Jennifer Cabiya
I attended a talk where Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies Sally Haslanger discussed structural injustice, the "myth" of implicit bias, and the harm of standard stories. The discussion that followed focused heavily on how structural changes can be made, and I adapted this approach to Education Reform.
Sally Haslanger has experience in Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. Her blog can be found here. She is a feminist who supports challenging systemic inequality by examining structural schemas, rather than by confronting individuals, which she believes is futile. She began her talk with explaining that while progress has been made in terms of social equality, inequality still endures. Current popular methods of explanation for this blame implicit bias (or racist and sexist schemas within the individual), which attributes blame to the individual. She says that not only is individual confrontation unlikely to yield cooperative conversations about social inequality, as the confronted person will most likely be occupied with defending their reputation as a non-sexist, non-racist person, but it also misses the cause of these schemas that inform an individual’s implicit bias.
 |
| Sally Haslanger's model of implicit bias. Cultural schemas, or stereotypes, inform an individual's beliefs and attitudes, or their implicit biases. These affect their actions, and how they help to contribute to the distribution of resources within a society. These aparent structural constancies thus enforce or challenge cultural schemas. Source: Jennifer Cabiya |
She turns to standard stories as an example of social stratification that misleads the general public into believing that they are free from implicit bias. She defines a standard story as the type of narrative where the characters’ actions are purposeful and independent of structural problems. These are often protagonists that are morally righteous in that they have little to no implicit bias, or if they do, it is somehow justified. In contrast, she argues, most real-life narratives involve real people are not standard at all, and are inextricably linked to the structural forces of society. She gives the example of a man who works miles away from where he lives, and relies on the public transportation system, which is then cut back and his route dropped, forcing him to lose his job. In a standard story, the “fault” would lie at the hands of the city planner who chose which route to cut, but according to Sally Haslanger, the “fault” is so disseminated throughout the city as a whole, down to the legislators who decided transportation accessibility was less important than any other given issue as well as the city planner who made the executive decision on which lines to cut, which may have been a strict financial decision as well as one informed by implicit biases.
She turned her direction to a gender-specific approach, addressing the division of labor as upheld by capitalism. She points out that a lack of paid maternity leave inherently demeans female labor, even if men and women had the same wage--which is more often than not, not the case. For example, men usually have a higher-paying job, so it is merely a strategic decision to have the mother take time off work, to raise the baby for the first few months or years. When the mother returns, her career has stagnated and her employers’ perception of her role has changed from an employee to primarily a mother, and will continue to promote the father, who has dedicated more time into his career. This upholds the stereotype that women are mothers and men are workers, and even if no one involved believed this fundamentalist idea, the structure of the situation (i.e. the lack of adequate parental leave) maintains the inequality. More on this trend has been explored by Yavorsky, Dush, a& Schoppe-Sullivan (2015), and a link to their study in PSYCinfo can be found here.
 |
| Equality, Equity, Removal of Systemic barrier. Sally Haslanger promotes the option on the right. Source: https://twitter.com/constababble/status/730589497050587136 |
Sally Haslanger argues that this is not an ethical debate, which she claims often attempts to blame one party or philosophy for a given outcome. To her, this is similar to the type of accountability that maintains the myth of implicit bias as the pillar of systemic inequality. Instead, she suggests that movements, political, social or otherwise, and the necessary catalysts for change. Not to change people’s minds, not to necessarily bring about equality or even equity, but to remove the structural barriers that prevent social fairness.
Her position can be applied to education reform in that it may be futile (on both a philosophical and a practical scale) to coerce every single educator and administrator to agree on an ideal philosophy and apply it to education from the top-down. More on the Department of Education's perspective on educational reform can be found in an archived article, found here. Instead, reform ought to be on a grassroots level, incorporating a plan of reform that models activist roots. First, like-minded (or even simply open-minded) individuals must mingle, that is, interact with one another to recognize unity. Then, they must coalesce, banding together under a common goal that can be achieved through teamwork and campaigning. Finally, they must organize the campaign and demand change to benefit the local community in the most impactful way. One of such approaches is the Free Student Press movement headed by Damon Krane, the background for which can be found here. Sally Haslanger urges that this is not to enact an ideal, universal philosophy, but rather to practice through trial-and-error methods of reform that aim to improve the community. Failure, both on the activist level and on the final-practice level are acceptable as long as they can be examples from which to learn, adapt, and re-aim for a more successful future.
References
Yavorsky, J. E., Dush, C. K., & Schoppe‐Sullivan, S. J. (2015). The production of inequality: The gender division of labor across the transition to parenthood. Journal Of Marriage And Family, 77(3), 662-679. doi:10.1111/jomf.12189
No comments:
Post a Comment