EJS joins the Writers Guild of America West, Screen Actors Guild, Americans for American Values and the Kirwan Institute in presenting “Reading Between the Lines: Uncovering Unconscious Bias” on September 30, 2009, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Writers Guild of America, 7000 West Third Street, Los Angeles. A reception will follow the panel, which will be introduced by Norman Lear.

UPDATE: We will be videotaping this event.

The event is listed on Facebook, but RSVPs must be sent to diversity@wga.org with “Between the Lines” in subject line of your email. Contact the WGAW Diversity Department at 323-782-4589 with any questions.

In his autobiography Nelson Mandela tells of getting on a plane in Africa after his release from 28 years of imprisonment. The pilot of the plane was a Black African. This frightened Mandela. When he examined his fears, he realized that he had internalized negative stereotypes of Black incompetence. Many of us have internalized negative stereotypes of women, lesbians and gay men, the disabled, older people, and people of color. These fears operate in our unconscious.

Panelists include:

• Celinda Lake, Pollster
• john powell, Professor of Law, The Ohio State University
• Antonia Hernández, President and Chief Executive Officer, The California Community Foundation
• Dr. Camille Charles, University of Pennsylvania
• Jerry Kang, Professor of Law, UCLA
• Dr. Maninder Kahlon, Cognitive Neuroscientist
• Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender and Producer of The Slanted Screen, a documentary on Asian Americans in cinema
• Eva Paterson, President, Equal Justice Society

With special guests:

• Kathleen Antonia, attorney and actor
• Tim Paulson, California Teachers Association
• Larissa Fasthorse, WGAW American Indian Writers Committee
• John S. Johnson, Director, Harmony Institute

The panelists will explore how the brain processes information and how the need for quick decision often leads to faulty conclusions. Political ads from the 2008 presidential campaign will be used as examples of how media can “prime” viewers to activate stereotypes and similarly, deactivate the impact of negative unconscious stereotypes. A number of ads showed candidate Obama as a menacing Black man – purposefully done to make voters afraid of him.

EJS has studied the intersection of unconscious bias and social justice since 2003. Our signature project on this issue is the collaboration with the California Teachers Association to assess racial bias in the classroom and school environment and its impact on student achievement.

“Implicit (unconscious) bias and stereotyping are gaining increasing attention as a possible explanation of unequal treatment in a number of settings including education, employment, health care and law,” said Dr. James Outtz, an industrial and organizational psychologist, who leads the research team on behalf of EJS and CTA. Dr. Outtz explained that scientists define unconscious bias as implicit attitudes, actions or judgments that are controlled by automatic evaluation without a person’s awareness. Existing research shows that we all engage in a cognitive process called “categorization” to simplify and streamline how we perceive others (e.g. sex, race, or age). This process can lead to stereotype application that influences our thoughts and behaviors towards members of certain groups.

Notably, there are a number of social power relationships in our society in which the application of stereotypes may be particularly detrimental to members of racial and ethnic minority groups, the teacher-student relationship being one significant example.

Our workshop will provide a background on the unconscious bias theory, drawing from our six years of work on the issue and identifying ways that unconscious bias can be better understood and used by writers.

Contact me at kkamisugi@equaljusticesociety.org if you have questions about this event.

]]> http://www.equaljusticesociety.org/2009/07/unconsciousbias-panel-wga/feed/ 1 http://www.equaljusticesociety.org/2009/04/new-project-to-study-and-combat-unconscious-racism-identify-what-triggers-racial-bias-and-political-consequences/ http://www.equaljusticesociety.org/2009/04/new-project-to-study-and-combat-unconscious-racism-identify-what-triggers-racial-bias-and-political-consequences/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:19:05 +0000 Keith Kamisugi http://www.equaljusticesociety.org/?p=673 The election of President Obama shows how far America has progressed in overcoming the racial divides that for so long scarred this country. But while overt racism is less and less acceptable in America, unconscious racial bias still plays a large role in our politics and society, as a new project launched this week by the Institute for America’s Future seeks to explore.

EJS and our president, Eva Paterson, have been involved in the project, called “Americans for American Values,” (AmericansForAmericanValues.org) which will research the effects of unconscious racial bias on decision making and will develop strategies to support decision-making based on consciously held American values rather than on racial anxiety and stereotypes.

john powell, the project’s founder and executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, said racial equality and fairness are values widely supported by Americans, but hidden biases often undermine these values.

“As society tries to move beyond racial discrimination, a better understanding of implicit bias is needed,” said powell. “Our two-fold goal with this study is to help the American public better understand implicit bias and to give them ways to avoid triggering these biases.”

Institute for America’s Future co-director Robert Borosage, whose organization will be the fiscal sponsor for the project, said the first series of studies will examine the impact of undetected racially-oriented biases on our democratic process.

“The election of the first African American president has helped us see one another with new eyes,” said Borosage. “Yet, we still struggle both as a society stratified in large part by race, and marked by attitudes that congeal in a society still marked by racial divisions.”

The “Americans for American Values” project will begin with research over the next two years designed to identify all the forms of implicit bias and what triggers them. The studies findings will help make recommendations on how to avoid these biases. The project was made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930. The organization supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.