{"id":432,"date":"2016-10-13T22:32:54","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T02:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/?p=432"},"modified":"2017-07-14T17:32:27","modified_gmt":"2017-07-14T21:32:27","slug":"racial-profiling-in-preschool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/racial-profiling-in-preschool\/","title":{"rendered":"Racial Profiling in Preschool"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>Data from the U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights, shows that African-American children, especially boys, are suspended or expelled<\/a> 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.\n

A new study by Walter Gilliam and his colleagues<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

In the first study<\/a>, participants were shown a 6-minute video of four preschool children\u2014a Black boy, a Black girl, a White boy and a White girl\u2014seated around a table. The teachers were asked to watch for \u201cchallenging behavior,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The eye tracking results<\/a>\u00a0showed 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.<\/p>\n

The title of the paper frames the research as a study of implicit bias<\/i><\/a>, and media reports of the study<\/a> have followed suit. The authors define implicit bias as the \u201cautomatic and unconscious stereotypes<\/a> that drive people to behave and make decisions in certain ways.\u201d However, the teachers\u2019 conscious appraisal of which child they paid\u00a0the 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.<\/p>\n

\"yale_implicit_bias_infographic_v07\"<\/p>\n

I mention this because the term \u201cimplicit bias\u201d is sometimes used to deny personal responsibility<\/a> for one\u2019s own and others\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

In my title, I described these results as similar to racial profiling. Racial profiling<\/a> targets people based on stereotypes about their race, as when the police stop and frisk Black teenagers having\u00a0no 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<\/i><\/a> drew this same analogy.)<\/p>\n

These same participants also took part in a second experiment. In this study<\/a>, they were asked to read a vignette describing a preschool child who repeatedly engaged in disruptive behavior. The child\u2019s race and gender were manipulated by changing the child\u2019s name (DeShawn, Jake, Latoya or Emily). Half the participants in\u00a0each 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\u2019s behavior and to recommend whether the child should be suspended or expelled.<\/p>\n

The following results were found<\/a> for ratings of the severity of the behavior.<\/p>\n