Data from the U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights, shows that African-American children, especially boys, are suspended or expelled from preschools at a higher rate than White children. For example, while 20% of preschool boys are Black, 45% of the boys suspended are Black. However, this is not proof of racial discrimination, since a skeptic could argue that, even at this young age, Black children are more likely to misbehave.

A new study by Walter Gilliam and his colleagues at the Yale University Child Study Center takes an experimental approach to this issue by holding the behavior of Black and White children constant and observing how teachers respond. Participants were 132 prechool teachers recruited at an annual conference. Sixty-seven percent of the teachers were White and 22% were Black. They took part in two studies.

In the first study, participants were shown a 6-minute video of four preschool children—a Black boy, a Black girl, a White boy and a White girl—seated around a table. The teachers were asked to watch for “challenging behavior,” but in fact the video did not contain any misbehavior. A computerized eye-tracking device was used to measure the amount of time the teachers spent watching each child. At the conclusion, the teachers were asked to report which of the four children required the most attention.

The eye tracking results showed that the participants spent more time looking at boys than girls, and more time looking at Black children than White children. In addition, the time spent gazing at the Black boy was significantly greater than would have been expected on the basis of his combined race and gender. The race of the teacher made no difference in this study.

The title of the paper frames the research as a study of implicit bias, and media reports of the study have followed suit. The authors define implicit bias as the “automatic and unconscious stereotypes that drive people to behave and make decisions in certain ways.” However, the teachers’ conscious appraisal of which child they paid the most attention to appeared to match the eye-tracking results fairly closely, as shown in the chart below. Apparently the teachers were well aware that they were paying more attention to the Black boy.

I mention this because the term “implicit bias” is sometimes used to deny personal responsibility for one’s own and others’ discriminatory behavior on the grounds that it is unconscious. By labeling this as a study of implicit bias, the authors may have given their teacher-participants less blame for their behavior than they actually deserved.

In my title, I described these results as similar to racial profiling. Racial profiling targets people based on stereotypes about their race, as when the police stop and frisk Black teenagers having no evidence that they are committing crimes. Like the police, these teachers were scanning for misbehavior, and they responded by giving special attention to African-American boys. (An editorial writer for the New York Times drew this same analogy.)

These same participants also took part in a second experiment. In this study, they were asked to read a vignette describing a preschool child who repeatedly engaged in disruptive behavior. The child’s race and gender were manipulated by changing the child’s name (DeShawn, Jake, Latoya or Emily). Half the participants in each race and gender condition also read background information suggesting that the child lived with a single mother who was under a great deal of stress. The others were not given background information. The teachers were then asked to rate the severity of the child’s behavior and to recommend whether the child should be suspended or expelled.

The following results were found for ratings of the severity of the behavior.

• The same behavior was rated as more seriously disruptive when the child was White than when he or she was Black.
• Giving teachers background information increased the ratings of the severity of the behavior.
• The Black teachers rated the behavior as more serious than the White teachers.
• The background information increased the perceived severity of the behavior when the teacher was of a different race than the child, but the teachers responded more sympathetically to it when the teacher and the child were of the same race.

With regard to suspension or expulsion, the only finding was that Black teachers were more likely to recommend these options.

The results of the second study are not a good fit with the Department of Justice data, since the teachers appear to be discriminating against the White children. The researchers explain this by suggesting that these teachers expected the Black children to be disruptive, but held the White children to a higher standard. Therefore, the identical behavior was seen as more serious when attributed to a White child.

My guess is that had the same behavior been rated more disruptive when when the child was Black, the results would have been interpreted in a straightforward manner as discrimination against African-Americans. However, since the results were unexpected, a more complex explanation was presented. This explanation may be correct, of course. There is some evidence for “shifting standards” with respect to race. However, the authors could have strengthened their argument with a followup study measuring teachers’ expectations about the misbehavior of Black and White children and the extent to which the behavior described in their vignette violated those expectations.

Since the Black teachers were stricter overall, it appears that increasing the representation of Black teachers will not by itself reduce the number of suspensions and expulsions.

Some additional perspective on this issue is provided by a set of two experiments by Jason Okonofua and Jennifer Eberhardt. Their participants, grade school teachers, read a desription of either a White or Black boy in middle school who committed two infractions—one class disruption and one act of insubordination. After each incident, they were asked how severely the child should be disciplined.

There was no difference in the punishment recommended for Black and White boys after the first infraction. As shown in the table, the recommended disciplinary action increased in severity after the second infraction, but it did so more for the Black boy than for the White boy. (In the table, “feeling troubled” refers to a combined measure the the severity of the misbehavior and the extent to which it would hinder and irritate a teacher.)

Apparently, the teachers were more likely to infer a disposition to misbehave from two bad actions when the child was African-American than when he was White.

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