Blink in Black and White / See Baby Discriminate

     Malcom Gladwell and Po Bronson have developed more scientific ways to assess racial views in people. Since most people are very guarded and less likely to admit being racist, it's difficult to get accurate measures of what the typical perspective is.
     In Gladwell's article, he discusses the use of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This test is based on the principle that your brain can make connections between two separate ideas faster if the ideas have been thought of before in your mind. It's basically a way to test your subconscience and what's inside your brain before you begin to overanalyze things. There is actually a test in this article the reader can take in order to get a sense of the IAT - it was really interesting and definitely helps one to understand how it works. It was interesting to see how quickly my brain associated common girl/boy names with the "appropriate" gender identity. When the categories became more complex, my brain had fewer pre-conceived notions and was forced to become analytical. It was interesting to see how programmed my brain really was!
     Bronson discusses the use of a study by Vittrup used on young children to gauge their understanding of racial differences. It was testing to see if television shows with obvious diversity truly would increase the children's views of diversity. What they found was that the exposure wasn't enough, and although children learned blanket phrases such as "we're all equal," they didn't truly understand the implications of the statement. To make matters worse, they began to realize that the kids actually had many pre-conceived notions somehow regarding race, many of which were negative.
     The problem both articles were uncovering is that we learn many unifying themes and statements, but we never truly learn about our differences. We become "color blind" and try to pretend we have no differences rather than embracing our differences and viewing them as a source of strength. Teaching kids equality is a great first step and certainly necessary, but without teaching what our differences mean, we're only sending people half the message. I believe I was brought up with the color blind style, having been brainwashed that we're all equal and to never think beyond this...I will certainly have to re-visit these ideas as I teach others in the future!