Government and civic leaders took another step toward addressing racial disparities in the community by bringing back john a. powell, an internationally known legal scholar and expert on implicit bias, civil rights and racial identity. He is currently director of the Haas Research Center on Diversity at UC Berkeley.
Read his CV here. Note: He writes his name in lowercase.
About 200 people attended the symposium at the High Point Theatre on Wednesday, where powell shared research and his experience tackling the unconscious racial tension that many people carry with them. powell spoke about implicit bias in Greensboro last summer, and he got such a strong response that 18 sponsors, including Guilford County Schools, brought him back this week.
"We are hopeful that this will create real, genuine, deep dialogue about race, racism, any of the 'isms,'" said Jody Clayton, program coordinator with the National Conference for Community and Justice, one of the sponsors. "Our goal is always to create inclusive communities. This event is a huge leap toward that goal."
Other sponsors included: Cone Health, the human relations departments with Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, Guilford County DSS, and the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.
Several high school students attended as part of their work for the student human relations commission in High Point. I spotted a number of educators and school officials in the audience: Principal Will Laine with Northern High, maintenance director Gerald Greeson, school board member Nancy Routh, and Kelly Hales, director of federal programs.
"To me, it's what I like to talk about," said Dwayne Washington, assistant principal at Welborn Middle. "It's a major issue and it doesn't get discussed enough."
During the presentation, powell talked about the fact that humans are only consciously aware of a tiny percentage of their thoughts and reactions. So a person can be well-meaning but still have racial anxiety that manifests in discrimination. People also consciously refuse to accept facts and figures that challenge their mental frames and preconceived notions (commonly referred to as cognitive dissonance).
"As a society we like the idea of not having racial hostility to the other," powell said. "And yet, at an unconscious level we may have some conflict.... In our society we have a lot of unconscious racial anxiety that can be easily activated."
In other words, a person may intend to treat people the same regardless of their race, but their body may react differently when they are around black males, for example. The unconscious mind gets its cues from society, from cultural narratives, cues, images and metaphors, not from logic or reason, he said. It tends to be simplistic and think in binaries.
"We are primed by our environment all the time, 24-7," he said. "We're getting messages about what's important, who's important, who's not important. And the messages affect us in powerful ways."
He said that Americans' goal should be to consciously manage their biases and to restructure institutions so that they don't result in racial or other disparities. He gave the example of requiring everyone to take an escalator to the fourth floor of a building. A wheel chair-bound person cannot use an escalator so it's only fair to install an elevator as well. He called that "targeted universalism" that focuses on goals and outcomes rather than expectations that all people are the same.
He also criticized bathrooms in stadiums; they are often built with a bias against women who need more stalls and more space than men.
One last thing: He did have some words about school systems' attempts to narrow the black male achievement gap. He said the gap points to the economical vulnerabilty black families have endured during America's deindustrialization over the past few decades.
"We don't say how is the structure working? Who is it defined for?" powell said. "It all becomes let's raise up the esteem of African-American males so they can perform like everybody else."
Guilford County Schools is in the process of developing some programs to address the black male achievement gap now, so powell's perspective gives me another lens with which to view and assess the district's work.
