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Impossible Symmetric Architecture by Erik Schepers  

Impossible Symmetric Architecture by Erik Schepers

http://www.erikschepers.com/architecture/impossible-symmetric-architecture/ Images of impossible symmetric architecture. Inspired by modern cities, I've created these impossible symmetric images of buildings hanging in the sky. Soporific & exciting architecture alike, become intricate structures of concrete and glass. Sometimes they turn out looking like a spaceship, sometimes the image is completely abstract. I leave it too your own imagination to find the spaceship amongst them.

Erik Schepers: Photos

 
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A Four Step Plan for Dealing With an Angry Coworker  

It's Tuesday morning, the alarm on your phone goes off and you can't help but look at the first email in your inbox. You read the first few words and begin to worry: Is your boss mad? You keep reading, and it's true—she's really steamed.

This post originally appeared on The Muse.

Luckily, there's a simple four-step plan to win over someone who's angry in a professional and simple way.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Sentiment

First things first, you should be able to answer the question: How exactly does he or she feel? That's because one of the most common mistakes people make is to immediately go on the defensive. You know the habit of making up excuses as to why you shouldn't be blamed, right? Don't go there.

Instead, pause for a moment and realize that the other person's experiencing an emotion. So, if you just dismiss it by saying it's not your fault, you're invalidating how he or she feels. What you want to do is demonstrate that you empathize with the situation and that his or her feelings matter.

In order to do that, you need to stop and visualize—imagine what it's like to be in the other person's shoes. Let's say your co-worker feels that you threw her under the bus in front of your boss. Ask yourself: What's going through her mind? Perhaps she's still coming back from a tough performance review and feels like she's on thin ice, or maybe she feels like her contributions are regularly overlooked. When you begin to visualize how someone else is experiencing something, you'll be much better off genuinely expressing empathy.

Next, use some of the emotions from the scenarios you visualize to craft a message that acknowledges what the other person is going through. Start the sentence with “you” rather than “I.” Look at how differently these two approaches come off for similar situations:

Original Approach: “I know you're frustrated but [insert excuse]...”

New Approach: “You probably feel really frustrated, and I can see where you're coming from.”

Original Approach: “That was not my fault”

New Approach:“ “You're upset, I totally understand. You probably felt that [insert scenarios from visualization].”

Step 2: Add Context

Now that you've imagined how the other person feels, take it a step further and consider why this happened.

Along with empathizing, another way to make your response sound less like an excuse is to add some context to the situation so the person has a higher-level view of why something occurred. Nine times out of 10, I vote for full transparency because it helps engender a relationship of trust and camaraderie. Personally, it has always helped me when dealing with conflicts at work.

You can choose the degree of transparency you want to set, but the spirit of this principle is to answer the question “Why did this happen?” as honestly as possible. By providing a reason, you're much more likely to gain compliance.

In a classic experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, subjects asked to cut in line for the copy machine. They tested whether giving a reason as to why they were cutting would make any difference.

Here's the result: When someone simply said “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” 60% of people allowed her to cut. But when a person said “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush?” the success rate climbed to 94%! The lesson is that when you share the “because,” people are more likely to be on your side.

Think about it: “I didn't see the email with your changes before the meeting” and “I didn't see the email with your changes before the meeting because I was practicing the presentation” feel different. The other person might be annoyed either way, but with the second option you're letting him know you weren't simply ignoring him.

Step 3: Take Responsibility

What about starting the above statement with “I'm sorry I didn't see the email…”

In some situations it may be worthwhile to apologize, but it can vary. If you were clearly in the wrong (like when you show up late, dismiss someone's idea, or forget to do something), then own up to it and apologize.

If there's no fault to bear or it's ambiguous (like if you miss a video call because the internet went out throughout your office building), then make your best judgment call. Don't default to apologizing unless you mean it and you were really at fault.

Using a similar example from Step 2, let's suppose you missed an email that had some edits to a PowerPoint you were going to present, because you were so busy preparing. It wasn't entirely your fault. You wanted to practice before making the presentation, so in the hour leading up to it you didn't check your email. Nevertheless, he's upset his edits didn't make it in. You might say something like:

“You're probably frustrated that your changes didn't make it into the presentation and I totally get that. But I was so focused on nailing the presentation I didn't check my emails an hour before since I was practicing. Your suggested edits were great. Next time let's setup a 15-minute meeting before the presentation to make sure we're on the same page.”

Step 4: Define Next Steps

The best way to conclude and move forward is to explain the best next steps to resolve what's going on. If you're dealing with an angry customer, you may want to explain steps your company is taking to ensure a snafu doesn't occur again or propose a follow-up meeting. In the example of your friend's resume, you could suggest other ways you'd like to be helpful in her job search.

Ending your response in this way closes the loop. Humans crave closure. Social psychologist Arie Kruglanski defines it as “cognitive closure” or the need to find a firm answer and distance ourselves from ambiguity. Studies have shown that deadlines and environments that are in-flux (i.e., the workplace) increase our need to have “cognitive closure” making it even more important to close the loop in work-related scenarios.

What if there are no tangible “next steps?” Sometimes it helps to just give people a forum to vent or complain, so in this instance, it's to let them know they're heard. One way to do this is to offer to pass concerns on to your manager, or if it's your boss who's annoyed, to offer to check back in on the specific complaint and make sure you've made the requisite changes.

Dealing with an angry person can be really intimidating. By following this four-step process you can empathize, take accountability and turn it into an opportunity to strengthen a relationship. Mistakes happen, it's a part of life. What sets trusted people apart is how they handle situations when these slip-ups do occur. Assuming it's not a huge crisis, you'll be remembered for the way you reacted, rather than for what initially happened.

Your 4-Step Plan to Winning Over an Angry Person | The Muse

Katrina is a communication coach and founder ofcommunicationfornerds.com, where she helps people become socially bulletproof and live their best lives. She's also a Silicon Valley executive and former founder of marriage.com. If you found this article helpful, sign up for her free video course called How to Shut Up that Inner Voice & Beat Awkward Conversations.

Image by July Pluto (Shutterstock).

 
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Robert 'Robin' Gottfried: The Promise And Challenges Of Seeing God Everywhere  
Photo credit: Pixabay

"I do not worship matter. I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter...

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Why Women Are Smarter Than Men  
Trying to compare intelligence and gender doesn't typically yield much in the way of productive discussion, but sometimes research comes along that's worth opening this particular can of worms.

Decades of research show unequivocally that men and women are equal in general intelligence (IQ), but that isn't the case when it comes to emotional intelligence (EQ). There are subtle, and not so subtle, differences in men's and women's expression and understanding of emotions that must be explored and understood.

Gender is a common place for people to assign labels around emotion. Such generalizations have pegged women as everything from the "fairer sex" to overly emotional, and men from emotionally aloof to explosive. You'll find that none of these platitudes are true.

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." -Timothy Leary

TalentSmart has tested the emotional intelligence of more than a million people and it's clear that women have the upper hand. While women's overall EQ score is just a couple of points higher than men's, this is a statistically significant difference that shows that women have greater skill in using emotions to their benefit.

It just doesn't answer the pressing question: why?



To understand why women outscore men, we have to look at scores for each of the four emotional intelligence skills by gender. There's a reliable pattern in the data that points to some interesting explanations for the gap.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is how well you understand your own emotions in the moment, as well as how well you understand your tendencies--the people and situations you handle well and those that push your buttons. This is the one place where men and women have perfectly equal scores. It's also a place where men have been given a bad rap. People often assume that men aren't tuned in to their emotions or don't understand them. Clearly, that isn't the case. Of course, men also have a tendency to hop on this bandwagon--by feigning to have no awareness or understanding of their emotions--in the hope of avoiding any accountability for their actions. Now we know better.

Self-Management

Self-management is what you do with your emotions once you're aware of them. Since you can't make emotions disappear, effective self-management requires channeling your emotions into producing the behavior that you want. This is the one area where men outscored women. I believe that the best explanation for gender differences in emotional intelligence is how we are socialized growing up (reinforced by societal gender pressures we experience as adults). In the case of self-management, men are often expected to be emotionally "strong" and in control of their emotions, which may explain why they outscore women slightly.

Social Awareness

Social awareness is how well you understand the emotions and experience of other people. This requires the ability to tune in to body language and other unspoken signals, since people don't usually come out and say what's going on with them. This is an area where women outscore men by a fairly large margin (statistically speaking). This is also a skill that women are socialized to practice and possess from childhood in ways that men aren't. Right or wrong, women are expected to take care of other people (and are rewarded for doing so). This gives them an upper hand when it comes to social awareness. Men, to their detriment, aren't rewarded for social awareness in the same way that women are, and this carries over into adulthood.

Relationship Management

Relationship management is the pinnacle of emotional intelligence. It requires that you use self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness in concert to better your relationships as you interact with other people. You cannot hope to get the most out of your interactions with other people until you understand your emotions, cue in to their emotions, and use this knowledge to adjust your approach on the fly. Women have a slight edge in relationship management for reasons described in the social awareness section above.

The Advantage

Emotional intelligence presents a significant advantage for women in the workplace. Whether you're a man or a woman, don't just sit back hoping that you're one of the high-EQ types. EQ is a flexible skill that you can improve with effort. To that end, here are a few things that you can do to improve your EQ today:

Limit Your Caffeine Intake

Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, and adrenaline is the source of the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response to ensure survival. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you're responding to a curt e-mail. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. Caffeine's long half-life ensures you stay this way as it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body. High-EQ individuals know that caffeine is trouble, and they don't let it get the better of them.

Get Enough Sleep

It's difficult to overstate the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence. When you sleep your brain removes toxic proteins from its neurons that are by-products of neural activity when you're awake. Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while you're asleep. So when you don't get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc by impairing your ability to think. Skipping sleep impairs your brain function across the board. It slows your ability to process information and problem solve, kills your creativity, and catapults your stress levels and emotional reactivity. High-EQ individuals know that their self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when they don't get enough sleep. So, they make sleep a top priority.

Stop Negative Self-Talk in Its Tracks

The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that--thoughts, not facts. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain's natural tendency to perceive threats (inflating the frequency or severity of an event). Emotionally intelligent people separate their thoughts from the facts in order to escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive, new outlook.

Appreciate What You Have

Taking time to contemplate what you're grateful for isn't merely the right thing to do; it also improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy, and physical well-being. It's likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

Why do you think women outscore men in emotional intelligence? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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r0B0t: The Fake '80s Slasher Film Seen in the Latest Mr. Robot Episode Is Now Online  

In Season 2's third Mr. Robot episode, homages to Stanley Kubrick abound; the latest episode, “eps2.2_init_1.asec,” finds inspiration in a different cultural artifact: '80s slasher films. In a flashback to the Halloween before the hack, Darlene and Elliot watch a cheesy film from their childhoods, the not-so-subtly named The Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie.

Eight minutes of that faux horror film have arrived online, and we get a bit more context here: It's New Years 1985, and a pair of spoiled, bratty siblings anticipate the arrival of their friends to come over and celebrate. The would-be party soon takes a dark turn, however, when an unknown killer—donning the signature mask that would become the face of the Fsociety movement—goes on a rampage. The Careful Massacre takes a page from the Halloween franchise (and its many imitators), echoing the iconic first-person point of view that puts the audience in the villain's shoes. Stylized like an old VHS tape, the video opens with a production logo for “E Corp Home Entertainment”; perhaps in this short film there are underlying clues to the mystery surrounding key plot elements of Mr. Robot? We'll have to wait and see—for now, you can check the film out on the show's website.

 
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Sunset over the 02Arena  

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Sunset on The Shard London UK 30.07.16  

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We're thrilled to do the second post from our Neighborhood...  

We're thrilled to do the second post from our Neighborhood Portrait series with @dnainfony! This Overview shows Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in New York. To learn how this massive development got its layout and structure, check out the full article here:

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160727/stuy-town/even-from-space-stuy-town-looks-totally-unique?utm_source=DO&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=portrait

 
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A Blackfriars sunset from Tate Modern Extension London UK 30.07.16  

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London 14 to 26 july 2016  

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Thames at Putney bridge

 
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Sunrise on the Wharf  

scott.hammond34 posted a photo:

Still working all the time so no time for landscapes at all recently but when im working in the city i get to detour on the way home sometimes. Its a bit of a struggle to know where to park usually but being a sunday night/monday morning there was loads of space. More Uploads focusing more on night time shots coming this week. I enjoy cityscapes but if i do it more often i might need to trade in the trusty old 17-40L, its a bit too soft in the corners and not great on distortion, which im finding really shows up in this case. Im still dreaming of the zeiss 21/2.8 (and dreaming it will probably remain . . .)

3 image pano consisting of 3 hdr images.

Thanks for viewing :-)

 
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While South Korea's economy has experienced strong growth in recent decades, another troubling statistic has grown as well. For years now, South Korea has had the second-highest rate of suicide in the world. Public and private programs have been developed to address the problem, and one getting notice lately is called “Happy Dying”.  The program, led by Mr. Kim Ki-ho brings participants together to reflect on their lives by experiencing their own fake funeral. They write their own eulogies, make out mock wills, and pen farewell notes. Then, they dress in traditional burial linens, climb into coffins in a darkened room, and meditate on their lives for 30 minutes. Responses vary, but many said that acting out their own deaths made them appreciate their lives more, and to consider the consequences of their deaths more seriously.

 
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You need to open your eyes to see the beauty in things..  

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Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
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How to Stop the Racist in You  
By Jeremy Adam Smith, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton

In the wake of racially charged bloodshed in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis, and Dallas, the city of Cleveland hosted the Republican National Convention.

There Iowa Rep. Steve King argued that only whites had made contributions to civilization, while other "sub-groups" did not. Asked to clarify his remarks, King--who keeps a Confederate flag on his desk--did not back down. "The Western civilization and the American civilization are a superior culture," he said, deliberately associating "Western" and "American" with white. No leader at the convention publicly disavowed King's assertion.



This is just the latest example of what seems to be a rise in polarizing public language that meets the dictionary definition of "racist"--"having or showing the belief that a particular race is superior to another." King's argument is an example of explicit, conscious prejudice, when someone outwardly expresses, through words or behavior, a view denigrating a particular group.

But what explains the fact that police departments are more likely to use force against black suspects than white ones, at a time when so many departments are consciously trying to reduce these discrepancies? What could explain why companies explicitly committed to diversity show racial bias in hiring decisions? Why would caring teachers be more likely to punish black students more harshly than white students?

In these cases, and many others, scientific evidence suggests that we're seeing the effects not of explicit prejudice but of implicit bias--the unconscious, often knee-jerk prejudices that subtly guide our behavior.

The distinction between explicit and implicit bias is important, because it changes how we address prejudice in every corner of society, from police departments to schools to homes. If the problem is with racists--individuals like Steve King--then the solution is to identify them and limit their influence. That does need to happen; indeed, after Chief David Brown took over the Dallas police department in 2010, he fired over 70 officers from his force--and excessive-force complaints dropped by 64 percent.

But the new science of implicit bias suggests that the problem is not only with bad apples. Instead, prejudice is a conflict that plays out within each and every one of us.

Since we published the book Are We Born Racist? in 2010--which explores racial prejudice as a neurological and psychological process--we've seen more and more research into the automatic and measurable associations that people have about others, and the subtle and unconscious behaviors that these associations influence. In many daily circumstances, automatic associations are natural and harmless. Not so when a police officer pulls a car over for a broken tail light, and the negative associations he has with the face of the driver can produce deadly results; or when a black defendant's facial features can make a jury more likely to give him the death penalty.

Last summer, Greater Good published a series of articles by researchers and law enforcement officials about how to reduce the negative influences of implicit bias in the criminal justice system. But this research isn't just for cops and judges--it can help all of us to understand how our brains work and why we are not as different as we might like to think from a police officer who shoots an unarmed suspect.

Indeed, the fact that implicit bias occurs outside of our awareness but affects explicit behaviors--from whether we pull a trigger to how we judge a resume to how we discipline young children--can deeply threaten our self-image. If I have implicit bias, does that mean I'm not really committed to fairness and equality? Am I, at a deep and unconscious level, actually a racist?

The answer is both yes and no. We all carry prejudices within ourselves--and we all have the tools to keep them in check.

From explicit to implicit bias

When we think of "racists," our minds conjure up people like the San Francisco police officers who were recently caught using racially derogatory words in text messages, or perhaps politicians like King. Their pronouncements shock many of us with their old-fashioned racism, in which people's out-group attitudes are conscious, explicit, and openly endorsed. This type of racism was characteristic of majority group members' attitudes up until around the 1950s--and today it does indeed appear to be undergoing a vocal revival in public life.

What current discussions about implicit bias recognize, however, is that a great deal of contemporary racism comes from people who say they don't want to be racist.

Evidence of this tendency emerged when negative attitudes or stereotypes became publicly frowned upon in the 1960s and 70s, and many people felt social pressure to not get "caught" saying something that sounded racist--an extrinsic motivation that many have labeled "political correctness."

This formulation implies that egalitarian behavior is not real or truly felt, but rather, a social grace to mask an unacceptable attitude. As many supporters have said about GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, he "says what nearly everybody thinks, but is too fearful or polite to say." This conception makes someone like Trump sound "honest," but by implication, suggests that those who speak up for egalitarianism are being somehow "dishonest."

Things become even more complicated when a person (or institution) sincerely values egalitarianism yet engages in some kind of behavior that nonetheless betrays bias. Many studies find evidence of anti-black bias in pain-killer prescription and other kinds of medical treatment. One study found that job applicants with stereotypically African-American names were less likely to be invited to be interviewed. And, despite the avowed commitment of the courts to "justice for all," the connection between criminal sentencing and race is well documented.

For many people, the very possibility that they too might get caught saying one thing but doing another is extremely threatening and aversive. That threat, in fact, has a name: aversive racism. It refers to the type of racism in which a person's implicit biases are so out of line with their conscious values that social situations where they experience this conflict--such as interracial interactions--are something to fear and avoid.

In a 2008 study, for example, white participants who were about to discuss racial profiling with a fellow study participant who was black literally sat further away from them, and this distance was not predicted by their level of racial bias. Instead, it was predicted by their fear of being perceived as racist. In these kinds of situations, we create a self-fulfilling cycle of negative racial interactions--and to avoid them we may avoid contact with different kinds of people altogether.

This dynamic, ironically, can deepen racial segregation and inequality.

Did we evolve to be racist?

These behavioral findings have counterparts in neuroscience.

We often hear descriptions of the brain's limbic system as our "reptilian brain" that responds to environmental cues with the same level of sophistication as an alligator. Lightning quick and outside of our control, the limbic system has been called the seat of our fight-or-flight responses, perfectly adapted to the eat-or-be eaten environment of our early ancestors. A central player in this prehistoric narrative is the amygdala, a pair of almond-like structures that form part of the limbic system. Early findings that the amygdala responds strongly to fear conditioning led to the view that the amygdala is the structure that sets in motion the fight-or-flight response.

Researchers like Elizabeth Phelps and Mahzarin Banaji wrote a significant chapter in our understanding of implicit bias when they found that faces of different races trigger different amygdala activation in the brain, and that there's a relationship between levels of implicit bias and amygdala activity. These findings have fueled a conception of implicit bias as not only unconscious and automatic, but also as biologically determined--part of our ancestral heritage. The implication there is that our only hope is to contain it, but never realistically to overcome it.

Newer research--often by the same people--is beginning to challenge the core assumptions of this narrative. Once again, the amygdala plays a central role. Scientists are beginning to recognize that the amygdala, rather than responding exclusively to negative or fear-inducing stimuli, instead seems to be exquisitely sensitive to emotionally important information in the environment. This is a subtle but important difference, and suggests that depending on the task or the situation at hand, the amygdala may be able to respond differentially.



In one study, researchers found that the amygdalae of participants activated at levels consistent with how negatively they rated a set of faces, in line with prior findings. However, amygdala activity was also related to their judgments of the positivity of faces. And when they judged faces using a scale that was anchored by both positive and negative endpoints, the amygdala tracked the overall intensity of the responses. In other words, the amygdala is more than just a "fear" center, and its activation doesn't necessarily indicate prejudice.

In another study, researchers had participants engage in a face-sorting task in one of two different conditions--either by race, or by membership in teams that included people of different races. Interestingly, the amygdala did not only track race information--it tracked the socially relevant membership (team or race) depending on the social task in front of participants. This tells us that the amygdala is not necessarily pre-wired to detect race information, but rather, to track and respond to the category or social grouping that is most relevant at a given time.

Rather than contradicting an evolutionary narrative, however, these findings merely challenges us to think a little more broadly about the usefulness of categorization even in early times--we may have had to quickly recognize a member of an "out-group" on the basis of race, but it would have been just as helpful to quickly track whether an individual of the same race as us was part of a nearby enemy tribe. When we consider that "in-group" versus "out-group" distinctions don't neatly fall along racial categories, we can begin to consider that race is not a biological inevitability, but a social construction with social significance that our amygdala tracks.

In other words, if the brain adjusts to quickly process information that is deemed as socially relevant, it may be within our power to redefine what is socially relevant. And, rather than needing to squash or cover up our base biases, perpetually caught in a Freudian tug-of-war between Id and Superego, the current view opens the possibility of redefining our social environment so that it doesn't need to track race as a socially significant marker.

Six ways to stop the racist in you

What are the implications of this new way of thinking and conceptualizing brain function for our understanding of prejudice--and of how can we use it to limit our own biases?

At its most basic level, this new understanding of the brain reveals it not as a layered organ showing the layers of our evolution, as might layers of sediment in a canyon. Rather than thinking in terms of dualistic structures--primitive/evolved, emotion/thought, limbic system/neocortex--we are coming to understand that the brain is much more interconnected than previously thought.

But beyond this understanding, these new findings show that our automatic processes (including our implicit biases) are not unchangeable, and that we can learn new behaviors that can become second nature.

An everyday example shows how this is possible. Consider that not one of us is born learning how to drive, and yet by the time many people are adults, we find ourselves not even thinking about it even as we expertly maneuver the car. One day, with practice, egalitarianism might be like driving a car: a skill learned over time but eventually so automatic as to be second nature.

So what are the tricks that you can use to stop the racist in you? There are many, of course, but here are six to consider that follow from the scientific insights we describe.

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• Consciously commit yourself to egalitarianism.
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• But recognize that unconscious bias is no more "the real you" than your conscious values. You are both the unconscious and the conscious.
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• Acknowledge differences, rather than pretend that you are ignoring them.
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• Seek out friendship with people from different groups, in order to increase your brain's familiarity with different people and expand your point of view.
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• It's natural to focus on how people are different from you, but try to consciously identify what qualities and goals you might have in common.
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• When you encounter examples of unambiguous bias, speak out against them. Why? Because that helps create and reinforce a standard for yourself and the people around you, in addition to providing some help to those who are the targets of explicit and implicit prejudice.

Those are steps you can take right now, without waiting for the world to change.

But this research has implications that go well beyond the personal. The split-second reaction of a police officer who shoots an unarmed black man might not be very different from your own. Instead of asking the question of whether a person is or is not racist--because we're all a mix--we can turn to thinking of the ways in which we might engineer our social environment to address racism and its worst effects, without believing that any one step will be a blanket fix.

Knowing that bias is part of the structure of our minds we can ask, for example, how can we change policing so that the results of bias are less deadly? How can we address economic inequality between different groups so as to reduce the stress on communities that are historically the targets of racism? What can school districts do to make sure teachers come in daily positive contact with different kinds of people, and receive training in techniques to help them consciously reduce unconscious bias?

There are many fronts in the campaign against bias, both implicit and explicit, but they all have one thing in common: us. We are all potentially part of the problem--and we can all become a part of the solution.

This essay was revised and updated by Smith from a piece by Mendoza-Denton and Amanda Perez in the journal Othering & Belonging, published by the UC Berkeley Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.

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