A few thoughts... on the medical distreatment of people of color. My son just got his eyes dilated and the optician explained that dark eyes are less photosensitive to light therefore he needed two drops instead of one to dilate his eyes. Clearly, this is a characteristic not based on race right? Made me wonder if someone with light eyes is more photosensitive to light would they not feel more pain with the same about of light? Often stereotypes are based on truth. In a resourced-based economy, should my son's eye dilation procedure cost more since it required 2xs the amount of resources as a person with light eye color?
On unconscious bias interesting story about the woman in scrubs. Is she not unconsciously biased about who she believes has the better status? You can argue that she was really finding out more information and not making a biased assumption but the story really only works if we believe that doctors are more important than nurses. We as teachers are in the business of bias. We are biased toward the individual we deem more capable typically based upon school grades. Schools work to make bias more apparent to allow for the easy discrimination of individuals based upon predetermined cognitive abilities. Is this not what grades are really about? Teachers interested in actual learning know that grades are for sorting, they know really learning is about feedback. Feedback however does not allow for sorting. If we were serious about attacking bias the first thing we would attack is a grading system. We know grades are used to reinforce accepted biases.
On unconscious bias interesting story about the woman in scrubs. Is she not unconsciously biased about who she believes has the better status? You can argue that she was really finding out more information and not making a biased assumption but the story really only works if we believe that doctors are more important than nurses. We as teachers are in the business of bias. We are biased toward the individual we deem more capable typically based upon school grades. Schools work to make bias more apparent to allow for the easy discrimination of individuals based upon predetermined cognitive abilities. Is this not what grades are really about? Teachers interested in actual learning know that grades are for sorting, they know really learning is about feedback. Feedback however does not allow for sorting. If we were serious about attacking bias the first thing we would attack is a grading system. We know grades are used to reinforce accepted biases.