We do have, after all, a debt to our past and the long shadow of identity structured opportunity, disadvantage, status, and inequality that it casts over our present lives.

This doesn’t mean we have to live with the bad effects of bias. But it does mean that trying to mitigate its effects can be as important as trying to eliminate it altogether.

My answer begins with a reminder: Not coping well with a situation that is important to one’s future is stressful for anyone.

Think of Tyler showing up to school— possibly prospecting for food in trash cans along the way. He’s undoubtably in a preoccupying state of churn. He knows he might be seen and treated in school based on the poverty and status of his family, on skill and vocabulary deficiencies possibly tied to that poverty, on having a dialect and even clothes that reflect his social status, on not having seen much of the world outside his neighbourhood, and so on.

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.