our implicit biases with the explicit values we uphold?

Mitigating the Influence of Implicit Bias

Recognizing that implicit biases can yield inequitable outcomes even among well-intentioned individuals, a significant portion of implicit bias research has explored how individuals can change their implicit associations-in effect "reprogramming" their mental associations so that unconscious biases better align with explicit convictions. Thanks to the malleable nature of our brains, researchers have identified a few approaches that, often with time and repetition, can help inhibit preexisting implicit biases in favor of more egalitarian alternatives.

With implicit biases operating outside of our conscious awareness and inaccessible through introspection, at first glance it might seem difficult to identify any that we may hold. Fortunately, researchers have identified several approaches for assessing these unconscious associations, one of which is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Debuting in 1998, this free online test measures the relative strength of associations between pairs of concepts. Designed to tap into unconscious System 1 associations, the IAT is a response latency (i.e., reaction time) measure that assesses implicit associations through this key idea: when two concepts are highly associated, test takers will be faster at pairing those concepts (and make fewer mistakes doing so) than they will when two concepts are not as highly associated.*

To illustrate, consider this example. Most people find the task of pairing flower types (e.g., orchid, daffodil, tulip) with positive words (e.g., pleasure, happy, cheer) easier than they do pairing flower types with negative words (e.g., rotten, ugly, filth). Because flowers typically have a positive connotation, people can quickly link flowers to positive terms and make few mistakes in doing so. In contrast, words such as types of insects (e.g., ants, cockroaches, mosquitoes) are likely to be easier for most people to pair with those negative terms than with positive ones. ¹⁷

While this example is admittedly simplistic, these ideas laid the foundation for versions of the IAT that assess more complex social issues, such as race, gender, age, and sexual orientation, among others. Millions of people have taken the IAT, and extensive research has largely upheld the IAT as a valid and reliable measure of implicit associations. ¹⁸ There are IATs that assess both attitudes (i.e., positive or negative emotions toward various groups) and stereotypes (i.e., how quickly someone can connect a group to relevant stereotypes about that group at an implicit level).

Educators can begin to address their implicit biases by taking the Implicit Association Test. Doing so will enable them to become consciously aware of some of the unconscious associations they may harbor. Research suggests that this conscious awareness of one's own implicit biases is a critical first step for counteracting their influence. ¹⁹ This awareness is especially crucial for educators to help ensure that their explicit intentions to help students learn and reach their full potential are not unintentionally thwarted by implicit biases.

By identifying any discrepancies that may exist between conscious ideals and automatic implicit associations, individuals can take steps to bring those two into better alignment. One approach for changing implicit associations identified by researchers is intergroup contact: meaningfully engaging with individuals whose identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, religion) differ from your own. Certain conditions exist for optimal effects, such as equal status within the situation, a cooperative setting, and working toward common goals. ²⁰ By getting to know people who differ from you on a real, personal level, you can begin to build new associations about the groups those individuals represent and break down existing implicit associations. ²¹

Another approach that research has determined may help change implicit associations is exposure to counter-stereotypical exemplars: individuals who contradict widely held stereotypes. Some studies have shown that exposure to these exemplars may help individuals begin to automatically override their preexisting biases. ²² Examples of counter-stereotypical exemplars may include male nurses, female scientists, African American judges, and others who defy stereotypes.

This approach for challenging biases is valuable not just for educators but also for the students they teach, as some scholars suggest that photographs and décor that expose individuals to counter-stereotypical exemplars can activate new mental associations. ²³ While implicit associations may not change immediately, using counter-stereotypical images for classroom posters and other visuals may serve this purpose.
Beyond changing cognitive associations, another strategy for mitigating implicit biases that relates directly to school discipline is data collection. Because implicit biases function outside of conscious awareness, identifying their influence can be challenging. Gathering meaningful data can bring to light trends and patterns in disparate treatment of individuals and throughout an institution that may otherwise go unnoticed.

In the context of school discipline, relevant data may include the student's grade, the perceived infraction, the time of day it occurred, the name(s) of referring staff, and other relevant details and objective information related to the resulting disciplinary consequence. Information like this can facilitate a large-scale review of discipline measures and patterns and whether any connections to implicit biases may emerge. ²⁴ Moreover, tracking discipline data over time and keeping implicit bias in mind can help create a school- or districtwide culture of accountability.

Finally, in the classroom, educators taking enough time to carefully process a situation before making a decision can minimize implicit bias. Doing so, of course, is easier said than done, given that educators are constantly pressed for time, face myriad challenges, and need crucial support from administrators to effectively manage student behavior.

As noted earlier, System 1 unconscious associations operate extremely quickly. As a result, in circumstances where individuals face time constraints or have a lot on their minds, their brains tend to rely on those fast and automatic implicit associations. Research suggests that reducing cognitive load and allowing more time to process information can lead to less biased decision making. ²⁵ In terms of school discipline, this can mean allowing educators time to reflect on the disciplinary situation at hand rather than make a hasty decision. ²⁶

* * *

While implicit biases can affect any moment of decision making, these unconscious associations should not be regarded as character flaws or other indicators of whether someone is a "good person" or not. Having the ability to use our System 1 cognition to make effortless, lightning-fast associations, such as knowing that a green traffic light means go, is crucial to our cognition.

Rather, when we identify and reflect on the implicit biases we hold, we recognize that our life experiences may unconsciously shape our perceptions of others in ways that we may or may not consciously desire, and if the latter, we can take action to mitigate the influence of those associations.

In light of the compelling body of implicit bias scholarship, teachers, administrators, and even policymakers are increasingly considering the role of unconscious bias in disciplinary situations. For example, the federal school discipline guidance jointly released by the U.S. departments of Education and Justice in January 2014 not only mentions implicit bias as a factor that may affect the administration of school discipline, it also encourages school personnel to receive implicit bias training. (For more information on that guidance, see "School Discipline and Federal Guidance.") Speaking not only to the importance of identifying implicit bias but also to mitigating its effects, the federal guidance asserts that this training can "enhance staff awareness of their implicit or unconscious biases and the harms associated with using or failing to counter racial and ethnic stereotypes." ²⁷ Of course, teachers who voluntarily choose to pursue this training and explore this issue on their own can also generate interest among their colleagues, leading to more conversations and awareness.

Accumulated research evidence indicates that implicit bias powerfully explains the persistence of many societal inequities, not just in education but also in other domains, such as criminal justice, healthcare, and employment. ²⁸ While the notion of being biased is one that few individuals are eager to embrace, extensive social science and neuroscience research has connected individuals' System 1 unconscious associations to disparate outcomes, even among individuals who staunchly profess egalitarian intentions.

In education, the real-life implications of implicit biases can create invisible barriers to opportunity and achievement for some students-a stark contrast to the values and intentions of educators and administrators who dedicate their professional lives to their students' success. Thus, it is critical for educators to identify any discrepancies that may exist between their conscious ideals and unconscious associations so that they can mitigate the effects of those implicit biases, thereby improving student outcomes and allowing students to reach their full potential.
Cheryl Staats is a senior researcher at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, housed at Ohio State University.
*Implicit Association Tests are publicly available through Project Implicit. ( back to the article)

Endnotes

1. Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (New York: Penguin, 1999).

2. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

3. See, for example, George A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information," Psychological Review 63, no. 2 (1956): 81-97.

4. See, for example, Janice A. Sabin, Brian A. Nosek, Anthony G. Greenwald, and Frederick P. Rivara, "Physicians' Implicit and Explicit Attitudes about Race by MD Race, Ethnicity, and Gender," Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 20 (2009): 896-913.

5. See, for example, Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park, Charles M. Judd, Bernd Wittenbrink, Melody S. Sadler, and Tracie Keesee, "Across the Thin Blue Line: Police Officers and Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 1006-1023.

6. See, for example, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, and Chris Guthrie, "Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?," Notre Dame Law Review 84 (2009): 1195-1246.

7. Marianne Bertrand, Dolly Chugh, and Sendhil Mullainathan, "Implicit Discrimination," American Economic Review 95, no. 2 (2005): 94-98.

8. See, for example, Cheryl Staats and Danya Contractor, Race and Discipline in Ohio Schools: What the Data Say (Columbus, OH: Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 2014).

9. Russell J. Skiba, Robert S. Michael, Abra Carroll Nardo, and Reece L. Paterson, "The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment," Urban Review 34 (2002): 317-342.

10. Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Phillip Atiba Goff, Valerie J. Purdie, and Paul G. Davies, "Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87 (2004): 876-893.

11. Carla R. Monroe, "Why Are 'Bad Boys' Always Black? Causes of Disproportionality in School Discipline and Recommendations for Change," The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas 79 (2005): 46.

12. Jason A. Okonofua and Jennifer L. Eberhardt, "Two Strikes: Race and the Disciplining of Young Students," Psychological Science 26 (2015): 617-624.

13. Okonofua and Eberhardt, "Two Strikes."

14. Arin N. Reeves, Written in Black & White: Exploring Confirmation Bias in Racialized Perceptions of Writing Skills (Chicago: Nextions, 2014).

15. Reeves, Written in Black & White, 6.

16. Linda van den Bergh, Eddie Denessen, Lisette Hornstra, Marinus Voeten, and Rob W. Holland, "The Implicit Prejudiced Attitudes of Teachers: Relations to Teacher Expectations and the Ethnic Achievement Gap," American Educational Research Journal 47 (2010): 497-527.

17. This example is from Anthony G. Greenwald, Debbie E. McGhee, and Jordan L. K. Schwartz, "Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 (1998): 1464-1480.

18. Brian A. Nosek, Anthony G. Greenwald, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, "The Implicit Association Test at Age 7: A Methodological and Conceptual Review," in Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes, ed. John A. Bargh (New York: Psychology Press, 2007), 265-292.

19. Patricia G. Devine, Patrick S. Forscher, Anthony J. Austin, and William T. L. Cox, "Long-Term Reduction in Implicit Bias: A Prejudice Habit-Breaking Intervention," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012): 1267-1278; and John F. Dovidio, Kerry Kawakami, Craig Johnson, Brenda Johnson, and Adaiah Howard, "On the Nature of Prejudice: Automatic and Controlled Processes," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 33 (1997): 510-540.

20. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954). Allport also recognizes a fourth condition for optimal intergroup contact, which is authority sanctioning the contact.

21. Thomas F. Pettigrew and Linda R. Tropp, "A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90 (2006): 751-783.

22. Nilanjana Dasgupta and Anthony G. Greenwald, "On the Malleability of Automatic Attitudes: Combating Automatic Prejudice with Images of Admired and Disliked Individuals," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 800-814; and Nilanjana Dasgupta and Shaki Asgari, "Seeing Is Believing: Exposure to Counterstereotypic Women Leaders and Its Effect on the Malleability of Automatic Gender Stereotyping," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40 (2004): 642-658.

23. Jerry Kang, Mark Bennett, Devon Carbado, et al., "Implicit Bias in the Courtroom," UCLA Law Review 59 (2012): 1124-1186.

24. Kent McIntosh, Erik J. Girvan, Robert H. Horner, and Keith Smolkowski, "Education Not Incarceration: A Conceptual Model for Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in School Discipline," Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk 5, no. 2 (2014): art. 4.

25. Diana J. Burgess, "Are Providers More Likely to Contribute to Healthcare Disparities under High Levels of Cognitive Load? How Features of the Healthcare Setting May Lead to Biases in Medical Decision Making," Medical Decision Making 30 (2010): 246-257.

26. Prudence Carter, Russell Skiba, Mariella Arredondo, and Mica Pollock, You Can't Fix What You Don't Look At: Acknowledging Race in Addressing Racial Discipline Disparities, Disciplinary Disparities Briefing Paper Series (Bloomington, IN: Equity Project at Indiana University, 2014).

27. U.S. Department of Education, Guiding Principles: A Resource Guide for Improving School Climate and Discipline (Washington, DC: Department of Education, 2014), 17.

28. For more on implicit bias and its effects in various professions, see the Kirwan Institute's annual State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review publication.

[illustrations by Souther Salazar]

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As a profession, teaching is full of well-intentioned individuals deeply committed to seeing all children succeed. Touching innumerable lives in direct and indirect ways, educators uniquely recognize that our future rests on the shoulders of young people and that investing in their education, health, and overall well-being benefits society as a whole, both now and into the future.

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This video adds statistics which help give us a visual and allows us to reflect on ourselves. It also talks about how a teacher made a distasteful joke about a students culture. The student went on to become a teacher and then a principal. I think his story while it has an unfortunate start shows just how important it is to reflect on yourself as an educator.

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This video encourages us to reflect on ourselves. Even the person in the video says they have biases and is working on them. I appreciate the self reflection and not just finger pointing because it is important to look within yourself and acknowledge your own flaws as well before you cast judgement on others for the same thing.

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California Commission on Teacher Credentialing

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Uncovering the Veil: How Implicit Bias Impacts Educational Decisions September 2023

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This defines implicit biases quite well. The speaker gives credit to his sources and goes through his background. He also challenges us to think of ways to make the positive change we as a society need to.

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We all have implicit biases. So what can we do about it? | Dushaw Hockett | TEDxMidAtlanticSalon

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This video is another part of the talk about deconstructing implicit bias from the same speaker. my point in posting both parts is to give full context and credit to Dr. Dwayne Ray Cormier for the information i gained from his seminars.

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Becoming an Antiracist Educator Series: Deconstructing Implicit Bias with Dr. Dwayne Ray Cormier.

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This article reminds us while everyone has implicit biases we are not absolved of the responsibility to try and better ourselves as a community.

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Implicit Bias and Structural Racialization

by Kathleen Osta, LCSW and Hugh Vasquez

November 2018

"Implicit biases come from culture. I think of them as the thumbprint of the culture on our minds. Human beings have the ability to learn to associate two things together very quickly-that is innate. What we teach ourselves, what we choose to associate is up to us." -Dr. Mahzarin R. Banaji﻿

Increased interest in the topic of implicit bias provides an opportunity to open and deepen important conversations in our organizations and communities about equity, belonging, and ultimately justice. Most work on implicit bias focuses on increasing awareness of individuals in service of changing how they view and treat others. However, in order to lead to meaningful change, an exploration of implicit bias must be situated as part of a much larger conversation about how current inequities in our institutions came to be, how they are held in place, and what our role as leaders is in perpetuating inequities despite our good intentions. Our success in creating organizations and communities in which everyone has access to the opportunities they need to thrive depends on our willingness to confront the history and impacts of structural racism, learn how implicit bias operates, and take action to interrupt inequitable practices at the interpersonal, institutional and structural level.

Implicit bias (also referred to as unconscious bias) is the process of associating stereotypes or attitudes towards categories of people without conscious awareness - which can result in actions and decisions that are at odds with one's conscious beliefs about fairness and equality. This can lead us to make biased and unfair decisions regarding who we hire for a job or select for a promotion, which classes we place students into and who we send out of the classroom for behavior infractions, and which treatment options we make available to patients. And, we know from extensive research, that this happens all the time in our schools, in hospitals, in policing, and in places of employment.

While it is critical that we work to identify and mitigate the effects of implicit bias, some have argued that a focus on implicit bias is problematic because it lets white people off the hook, "Race had nothing to do with my decision." That is, if people can say their actions are unconscious, how can we hold them accountable for actions that create and perpetuate systemic oppression and structural inequalities? We understand this caution. Yet, we believe that recent research findings in the field of neuroscience are ultimately cause for optimism and that the uptick in interest in implicit bias "training" in the fields of education, public health, social services, law enforcement, government and private sector companies is a hopeful sign. The field of neuroscience has shown us that our brains continue to develop and grow well into adulthood. This means that while we cannot avoid mentally absorbing some of the negative stereotypes about groups of people that permeate our culture, the associations and implicit biases that we internalize are malleable. We can, quite literally, change the physiology of our brain, like adding wiring to a house or building a new road in a city. We have the ability to produce new associations which in turn can produce new, more inclusive and equitable, ways of behaving and reacting.

In order to ensure that learning about implicit bias leads to significant and meaningful change toward creating more equitable and inclusive communities and organizations, we offer these considerations.

Consideration #1: Situate learning about implicit bias in a historical and socioeconomic political context.

We are not born with negative biases toward any particular group of people. The biases we have internalized, both consciously and unconsciously, have been "primed" through our experiences - images and messages we receive every day about who is "normal" or "desirable" and "belongs" and who is "different" or "undesirable" and "not one of us." These messages are neither neutral nor random. In the United States, "whiteness" is the dominant and privileged identity; socially constructed to justify conquest and slavery and reified in laws and policies, both historic and current, that ensure that white people benefit disproportionately from the benefits of society and are protected from more of its harms. White supremacy is baked into our country's DNA. As such, what is deemed good and acceptable is normed to white people and we have all, white people and people of color, internalized an "anti-black and brown" bias. The effects of these biases results in both individual and institutional acts and are pervasive across sectors including education, health, employment, and housing. The negative associations and assumptions we make about people of color have been wired into our unconscious mind over hundreds of years and show up in all of our institutions today.

Consideration #2: Highlight and interrogate the ways that current policies and practices create and reproduce inequitable outcomes that serve to reinforce our implicit biases and the ways in which our implicit biases lead us to reify (and justify) existing inequities.

Access to opportunity has never been equitable or fair in the United States. As john powell points out, since our inception as a nation "We the People" only included some people. Housing discrimination, racial segregation, voter suppression, and disinvestment in neighborhoods where people of color live, are a result of explicit policies which produce outcomes that reinforce our biases - whether we are conscious of it or not. It isn't just the media that reinforces our negative racial biases (which it does), it is also the way we have historically and currently denied people of color access to opportunities in and across our communities that reinforces negative associations (crime, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure). In other words, we design policies and practices that disproportionately benefit white people and exclude and harm people of color and then use the negative outcomes the policies produce as evidence of racial superiority and inferiority.

For example, our inequitable structural arrangements mean that children of color are much more likely to grow up in poverty and attend underfunded, under-resourced schools with other students of color living in poverty. When these students, who have very likely had less experienced teachers, larger class sizes, and fewer extracurricular and enrichment activities score below state standards, the discourse that accompanies this fact most often focuses on what "extra" supports are needed for these students as if the problem is somehow located in the student and not in the material conditions of their educational experiences. The structural arrangement produces the outcomes (low achievement for student of color), but the outcomes produce and reinforce associations in our minds between students of color and lower academic performance.

Similarly, we now live in neighborhoods that are more racially segregated than they were in the 1960s. This means that many white children grow up with very little interaction with people of color. It may also mean that the primary way white people learn about people of color are through media depictions which often serve to perpetuate harmful negative stereotypes. To complicate things further, in their own segregated communities, they may only see people of color working in lower paying service positions such as gardeners, house cleaners, dishwashers in restaurants, security guards in their schools, lunchroom supervisors, or bus drivers. What are they learning? What messages are being reinforced unconsciously every day by simply walking around in their communities? What children see and experience every day attaches to messages about "those people" that are fed to their brains without their conscious awareness. In this way, white children (and people) living in racially segregated neighborhoods are primed to make associations between people of color and violence, crime and lower status positions.

This plays out within racially diverse schools as well. For example, in schools we often see the majority of African American and Latino kids placed in the lower track classes while "honors" and "gifted" classes are most often filled with white students. As a result, our mind consciously and unconsciously starts to associate African American and Latino kids with being less intelligent, less capable. (Note again that student placement patterns are the result of both the structural arrangements and policies governing schooling and the discretion of individual teachers and counselors.) Now picture a new student of color walking into the school. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we may assume that student should not be placed in the honors track. Even if we consciously and intellectually understand that intelligence is malleable and evenly distributed across the human race, what our mind sees day-to-day in our communities and schools are conditions that create associations that reinforce negative assumptions about the academic ability of students of color. When, based on this implicit assumption, we place the new student of color into a lower and less rigorous track, we reproduce the inequity and the vicious cycle of structural racism and implicit bias continues.

[Image Description: Cyclic path graphic consisting of three black arrows. In the center of the graph in large black text is the text "Implicit Bias" with a small dotted arrow pointing to the phrase, "Structural Racism" with another small dotted arrow pointing to "Implicit Bias." The top left arrow is titled "Priming, Associations, Assumptions." To the left of the arrow is the following text: "Dominant narratives about race (family, media, society) coupled with racialized structural arrangements and differential outcomes by race all prime us to believe that people of color are inferior to white people, create and maintain harmful associations, and lead us to make harmful assumptions, consciously and unconsciously, about people of color." The top right arrow is titled "History, Policies, Practices." To the left of the arrow are bullet points that state the following: To the right of the arrow is the following text, "Race is created to justify enslaving people from Africa (economic engine of a country). Policies and practices that consolidate and protect power bestow unearned economic, social, cultural, and political advantages to people called 'white' and unearned disadvantage to people of color. National narratives (ideology, belief system) about people of color being 'less than' human (and less than white) justifies mistreatment and inequality (white supremacy). The bottom arrow is titled, "Inequitable Outcomes & Racial Disparities." To the right of the arrow is the following text, "Inequitable outcomes and experiences resulting from policy decisions in health, housing, employment, education, and life expectancy - reinforces white supremacist beliefs and ideology; dominant narrative uses disparate outcomes as evidence of white superiority, promotes 'whiteness' as normal and desirable, and justifies inequality."]

Another example relevant for educators is the issue of student discipline. We are barraged with images of African American and Latino men and boys' mug shots in the media. There have been numerous studies (IAT and others) that show that we associate black and brown boys with aggression and violence; we have been primed to do so since before the United States was a country. As early as preschool, we are viewing the same behaviors very differently for different groups of children, attributing aggression to boys of color. One preschool study showed that when teachers were told there may be challenging behavior in their preschool classroom, they watched black boys significantly more than other children even though all the children were behaving well. Black preschoolers are more likely to receive suspensions than white preschoolers. Throughout their educational experience, African American and Latino students are more likely to be disciplined harshly and sent out of class. We walk by the school office and we see African American students sitting there - in trouble. Consciously or not, our mind begins to make associations between African American and Latino students and misbehavior in school. When we interact with these students, we carry those associations and assumptions with us. We don't consciously THINK we are doing this, but we are. We perceive the same behavior from a student of color in the classroom as threatening and disruptive and are more likely to send that student out to a system of harsher punishment.

Consideration #3: Understand that structural racism, othering, and exclusion have become normalized and result in policies and practices that ensure access to opportunity for some and exclude others.

Part of what allows these harmful associations and assumptions about people of color to endure is the fact that we have come to accept the structural and institutional inequities we have created as normal. We see neighborhoods with vastly different resources and most days we carry on with our lives accepting that this is just "how it is." We have come to accept the current inequitable conditions - it's the water we swim in. But the current conditions are NOT NATURAL and are not normal. We created them through laws and policies that have created advantage for some, particularly white people, and disadvantage for others, particularly people of color. By default, we accept these structural inequities as normal and we mostly try to help kids and families of color survive, and maybe do a little bit better, while living under inequitable conditions in a system that was not designed for their success. As educators, social workers, nurses, doctors, we are doing our best to meet the needs of the populations we serve. This is our job and the work that we do matters. However, it is critical to periodically step back and problematize the current structural conditions that have produced the inequitable outcomes and therefore the harmful associations and biases. Our work as advocates and providers is to make these inequitable conditions visible and consider the ways in which our programs and services may be designed without sufficient consideration of how different populations are "situated" to opportunity in our communities and how implicit bias may be playing out in our own policies and practices.

Consideration #4: Don't confuse the fact that "we all have implicit biases" with immunity from responsibility as the benefactors of the current inequitable structural arrangements.

It can come as a relief to white people to find out that people of color have also internalized negative racial biases. It shouldn't. While it is true that none of us are immune to the negative narratives and images we receive via the media, our families, in our communities, in literature, etc., the fact that we have all internalized these biases makes us no less responsible for their negative effects. Awareness of how implicit bias operates requires us to become even more vigilant and comes with an even greater level of responsibility to interrupt biases when we see them, in ourselves and others, and to dismantle the structures that created and perpetuate systems of othering. Understanding how implicit bias operates within each of us does not let us off the hook, rather it illuminates the ways that we may be unknowingly contributing to inequities at the interpersonal, institutional, or structural level and pushes us to think critically and creatively about how to create inclusive communities in which everyone belongs and has what they need to thrive.

Consideration #5: We are all connected - our fates are linked. Working for social justice is not about "helping those kids" or "those communities", but about dismantling structures that exclude, increasing access to opportunity and building healthy, inclusive communities in which we all belong and can thrive.

Now let's connect all of this to the concepts of "belonging" and "othering." Belonging is more than just "feeling included." john powell makes the case that "in a legitimate democracy, belonging means that your well-being is considered and your ability to design and give meaning to its structures and institutions is realized." Our need to connect is as fundamental as our need for food and water. Across many studies of mammals, from the smallest rodents all the way to us humans, the data suggests that we are profoundly shaped by our social environment and that we suffer greatly when our social bonds are threatened or severed. This is why our brains evolved to experience threats to our social connections in much the same way they experience physical pain. By activating the same neural circuitry that causes us to feel physical pain, our experience of social pain helps ensure the survival of our children and ensures that staying socially connected will be a lifelong need, like food and warmth. Deep down we know that belonging is essential to survival and we resist any attempts to be divided from each other. However, although we are hard wired for belonging, we have become soft wired for othering.

Othering is defined as "a set of dynamics, processes, and structures that engender marginality and persistent inequality across any of the full range of human differences based on group identities." Othering is artificial; we have created it. For example, racial discrimination in our laws, real estate practices, and banking industry meant that people of color have not had access to home ownership, the primary driver of wealth accumulation in the United States. This form of othering has become institutionalized and its harmful effects can be seen in every major city today.

Yet, it is NOT in our nature to "other." One can see evidence of this during natural disasters. When a devastating earthquake hit the San Francisco area in 1989, the impulse to help other human beings superseded any biases about one another's differences as people helped each other out of the rubble. When the World Trade Center towers fell, people helped each other without regard to race as they ran from the ashes. These are the times when we truly experience our linked fates and our hard wiring kicks into action, human being to human being.

With this in mind, the health and well-being of our communities can be measured by the extent to which all of its members experience a sense of belonging and have access to and benefit from the opportunities available. Numerous studies from across the globe have shown that when we have inequality, it is not just the marginalized who suffer, but rather exclusion hurts us all. Extreme inequality reduces quality of life, life expectancy, and social cohesion which in turn lead to greater isolation and increased rates of poverty and racial tension. As we delve into an exploration of implicit bias, we are called to look at the extent to which our policies, practices, and ways of communicating create a sense of belonging for every member of our communities and to identify those policies, practices, and narratives that create or perpetuate othering in any form.

Consideration #6: Any effort to interrupt implicit bias and its impacts must be accompanied by efforts to dismantle structures that exclude and build structures that provide access to opportunity or create new opportunities.

As we have seen, inequitable structural arrangements produce and reinforce implicit biases. Therefore, any effort to mitigate implicit biases and interrupt their harmful effects must include strategies focused on changing structures. Yes, we need to increase our self-awareness and interrogate how biases may be playing out and shaping our interactions and decision making. We need to actively work to change the narrative about people and communities, to actively do stereotype replacement, and intentionally build more relationships and connections across differences to build new neural pathways. However, in order for any of this to lead to meaningful change toward equity and justice, we must also dismantle the policies and practices in our organizations and communities that create and perpetuate inequities in the first place.

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Implicit Bias and Structural Racialization - National Equity Project

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To address implicit bias and systemic racism, inequitable practices must be interrupted at the interpersonal, institutional, & structural level to create change.

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credit to NATA for this image. I have hyperlinked their article so it may be read. I found it very important as it didn't just speak about race.

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This is part of a series on becoming antiracist educators which is very important and i have added another video from this series. This talks about deconstructing Implicit Bias.

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While this video talks about being a nurse and treating your patients with the same care and respect as your own family members, I think that as a teacher you should care for your students as they are your own children in a sense of showing them respect and trying to learn their culture as well as them as an individual. It is important to acknowledge differences but help bridge the gaps not just sit and look at them.

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CULTURAL COMPETENCE & DIVERSITY in HEALTHCARE

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This speaks about how we as adults shape the children around us through our body language and how we conduct ourselves around people who are different from us even if we do not realize that we are doing these things.

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RACIAL BIAS: Why We Have It and What We Can Do About It

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I know i have listed three types of biases in this section, but I put them here to help show some of the factors we need to combat if we wish to develop cultural competence. Some others I wish to list are Socioeconomic background, ethnic background, and political background, as well as language and physical/mental ability. All of these are things we should take into account when interacting with someone different so that we may reflect and try to improve ourselves.

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This article gives statistics on religious bias, and it makes me sick how anti-Jewish we are as a country, 60.3%. That is disgustingly high and we should strive to do better. The 13.3% anti-Islamic is also too high for my taste it just shows me how far we have to go as a society if we want to improve and become more inclusive.

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What is Religious Discrimination?

Religious discrimination involves treating a person unfavorably because of their religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs. Religious discrimination can also involve treating someone differently because that person is married to (or associated with) an individual of a particular religion.

Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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Recognizing Religious Bias | UMass Office of the President

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Religious discrimination involves treating a person unfavorably because of their religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.

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The factors to help improve cultural competence

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The factors to help improve cultural competence

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We as a society have grown to be accepting and inclusive but we still have a long way to go. This list allows us to see what we can do to improve our community and help diversity prosper.