Название: Still Invisible?
Автор: Elvin J. Dowling
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Изобразительное искусство, фотография
isbn: 9781922309815
isbn:
In a study produced by the University of Iowa, researchers have affirmed what African-American parents have decried for generations: Black boys are seen as an inherent threat to nonwhites. According to the study, people were more likely to associate threatening words and weapons with the images of young Black boys. The results were similar to that of the first experiment; participants were more likely to associate images of guns with Black faces - regardless of whether the faces belonged to an adult or a child. What is more, subjects were more likely to mistakenly identify tools as guns after seeing an image of a Black adult or child. According to Matthew Lynch, in his article for The Edvocate, "Black Boys Are Seen as More Threatening Than White Boys", white males, in particular, may tend to be triggered by the very image of Black males, even as young as preschoolers. "The team enrolled 131 white college students in a second experiment, in which participants were shown faces of Black and white adults, alongside the images of tools or a gun" the study observed (Lynch). "Further analysis using a process-dissociation procedure revealed that it was unintentional racial bias that drove participants to associate threatening objects with Black faces," it continued. "Our findings suggest that, although young children are typically viewed as harmless and innocent, seeing faces of 5-year-old Black boys appears to trigger thoughts of guns and violence." It is important to note, however, that this less than earth-shattering empirical research also revealed that, when scratching deeper beneath the surface, an even more disturbing revelation emerges. "Their research also revealed that the racial prejudices we show against Black men really begins much earlier. The study found that racial stereotypes are first felt by Black men when they are just boys (Lynch)".
During the experiments conducted amongst the participants, pictures of small children were displayed, one Black, the other white. Next they were shown a picture of two items, one being a gun and the other a toy. Finally, they were asked to associate either object to each of the children in question. As they were shown the images of the children, the students were also given pictures of a gun or a toy. The results revealed that the participants were more likely to associate the gun with the Black boy and the toy with the white boy, indicating an inherent bias that the subjects may not have even been aware they possessed. What's more, however, the lasting impact that these underlying biases have on Black males is one that impacts them, more often than not, their entire lives.
Perhaps the most persistent fear that African-American parents of school-aged children have is the gnawing sense that the "system" is always a step behind them waiting for their children to make a misstep, so that they can swoop in and make free labor of them as a critical component of the American penal system. As a teacher that steadfastly held the interests of all of his students as a high priority and a personal commitment, Gregory Diggs knew heading into the educational field, that the cards were stacked against his students of color, particularly African-American boys, regardless of what he did to help stem the tide. "The education of our children does not start at school; it starts at home. We are now starting to have more and more early childhood education programs that are aligned with school curriculums and that's good, but as soon as your child can walk and talk you should be engaging them in education and learning activities even before they come to school, and then we definitely should be involved as soon as they're going to school." The challenge, however, with this philosophy is the fact that, even when African-American parents do their best to steer their children in the right direction, there are systemic obstacles intentionally designed to funnel them into the grips of the government, regardless of their efforts.
Notwithstanding the fact that race plays an integral role in the life challenges faced by Black boys in America, the issue of economic inequality, often experienced at birth is one that cannot be understated. According to Emily Badger, in a Washington Post article chronicling another extensive report on the lives and experiences of inner city Black youths entitled, "What Your First Grade Life Says About the Rest of It," young Black boys have very little opportunity to break out of the cycle of poverty, incarceration, disenfranchisement and early death that they are confronted with from birth. In a twenty year longitudinal study of nearly 800 Baltimore public schools entitled "The Long Shadow," researchers Karl Alexander and Doris Entwisle uncovered an unsettling dynamic that impacted the vast majority of these students their entire lives: if you are a poor Black kids, chances are you will become a poor Black adult--if you make it to adulthood, that is. In fact, the students of the study weren’t just faceless subjects, as the researchers became emotionally invested in their individual wellbeing, having closely followed their life's trajectory over an extended period of time. "In a typical survey project, you knock on doors, you make calls, you ask questions, you get your answers, and you go away. This wasn’t like that. We were with these kids a long, long time" ("First Grade").
Throughout the course of the study, both Alexander and Entwisle continued to reach out to the students, sending annual birthday cards, conducting impromptu visits and phone calls, with the goal of tracking the students’ progress and looking for any patterns of similarities that may emerge. "Over time, their lives were constrained — or cushioned — by the circumstances they were born into, by the employment and education prospects of their parents, by the addictions or job contacts that would become their economic inheritance", the researchers intoned ("First Grade"). "[T]he threads running through all those numbers and conversations: The families and neighborhoods these children were born into cast a heavy influence over the rest of their lives, from how they fared in the first grade to what they became as grownups" ("First Grade"). And though many of the students ultimately acquired midlevel jobs and stable households as adults, those limited examples of success came primarily as a result of those isolated examples leveraging their limited networks and resources to help pry open the doors of economic opportunity.
In her much-heralded viral TED Talk, "How We're Priming Some Kids for College--Others for Prison," urban ethnologist Alice Goffman helped to lay bare the stark realities facing America's minority youth. "It's poor kids that we're sending to prison, too many drawn from African-American and Latino communities so that prison now stands firmly between the young people trying to make it and the fulfillment of the American Dream," Goffman declared. "The problem's actually a bit worse than this," she continued, "because we're not just sending poor kids to prison, we're saddling poor kids with court fees, with probation, parole restrictions and low-level warrants. We're asking them to live in halfway houses and on house arrest, and we're asking them to negotiate a police force that is entering poor communities of color, not for the purposes of promoting public safety, but to make arrest counts, to line city coffers." With these systemic challenges facing Black males in America, it’s any wonder anyone can succeed under the weight of such oppression.
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