Marmot ended up concluding that the psychic feeling of being in control of your life is extremely important as a source of well-being, and that conversely, being out of control is physiologically harmful as wells s emotionally intolerable.

At various points in this book, we’ve noted that you can tell when a cybernetic system is overloaded because it breaks down. Marmot’s main conclusion from his research was that inequality in society was a major driver of public health risks, but it could be givens cybernetic interpretation too. The connection that he found looks like the result of a variety mismatch; people are, increasingly, unable to regulate the input from their immediate environment, and they correctly perceive this as a threat to health and life.

Summarizing their own and other’s research, a distinguished group of Canadian psychologists led by Toni Schmader (Schmader, Micheal Johns, and Chad Forbes) points to three things that typically happen when people are under this threat. First, they’re stressed. Their heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating are elevated. Activity in their prefrontal cortex is often suppressed— which makes it more difficult to control attention, thinking, emotions, and behaviour. It’s harder to engage in the task at hand. Second, they’re self-conscious. The exhort themselves to double down, to disprove the stereotype. Then they monitor themselves to see if their efforts are working. Third, they try to suppress negative thoughts that, if allowed to surface, would deepen their sense of threat.

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.

The new tutor was different. She was relational, not gushy, but attentive. She intuitively understood you were working under the weight, the history, of a reputation— that it was “in the air,” waiting to be validated by your first frustration. She knew that any sign of a lack of confidence in your ability could send you into a churn of self-doubt and very likely kill your interest.

The new study habits I’d learned from Pat gave me the same sense New Yorkers have about their stresses: that I knew what to do. I knew how to cope. The ambiguity lessened. My frustration lessened, and with it my sense of being under threat. A weight of race was lifted, even though Pat’s help had nothing directly to do with race.