The Science of Racial Justice

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.