
WEBINAR
Only
The Science of Racial Justice
Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 10:00 AM - Wednesday, November 17, 2021, 4:15 PM EST
Webinar
Presented By
The New York Academy of Sciences
Political and social movements in 2020 raised collective consciousness, spotlighting the scourge of racism and bias against marginalized communities. The Black-Lives-Matter and the Me-Too movements highlight the prevalence of discrimination across spheres of society while a rise in hate and divisive rhetoric seem to make the goal of achieving racial equity more and more elusive.
To uncover the underlying causes and consequences of systemic bias, this two-day virtual conference will convene social, behavioral, and cognitive scientists as well as activists and legal scholars working to understand the dynamics of intergroup relationships and propose intervention strategies that will move us to a more racially just society.
Topics include basic research on implicit and explicit bias, stereotype threat, intergroup relations, consequences of racist behaviors in health, education, and law enforcement and development of effective intervention strategies.
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Tuesday
November 16, 2021
Welcome Remarks
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Overview
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Session 1: The Socio-Political Context of Racial Justice
Omission as the Modern Form of Bias against Indigenous Peoples
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The Roots of Racial Bias
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Break
Why Do People Seek Social Justice
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In this presentation, I discuss the motivational underpinnings for people concerns with social justice issues. I assume that all human behavior is guided by goals that ultimately serve fundamental human needs. Furthermore, I assume that social justice concerns stem from the universal human quest for significance and dignity. I consider how the quest for significance is activated through either loss of significance or the opportunity for significance gain, and how the channeling of this quest for specific justice oriented action is guided by cultural narratives and social networks. To illustrate these processes, I present findings as to how the quest for significance has played a role in violent extremist movements, but also in pro-social activism.
Justice Motives and Racial Attitudes
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Joint Audience Q&A
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Lunch Break
Keynote
The Mental Representation of Race in America: A New Science Compels a New Reckoning
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A concept as complex as that of “race” in the American context must be understood at multiple levels from the literary to the biological. The work I will present is a view from experimental psychology, with a focus on the mental representation of race and ethnicity. Using studies of attention and perception, explicit and implicit attitudes/stereotypes, embeddings in language both historical and today, we will examine the inconsistency between stated values and mental representations and actions. With this evidence in hand, we can ask how such evidence should compel a new reckoning about the meaning of a good society.
Session 2: Mechanisms of Bias
What Works to Reduce Prejudice? Developmental Science has Some Answers
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Developmental science perspectives on prejudice provide a fundamental and important window into determining how to reduce prejudicial attitudes and biases. Research with historically disadvantaged and advantaged groups in childhood and adolescence reveals that children are aware of status and hierarchies, often reject the status quo, and seek to rectify social inequalities. Challenging individuals and groups that exclude others, however, is costly. Group identity often creates obstacles for acting to achieve the fair and equitable treatment of others. Research on attitudes about race, ethnicity, and gender in childhood has identified some of the mechanisms and experiences that contribute to fair and just treatment of others, including cross-group friendships, mental state knowledge, and an understanding of group dynamics. Further, facilitating classroom discussions helps to reduce "in-group vs outgroup" attitudes which is a salient part of why prejudice forms in the first place. The negative consequences of experiencing prejudice and bias include depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. Thus, intervention, to be effective, must happen early in development, before prejudice and stereotypes are deeply entrenched (and difficult to change) by adulthood.
Social Neuroscience of Racial Bias
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Social Change and Prejudice: The Challenges of Living in a Dynamic Society
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Q&A
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Break
Session 3: Protective Mechanisms
Psychological Factors Affecting Equity in Higher Education
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Despites decades of research, disparities in educational outcomes between majority and minority group students persist at all levels of education. Particularly perplexing is the persistence of these inequalities at the highest levels of training, which already selects for the most highly achieving students for specialization in their field of study. This talk will cover some of the psychological processes that can explain these inequalities, and discuss how the structure of traditional higher education may contribute to these disparities.
Self-Affirmation
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Racial Literacy as Self-Protection During Discriminatory Racial Encounters
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Recently, the call for anti-racist solutions for societal conflicts have increased in education,healthcare, and justice without attention to the emotional, cognitive, and physiologicaldifficulties of in-the-moment (ITM) and face-to-face (FTF) interracial contacts. Discriminatoryracial encounters are detrimental to mental and physical well-being and are linked to short- andlong-term cardiovascular health and quality of life problems. Racial literacy interventions basedon Recast theory (Racial Encounter Appraisal and Socialization Theory) assume that successfullynegotiating stressful interpersonal racial encounters can improve the quality of relationshipsessential for competent health and functioning of relationships and climates for children,families, communities, and organizations (Anderson & Stevenson, 2019; Stevenson, 2014).Racial literacy interventions prepare participants to assertively negotiate ITM-FTF racialmicroaggressions through mindfulness of feelings, thoughts and body reactions during racialstorytelling, journaling, debating, and role-playing activities. Imagine the possibility of preparingindividuals and institutions to manage their threat reactions as perpetrators or victims of racialrejection, thus enhancing their access to memory, physical mobility, and voice? What if,through repetitive practice of racial literacy, we could improve the confidence and humanity ofour racial encounter decision-making and reduce incompetent life-threatening actions towardBlack and Brown people?
Joint Audience Q&A
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Closing Remarks
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Adjourn
Wednesday
November 17, 2021
Welcome Remarks
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Keynote
The Psychology of Navigating Social and Cultural Diversity
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Session 4: Applied Research in Racial Justice
Policing Racism: Beyond Hearts & Minds
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Why Critical Race Theory Needs Science
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Break
Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
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Joint Audience Q&A
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Featured Speaker
Racial Disparities in Health Care – In Conversation with Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith
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Lunch Break
Session 5: Strategies for Intervention
Prejudice Reduction: Progress and Challenges
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Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Practice
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Though not a new movement, the summer 2020 uprising for racial justice and Black lives increased theuse and popularity of the phrase “anti-racist pedagogy.” How do we convert these words from merelyaspirational to pedagogical change? Aspiring anti-racist educators can challenge systemic racism andwhite supremacy by strengthening our pedagogical humility (Case et al., 2020) and intersectional culturalhumility (Buchanan et al., 2020). Through pedagogical humility, faculty interrogate assumptions aboutways of being and knowing and infuse student expertise throughout the curriculum as co-creators of thelearning experience. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991) officially named intersectionality and highlightedthe ways social systems (e.g., legal system, education) were differentially accessible and applicable togroups of people at critical intersections of identity. Intersectional cultural humility recognizes the need forongoing learning with the understanding that a person’s subjective experience is shaped by their socialcontext, including their race, gender, and social class, and within the context of socio-political systemsthat are rooted in a particular historical context and physical location (Buchanan et al., 2020). Applicationof both pedagogical humility and intersectional cultural humility allows for critical reflection and movingbeyond our traditional higher education approaches aimed at diversity and inclusion.
Bridging Group Differences Through Intergroup Contact
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Break
An Evidence-based Faculty Recruitment Workshop Influences Hiring Perceptions Among University Faculty
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Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World
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Joint Audience Q&A
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Closing Remarks
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