Reporting on Race

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Reporting on Race

• Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director
• Kirwan Institute for the
• Study of Race and Ethnicity
• Columbus Dispatch
• February 19, 2009

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OVERVIEW

• Race coverage in the Dispatch
• Reporting on race
• Race matters
• Race and Opportunity
• The Meanings of Race
• How race matters (mechanisms)
• Cumulative Systems Bias
• Implicit Bias
• Colorblindness

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I. The Dispatch Positives on Race Coverage

• The Dispatch included an assessment of the racial
  impacts of the foreclosure crisis
• Has run articles on challenges facing some of
  Columbus's marginalized communities (and talked
  openly about race in those articles)
• Business section does good job covering issues
  around race (housing, community investment)
• Editorial page includes some columnists who talk
  about race (Page, Herbert and others)

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The Dispatch Some Gaps in Coverage

• Too much school coverage criticizes teachers and
  district administration little attention to
  neighborhood factors and to racial and economic
  segregation
• Coverage of Ohio's economic crisis has not noted
  its racial aspects
• Discussion around fixing the state's economy
  ignores the most marginalized segment of the work
  force, people we must bring into the econ
  mainstream if economy is to be revived

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The Dispatch The African American Community

• Although there is an emphasis on Black life, it
  often deals with tragedy or athletics.
• Why is it that when an alleged perp is black,
  his picture appears all week long? White perps
  only make one appearance, if any
• More human interest stories that focus on the
  positive contributions African-Americans are
  making to the community. We readily get the crime
  and sports stories, etc.   

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The Dispatch Other Communities of Color

• There is not much on other minority groups, such
  as Hispanics or Somalis unless it is dealing with
  crime stories
• I hardly ever see anything about the Somali
  population, expect for the recent FBI
  investigation
• Feature more stories about educated people of
  color who have something intelligent to say about
  issues. Obama is not the only smart black (or
  mixed race) guy out there

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The Dispatch Other Communities of Color

• Would be interesting to get more international
  news with a 'Columbus connection'  for example,
  they did a good piece on the Mexican soccer team
  coming to Columbus to play the USA
• I would like the Dispatch to carry more pictures
  of African Americans and other races/ethnicities
  doing normal things
• Talk with people of color (focus groups) to find
  out what kind of issues/stories are current
  within the city

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II. Reporting on Race Four Red Flag Tendencies

• Minimizing the significance of race and racism
• Focusing on individual attitudes and choices in
  evaluating racial outcomes and remedies
• Framing the concerns/aspirations of minority and
  white communities as if they were unrelated
• Highlighting race-as-problem without noting good
  news or possible solutions

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1. Minimizing significance of race and racism

• Possible responses
• Document racial disparities, but also explain how
  those disparities came to be (and narrative
  trumps numbers)
• Pay attention to the racial benefits and
  burdens of practices and policies. Who benefits?
  Who is harmed? Who has power? Who is left out?
• Do not reduce class and culture to race class
  and culture matter, but race matters
  independently
• Note Some of the language in this section is
  drawn from Annie E. Casey, Race Matters How to
  Talk about Race and the Praxis Projects Race
  Framing Memo.

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2. Focusing on individual attitudes and choices
in evaluating racial outcomes and remedies

• Possible Responses
• Avoid the easy trap of telling individual,
  episodic stories to advance the issue
• Structural opportunity and personal
  responsibility go hand in hand. Avoid the
  suggestion that one or the other is to blame
• Expose patterns and systems of injustice in ways
  that help people understand the institutional and
  structural roots of these issues

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3. Framing the concerns/aspirations of minority
and white communities as if they were completely
unrelated

• Possible responses
• Note that many/most challenges are shared across
  racial lines, though unequally (unemployment,
  health care, foreclosure). Opportunity is at risk
  for ALL of us
• Focus on situations anyone might find himself in
  (loss of a job, lack of health care)
• Stress values that unite rather than divide
  --opportunity, community instead of to each
  his/her own

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4. Highlighting race-as-problem without noting
good news or possible solutions

• Possible responses
• When discussing race-based inequality, focus on
  desired outcomes, not just on present disparities
• Focus coverage on policies, programs, and
  practices the places opportunities are lodged
• Where possible, highlight other communities where
  similar issues have been addressed effectively
• Celebrate evidence of progress even while noting
  the distance still to travel

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IIIa. Race Matters Demographics and Diversity in
Columbus
Source Diversitydata.org
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Demographics Diversity in Columbus Household
Composition
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Diversity Inequality in Columbus Homeownership
and Overcrowding
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Diversity Inequality in Columbus Economic
Opportunity
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Diversity Inequality in Columbus Economic
Opportunity for Children
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Whoa!
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In general, Americans think much less well of
Blacks than of Whites
IIIb. Race Matters The Meanings of Race
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Race Matters The Meanings of Race
Except with respect to family, public opinion
doesnt treat Hispanics much better than Blacks
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Racial Identity ? Social Status
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Racial Identity ? Social Status
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IVa. How Race Matters Thinking Race, Thinking
Systems
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Housing Is a Key Intervention Point into the
Complex Web of Opportunity
Housing is a key component of a set of
interrelated opportunity structures that affect
the attainment of safe, stable housing and are
affected by housing
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Where Children Live Largely Determines Their
Access to High or Low-quality Schools
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Jobs Role Models
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Playgrounds, Parks, Artsand More
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• All These Components Together
• Define an Opportunity Structure

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Race and Opportunity in Franklin County
Opportunity Indicators

• Property values
• Neighborhood poverty
• Vacancy rates
• Population change
• Projected job growth
• Crime rates

• Unemployment rates
• School math and reading proficiency rates
• School poverty rates
• School graduation rates
• Home ownership rates

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Latinos and, especially, African Americans, live
disproportionately in low-opportunity
neighborhoods
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Low-income African American Ohioans enjoy less
neighborhood opportunity than do low-income
members of other groups
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Low-income white families live in stronger
neighborhoods than hi-income black families
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IVb. How Race Matters Implicit (Hidden) Bias
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SPINNING GIRL
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• What colors are the following lines of text?
• Vqeb peow ytro
• Cvur zxyq brrm
• Vhrn wwte zytn
• Xoc jbni oew mne
• Zre ytu vee mkp

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• What colors are the following lines of text?
• Red
• Blue
• Black
• Green
• Brown

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• What colors are the following lines of text?
• Sky
• Grass
• Dirt
• Coal
• Stop sign

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• What colors are the following lines of text?
• Dirt
• Sunshine
• Sky
• Grass
• Stop sign

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• What colors are the following lines of text?
• Green
• Blue
• Brown
• Red
• Black

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Implicit Association Test
http//thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/
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Implicit Bias against Nonwhites, Relative to
Whites, is Strong
Note Percentages represent the percent biased in
favor of group. Source 94 California Law
Review (2006), p. 957
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What Would You Do?
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Implicit Racial Bias The Shooter Game

• Images of suspects -- armed and unarmed, black
  and white flash on a monitor.
• Is the man in each picture carrying a gun?
  Subjects have less than one second to press one
  key to shoot or another not to shoot.
• After repeated experimentation, peoples mistakes
  follow a clear pattern
• They shoot more unarmed blacks
• They fail to shoot more armed whites

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Implicit Racial Bias Demonstrated Behavioral
Links

• Split-second police decisions about when and what
  to shoot regardless of explicit attitudes
• Implicit biases affected sentencing decisions for
  defendants convicted of felonies
• More or less implicit bias corresponded with
  comfort level and body language in interracial
  interactions
• People with greater implicit bias were more
  likely to interpret ambiguous behavior with
  respect to negative stereotypes
• Source Dasgupta 2008

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Implicit Racial Bias Demonstrated Behavioral
Links

• As physicians' pro-white implicit bias increased,
  so did their likelihood of giving white patients,
  but not black patients, clot-busting thrombolytic
  drugs
• White people who exhibited greater implicit bias
  toward black people reported a stronger tendency
  to engage in such everyday discriminatory acts as
  avoiding or excluding blacks socially, uttering
  racial slurs and jokes, and insulting,
  threatening or physically harming blacks.
• The greater the implicit bias of an employer
  against Arab-Muslim men, the less likely he or
  she was to call an applicant with a name such as
  Mohammed or Reza for an interview.

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Implicit Bias Not Just Race

• Gender
• Age
• Weight
• Skin-tone
• Religion
• Disability
• Sexuality

Source Nosek et al, Implicit Attitudes and
Stereotypes. Available at http//graphics8.nytime
s.com/packages/pdf/business/20061202money2.pdf
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Perceiving Race

• Racial categorization occurs automatically,
  regardless of any efforts to divert attention
  from race.
• Within moments of perceiving someone, we
  reflexively judge that person in terms of
  in-group favoritism Is he or she us or them?
  
• We unconsciously think about race even when we do
  not explicitly discuss it. Our implicit (hidden)
  thoughts can overpower our explicit positions

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Reducing Implicit Bias

• Seeing targeted groups in favorable social
  contexts can help undermine hidden bias e.g.,
  seeing black faces with a church as a background
  examples of admired blacks such as Colin Powell
  and Denzel Washington reading about
  Arab-Muslims positive contributions to society.
• Working together in a structured environment to
  solve shared problems
• Teaching explicitly egalitarian views
• Practicing unbiased behaviors
• Learning to differentiate other-race faces
  (facial recognition training)
• Source Dasgupta 2008

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Reducing Implicit Bias (cont.)

• Feedback to make physicians more aware of their
  own biases, disparities in behaviors toward their
  own cohort of patients, privately administering
  IATs to increase awareness, and targeted
  education to mitigate effects on decision making.
  
• People who report a strong personal motivation to
  be non-prejudiced tend to harbor less implicit
  bias.
• Developing simple but concrete plans to supplant
  stereotypes in particular situations can also
  short-circuit implicit biases. On researcher
  found that those who simply resolved to think of
  the word safe whenever they saw a black face
  showed dramatic reductions in implicit racial
  bias.
• Source Siri Carpenter, Buried Prejudice The
  Bigot in Your Brain.

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IVc. How Race Matters Colorblindness

• Ignores the continuing significance of race
• Reinforces notion that the societal playing field
  has been leveled
• Encourages ineffective policy solutions to social
  problems
• Discounts strategic benefits of diversity
• Is not feasible given pervasiveness and strength
  of implicit racial thinking and bias
• The problem is racial bias, not race ignoring
  race actual undermines push for equal opportunity

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www.KirwanInstitute.org