There is poignancy to stereotype threat: It’s felt most by those in the stereotyped group who are most identified with achieving in the area where the stereotype applies, and who are trying to do challenging or frustrating things in that area. It affects most the vanguard of the group— as in Mirna wanting to succeed as an ultrarunner; as in women trying to break glass ceilings in finance; as in highly invested African American law students taking challenging state bar exams; as in white American males trying to succeed in elite basketball. That’s when, in the heat of frustration, the stereotype’s dark message— “everybody knows that, because of who you are, you probably can't do well at this, and that you probably don’t belong”— becomes personally relevant. That’s when it can cause enough churn to interfere with performance.

The common presumption is that biases like racism, sexism, and homophobia are the chief corrosives of diversity. And the are bad, to be sure. What I’m arguing is that churn is a further corrosive— in many common situations, as corrosive as prejudices themselves. Is the white teacher avoiding a needed conversation with Black parents because she is prejudiced, or because she is worried that a misstep in the conversation could get her seen as racist? Is it prejudice? Or is it churn that makes her hesitate? The point is that reducing churn can sometimes be as important in diverse setting as reducing prejudice itself.

Admittedly, this idea asks for an expansion of our thinking.

This book’s interest is to expand this approach to include a focus on mobilizing the settings of society themselves to foster successful integration. It sees these settings as having a capacity of their own, bottom-up, to foster successful integration— a capacity, perhaps underappreciated, to build trust across otherwise tenacious identity divides. It explores how to do this at several levels in society: in personal relationships and mentorships; in midsize settings like classrooms, sports teams, and small businesses; in larger institutions like universities and corporations; and in the overarching paradigms we use to design institutions like K-12 schooling.

The teacher might have said that her school tried to be color-blind. Who could blame her? But the parents could take that as a red flag. It might not quell their sense of threat at all. To do that would require something more: some sign that, in this setting, they are seen and respected for who they actually are. They’d need this because of the worry pressed on them by those stereotypes. They’d need a concrete signal that despite those stereotypes, their full humanity is understood and respected.

This could take many forms. It could be the teacher inviting the parents to join her in a working relationship to support their son. She might express confidence in his potential. She could be specific about her goals for his development and pathways for getting him there. She could offer regular check-in phone calls. Down-to-earth help like this is the heart of wiseness. It shows that she understands and accepts their full humanity and the importance of the situation to them. It disambiguates her intentions, clarifies what she’s thinking.

Transitions often involve ambiguity over how to cope effectively in the new setting. They instigate in all of us a search for what the challenges are, and for how best to meet them. But for those negatively stereotyped in the setting, this search has an extra consideration. It inevitably raises the possibility that they may face bias— devaluation, low expectations, little tolerance for error, little willingness to be associated with— and then the further worry about how to cope with all of this.