# Why are black preschool teachers biased against black boys (but not black girls)? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 30, 2016, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264 "2016-09-30T03:03:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/21 "2016-09-30T14:37:32Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > How do we know this bias should be counteracted, or even called out? That _a priori_ assumption is itself a pretty huge unacknowledged bias. How do we know it shouldn’t be? You really are one of the board’s true idiots. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/22 "2016-09-30T14:42:54Z")
It’s not clear to me from reading the study that the 42% vs. 34% result is significant. It seems close enough perhaps not to be, particularly in light of the results as between the white and the black girl. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/23 "2016-09-30T15:35:42Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > It’s not clear to me from reading the study that the 42% vs. 34% result is significant. It seems close enough perhaps not to be, particularly in light of the results as between the white and the black girl. They used an [ANOVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_variance) to test the interaction between sex and race, which overall was significant. However, it isn’t entirely clear which individual comparisons were significant. I would guess, however, that that percentage difference might be significant. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/24 "2016-09-30T15:48:09Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I actually took a bias study myself not too long ago. I found, unsurprisingly, I have a moderate negative bias towards people with darker skin. That’s not how I actually feel. But I found it harder to associate the good words with black people than I did with white people. It took me a few fractions of a second longer to press the button. > > If you want to try it for yourself, it’s on the Harvard website and is called [ProjectImplicit](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/). I just took that test for politics, and I’m a bit skeptical. According to the results it gave me, I have “_a neutral automatic attitude toward Hillary Clinton_”, and “_a weak negative automatic attitude toward Donald Trump_”. In reality I’m pretty down on both of them, in Clinton’s case mostly about policy and in Trump’s case mostly about character. I’ll try the racial one if I get a chance later. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/25 "2016-09-30T15:58:16Z")
Not sure why this is in the Pit, as it seems to be a legitimate question, but was reading [this](http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/29/opinions/im-black-and-struggle-with-implicit-bias-bailey/index.html) article on CNN and figured I’d post it here: > [@](#): > > (CNN)I’ve been afraid of black men. > I’ve braced myself in the presence of unknown black men, felt myself ready for a potential attack even as all they threw my way was a head bob and a “What’s up, brother?” > > That’s why I attended the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., in 1995. I needed to immerse myself in a sea of black men gathered for a cause of uplift so that I could alleviate dark thoughts I’d secretly harbored about men who wear dark skin – because I’ve been afraid of black men. > > Because I’m a man who has feared black men, despite the gaggle of black brothers and cousins and black father and stepfather who lived in the same house I did and loved me – despite the dark skin I’ve worn since birth. > [@](#): > > My own score on the Implicit Association test (a test developed by researchers to test for unconscious racial bias) showed that I found it slightly easier to associate negative things with dark skin – like nearly 90% of white people and almost half of black people. > > This is a key aspect of our ongoing national discussion about race that is too frequently ignored. > > But it is because I’m aware of my own fear that I know that even “good” cops can kill unarmed black men and millions of non-deplorable people can find ways to rationalize every such shooting. Because the kind of bias that is most pernicious is the subconscious kind. It can seduce us into believing that as long as we think the right thing or try to do the right thing or be the right kind of person, our actions would never be negatively influenced by racist stereotypes. > [@](#): > > Our country was founded in part on the belief that dark skin denoted inferiority and danger, a message with roots that are now centuries deep. Without systemic reforms designed to specifically combat implicit bias we will continue running in these circles, forever lamenting our fate. > [@](#): > > Each of those efforts is being designed to make it harder for our brains to automatically rely upon the racist stereotypes floating through our minds that we often aren’t even aware of or pretend don’t exist. > > But maybe the most important step is first acknowledging that an individual’s goodness isn’t enough to correct racial wrongs or prevent future injustices. > > Because if implicit bias can affect a good black man like me, it can affect anyone – and corrupt every system upon which we rely despite our best intentions. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/26 "2016-09-30T16:04:33Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Was this supposed to be in the Pit? 😕 It saves time. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/27 "2016-09-30T17:07:24Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > If we look at it another way, 76% of teachers felt the boys needed to be watched more closely and 23% felt the girls needed to be watched more closely. > > But yeah, I’m surprised the black girl wasn’t watched as much by the teachers as the white girl. Women commit less crime. They commit less SERIOOUS crime. They are less likely to be repeat offenders. I suspect the 23% eyeballing of the girls was pretty incidental. > **[Sex differences in crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime)** > > Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology (the scientific study of criminal behavior), sociobiology (which attempts to demonstrate a causal relationship between biological factors, in this case biological sex and human behaviors), or feminist studies. Despite the difficulty of interpreting them, crime statistics may provide a way to investigate such a relationship from a gender diff... ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/28 "2016-09-30T18:08:00Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Just going by the OP, and not the rest of the thread–there’s no reason that the idea in our culture that black men are more dangerous would not affect even black people. Nor the bias towards ignoring minority women. If it’s a conscious thing, black people would probably be more likely to reject it. But, if subconscious, they’d have to notice it first to reject it. > > I actually took a bias study myself not too long ago. I found, unsurprisingly, I have a moderate negative bias towards people with darker skin. That’s not how I actually feel. But I found it harder to associate the good words with black people than I did with white people. It took me a few fractions of a second longer to press the button. > > If you want to try it for yourself, it’s on the Harvard website and is called [ProjectImplicit](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/). I’m pretty skeptical of the methodology. For those who are curious, the test basically runs as follows: 1. There are four groups of objects A) positive-associated words, B) negative-associated words, C) pictures of presumably white faces and D) pictures of presumably black faces. 2. You use two keys on the keyboard to group the items as quickly as possible. First, you just group ‘like’ items (hitting E for ‘good’ words, and I for ‘bad’ words). Then you do the same for the faces, one letter for white, and the other for black. 3. Then all objects are in play, and you hit ‘E’ for both ‘good’ and white, and ‘I’ for both ‘bad’ and black. 4. Then, they switch. Press ‘E’ for ‘bad’ and white, and press ‘I’ for ‘good’ and black. If you’re slower at #4 than #3, surprise, you don’t like black people as much as white people. :rolleyes: After just focusing on quickly and accurately associating a certain letter on the keyboard with two arbitrary groupings, I don’t see how a slower response when the groupings are changed is indicative of anything other than having to ‘unlearn’ a behavior/group association that the test had ingrained in me moments before. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/29 "2016-09-30T18:24:22Z")
“we notice immediately that little girls are in fact smaller versions of real human beings, whereas little boys are Pod People from the Planet Destructo.” Dave Barry ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/30 "2016-09-30T18:24:59Z")
Yeah, I took it trying to come out not liking light skinned people and still ended up not liking darker skinned people. > [@Eonwe](#): > > After just focusing on quickly and accurately associating a certain letter on the keyboard with two arbitrary groupings, I don’t see how a slower response when the groupings are changed is indicative of anything other than having to ‘unlearn’ a behavior/group association that the test had ingrained in me moments before. Totally agree. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/31 "2016-09-30T18:50:59Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > After just focusing on quickly and accurately associating a certain letter on the keyboard with two arbitrary groupings, I don’t see how a slower response when the groupings are changed is indicative of anything other than having to ‘unlearn’ a behavior/group association that the test had ingrained in me moments before. Even if it indicates something else, what is that “something else”? Do your scores on this kind of test correlate to any kind of observable behavior in the wild? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/32 "2016-09-30T19:33:28Z")
because they have to yet to experience the fury because there cute little girls …they say women scorned have fury … .I learned as a child that when you spill reddish purple juice you weren’t supposed to be drinking on the expensive white couch you weren’t supposed to be sitting on the African American female is more dangerous and rage filled than your average Caucasian female which is why when the comedians used to joke about their mothers disclipilne I can nod and smile because I know of what they speak But I also noticed black women in general don’t trust black males in almost anything whether there 8 or 80 I think at this point its ingrained although with the above mentioned foster mom it turned into she didn’t trust any male not to get into “mischief” if left to their own devices or “by themselves” as shed say ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/33 "2016-09-30T20:06:53Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I suppose it depends on how you’re defining “bias”. The usual meaning of the term implies an unfair prejudice or distortion of fact based on some kind of negative stereotype or ulterior motive. Yes, it pretty much goes without saying that that sort of phenomenon should be called out and counteracted, in the interests of simple justice. How do you know it’s unfair? Do you feel the same about the much more pronounced gender bias shown by the study? > [@Colibri](#): > > How do we know it shouldn’t be? We don’t. You are falsely excluding the middle, and following up with gratuitous ad hominem. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > Was this supposed to be in the Pit? 😕 > [@QuickSilver](#): > > It saves time. LOL, exactly. And posting it elsewhere seemed perilous. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/34 "2016-09-30T20:08:37Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I just took that test for politics, and I’m a bit skeptical. > > According to the results it gave me, I have “_a neutral automatic attitude toward Hillary Clinton_”, and “_a weak negative automatic attitude toward Donald Trump_”. In reality I’m pretty down on both of them, in Clinton’s case mostly about policy and in Trump’s case mostly about character. > > I’ll try the racial one if I get a chance later. I took the skinned test, and there is a definite error in the methodology. I’ve emailed the site to explain my objections. As the participant progresses through each stage of the test, he/she will naturally get faster as experience with the test is gained. Therefore, the test taker will be able to match the word or face with the proper category faster toward the end of the test than in the very beginning of the test. This test has the DARK-BAD and LIGHT-GOOD, categories grouped together as the LAST stage in the test. Of course they will react more quickly. This isn’t because they more easily associate Dark with bad and Light skin with Good. It’s because they are better at taking the test at the end than when they initially started in the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/35 "2016-09-30T20:48:15Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > I took the skinned test, and there is a definite error in the methodology. I’ve emailed the site to explain my objections. > > As the participant progresses through each stage of the test, he/she will naturally get faster as experience with the test is gained. Therefore, the test taker will be able to match the word or face with the proper category faster toward the end of the test than in the very beginning of the test. This test has the DARK-BAD and LIGHT-GOOD, categories grouped together as the LAST stage in the test. Of course they will react more quickly. This isn’t because they more easily associate Dark with bad and Light skin with Good. It’s because they are better at taking the test at the end than when they initially started in the beginning. It would have worked, too - if it weren’t for you meddling _kids_! Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264/36 "2016-10-01T17:57:47Z")
To be fair, this is the response from the email I sent the researchers about the methodology: > [@Liz Redford](#): > > Hi, thanks for your participation. This is a very common question. Interestingly, people who first do a Clinton + good pairing (for example), often believe that their results are because they learned the original pairing, and then we asked them to switch. Similarly, people who first do a Clinton + bad pairing often believe that their results are because they didn’t have sufficient time to learn the original pairing. In other words, lots of people believe that the order matters for their result, no matter which order they get! One way that we try to minimize this order effect is by giving more practice trials before the second pairing than we did before the first pairing. It is also important to know that each participant is randomly assigned to an order, so half of test-takers complete gay people + bad and then gay people + good, and the other half of test-takers get the opposite order (for whatever particular test you have taken). We do not currently have data on handedness, but I imagine the randomized order of sides could account for that. I still think there’s much to be desired, but they’re certainly aware of the concerns. At least it opens up an opportunity for further research and more grants. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-black-preschool-teachers-biased-against-black-boys-but-not-black-girls/767264.md?page=1)