The African American parents face a different world outside of the parent-teacher conference. They, too, are racialized by diversity. But for them it is a more common experience. To work, be educated, get healthcare, buy food and clothes, they must regularly transact with people of different identities— often of greater social power and status— who may see and treat them stereotypically. Their day involves more diversity than does the teacher’s day. And that diversity can blanket their lives with the threat of stereotype-based devaluation, keeping them in churn much of the time.

Similarly, there is an understanding of schools, workplaces, and public spaces of our society that we would like people to trust— that they are basically fair places that offer genuine and equal opportunity. But for people like George Floyd, and others whose families and communities have experienced identity-based disadvantages, this proposition can be difficult to trust. Saying that these places are now color-blind doesn’t help much. People remember. They know that the inequalities that stem from those disadvantages have not been remedied.

People are likely to take assertions of color blindness the way Calogero took Jane’s assertions that she liked Italian boys— as a well-intended hope for society but, perhaps inadvertently, as a denial of their lived experience— a personal claim of innocence more than a real commitment to a more just society.

Like Calogero, to trust, they would need a more concrete signal, like a gracefully unlocked car door, that tells them that in this setting, that vision of a fair, color-blind society can be trusted.

6. Making School and Work Settings Wise

And this could happen, I also knew, without them being aware of it. I intuitively understood how stereotypes worked. They specified what was normal. My weak performance could confirm a stereotype about African Americans, while my strong performance could be taken as unusual. One’s hands, of course, should be beneath notice in such seminars. But the sight of my hands could push me into a churn of “remembering”— even without anybody present doing anything in particular to provoke it.

What he needs when he gets to school is something other than cognitive accountability— its good intentions notwithstanding. He needs signals that address his churn and that help resolve it: signs from adults and fellow students, for example, that he belongs in that school, that he is valued for who he is and who he can be, and that he is seen as having the potential to succeed there. And it wouldn’t hurt if he found some things about school interesting. For example, if his homeroom teacher read the class a compelling story every morning to get the day rolling. He needs signals that despite his status— and his churn to the contrary— he can trust the school’s beneficence toward him.

Yet in his school— very likely in the grip of cognitive accountability— he isn’t likely to have such experiences. Rather (as we shall see), he’s likely to get a more basic skills curriculum not much connected to his life, needs, or interests; a rigid disciplinary system; and frequent assessments of his cognitive skills that, from his perspective, may reinforce his image as a poor student— to himself and others.