Unconscious Racial Bias & Ethical Democracy

16. November 18, 2008 9:26 am Link

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What were the doctors? All white or racially and ethnically diverse?

Who were the patients? All Black or racially and ethically and economically diverse?

I may have missed these points in my quick initial reading of this article, so please excuse.

Some thoughts:
Race INTERSECTS with class, gender and sexual orientation but race frequently TRUMPS these other factors, in U.S. society.

We continue to be a racialized society in which Whiteness is the dominant system, structure and ideology, albeit highly nuanced in these times.
One doesn’t have the be white to perform and uphold Whiteness, a point that is essential to the maintenance of the dominant power of the Whiteness system.

A finding of unconscious racial bias is therefore a more plausible result, given the racialization of all discourses in U.S. society.

I might add:

commodified racialized discourses (from Black slavery and indigenous genocide onwards).

Chithra Karunakaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Findings
In Bias Test, Shades of Gray
Viktor Koen

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By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: November 17, 2008

Last year, a team of researchers at Harvard made headlines with an experiment testing unconscious bias at hospitals. Doctors were shown the picture of a 50-year-old man — sometimes black, sometimes white — and asked how they would treat him if he arrived at the emergency room with chest pains indicating a possible heart attack. Then the doctors took a computer test intended to reveal unconscious racial bias.
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The doctors who scored higher on the bias test were less likely than the other doctors to give clot-busting drugs to the black patients, according to the researchers, who suggested addressing the problem by encouraging doctors to test themselves for unconscious bias. The results were hailed by other psychologists as some of the strongest evidence that unconscious bias leads to harmful discrimination.

But then two other researchers, Neal Dawson and Hal Arkes, pointed out a curious pattern in the data. Even though most of the doctors registered some antiblack bias, as defined by the researchers, on the whole doctors ended up prescribing the clot-busting drugs to blacks just as often as to whites. The doctors scoring low on bias had a pronounced preference for giving the drugs to blacks, while high-scoring doctors had a relatively small preference for giving the drugs to whites — meaning that the more “biased” doctors actually treated blacks and whites more equally.

Does this result really prove dangerous bias in the emergency room? Or, as critics suggest, does it illustrate problems with the way researchers have been using split-second reactions on a computer test to diagnose an epidemic of racial bias?

In a series of scathing critiques, some psychologists have argued that this computerized tool, the Implicit Association Test, or I.A.T., has methodological problems and uses arbitrary classifications of bias. If Barack Obama’s victory seemed surprising, these critics say, it’s partly because social scientists helped create the false impression that three-quarters of whites are unconsciously biased against blacks.

The I.A.T., which has been taken by millions of people on an academic Web site, measures respondents’ reaction times as they follow instructions to associate words like “joy” or “awful” with either blacks or whites. It generally takes whites longer to associate positive words with blacks than with whites, although some do show no bias. (To meet one of these exceptional cases, go to TierneyLab, at nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

The test is widely used in research, and some critics acknowledge that it’s a useful tool for detecting unconscious attitudes and studying cognitive processes. But they say it’s misleading for I.A.T. researchers to give individuals ratings like “slight,” “moderate” or “strong” — and advice on dealing with their bias — when there isn’t even that much consistency in the same person’s scores if the test is taken again.

“One can decrease racial bias scores on the I.A.T. by simply exposing people to pictures of African-Americans enjoying a picnic,” says Hart Blanton, a psychologist at Texas A&M. “Yet respondents who take this test on the Web are given feedback suggesting that some enduring quality is being assessed.” He says that even the scoring system itself has been changed arbitrarily in recent years. “People receiving feedback about their ‘strong’ racial biases,” Dr. Blanton says, “are encouraged in sensitivity workshops to confront these tendencies as some ugly reality that has meaning in their daily lives. But unbeknownst to respondents who take this test, the labels given to them were chosen by a small group of people who simply looked at a distribution of test scores and decided what terms seemed about right. This is not how science is done.”

Two of the leading I.A.T. researchers, Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington and Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, say that some of the past criticism about their measurement techniques has been useful. But they dismiss most of the current objections as moot because the I.A.T.’s validity has been confirmed repeatedly.

In a new a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies, Dr. Greenwald, Dr. Banaji and fellow psychologists conclude that scores on I.A.T. reliably predict people’s behavior and attitudes, and that the test is a better predictor of interracial behavior than self-description. Their critics reach a different conclusion after reanalyzing the data in some of those studies, which they say are inconsistent and sometimes demonstrate the reverse of what has been reported. They have suggested addressing the scientific dispute over bias — and the researchers’ arguments about the legal implications for affirmative-action policies — by having the two sides join in an “adversarial collaboration.”

One critic, Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said he had found prominent research groups and scholars willing to mediate joint experiments. But so far nothing has happened — and each side blames the other. Dr. Greenwald says he tried proposing a joint experiment to Dr. Tetlock only to have it rejected. Dr. Tetlock says that he tried a counterproposal and offered to work out a compromise, but that the I.A.T. researchers had refused two invitations to sit down with independent mediators.

After all the mutual invective in the I.A.T. debate, maybe it’s unrealistic to expect the two sides to collaborate. But these social scientists are supposed to be experts in overcoming bias and promoting social harmony. If they can’t figure out how to get along with their own colleagues, how seriously should we take their advice for everyone else?



Journal List > J Gen Intern Med > v.22(9); Sep 2007
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PubMed articles by:
Green, A.
Carney, D.
Pallin, D.
Banaji, M.


J Gen Intern Med. 2007 September; 22(9): 1231–1238.
Published online 2007 June 27. doi: 10.1007/s11606-007-0258-5.

PMCID: PMC2219763
Copyright © Society of General Internal Medicine 2007
Implicit Bias among Physicians and its Prediction of Thrombolysis Decisions for Black and White Patients
Alexander R. Green, MD, MPH,corresponding author1 Dana R. Carney, PhD,2 Daniel J. Pallin, MD, MPH,3 Long H. Ngo, PhD,4 Kristal L. Raymond, MPH,5 Lisa I. Iezzoni, MD, MSc,4 and Mahzarin R. Banaji, PhD2
1The Disparities Solutions Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 50 Staniford Street, Suite 901, Boston, MA 02114 USA
2Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Boston, MA USA
3Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA USA
4Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA USA
5University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC USA
6The Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA USA
Alexander R. Green, Phone: +1-617-7241913, Fax: +1-617-7264120, Email: argreen@partners.org.
corresponding authorCorresponding author.
Received October 30, 2006; Revised March 23, 2007; Accepted June 1, 2007.
Small right arrow pointing to: This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
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>Abstract
BACKGROUND
METHODS
RESULTS
COMMENT
REFERENCES

Abstract

Context
Studies documenting racial/ethnic disparities in health care frequently implicate physicians’ unconscious biases. No study to date has measured physicians’ unconscious racial bias to test whether this predicts physicians’ clinical decisions.

Objective
To test whether physicians show implicit race bias and whether the magnitude of such bias predicts thrombolysis recommendations for black and white patients with acute coronary syndromes.

Design, Setting, and Participants
An internet-based tool comprising a clinical vignette of a patient presenting to the emergency department with an acute coronary syndrome, followed by a questionnaire and three Implicit Association Tests (IATs). Study invitations were e-mailed to all internal medicine and emergency medicine residents at four academic medical centers in Atlanta and Boston; 287 completed the study, met inclusion criteria, and were randomized to either a black or white vignette patient.

Main Outcome Measures
IAT scores (normal continuous variable) measuring physicians’ implicit race preference and perceptions of cooperativeness. Physicians’ attribution of symptoms to coronary artery disease for vignette patients with randomly assigned race, and their decisions about thrombolysis. Assessment of physicians’ explicit racial biases by questionnaire.

Results
Physicians reported no explicit preference for white versus black patients or differences in perceived cooperativeness. In contrast, IATs revealed implicit preference favoring white Americans (mean IAT score = 0.36, P < .001, one-sample t test) and implicit stereotypes of black Americans as less cooperative with medical procedures (mean IAT score 0.22, P < .001), and less cooperative generally (mean IAT score 0.30, P < .001). As physicians’ prowhite implicit bias increased, so did their likelihood of treating white patients and not treating black patients with thrombolysis (P = .009).

Conclusions
This study represents the first evidence of unconscious (implicit) race bias among physicians, its dissociation from conscious (explicit) bias, and its predictive validity. Results suggest that physicians’ unconscious biases may contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in use of medical procedures such as thrombolysis for myocardial infarction.
KEY WORDS: unconscious bias, thrombolysis, race, clinical decisions, disparities
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Abstract
>BACKGROUND
METHODS
RESULTS
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REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

Widely documented racial/ethnic disparities are particularly striking in the treatment of cardiovascular disease,1,2 with whites up to twice as likely as blacks to receive thrombolytic therapy for myocardial infarction.3–7 Whether health professionals’ biases contribute to such disparities in care has been a subject of speculation and study.1,8–14 For example, physicians might believe that black patients are less likely to adhere to treatment recommendations than whites, and thus offer treatment less often.12 Some researchers speculate that unconscious bias is more likely to underlie treatment disparities than overt prejudice.12,15–18

The computer-based Implicit Association Test (IAT), first introduced in 1998, is now used widely to measure bias that may not be consciously recognized.19 The IAT measures the time it takes subjects to match representatives of social groups (e.g., age, gender, and race) to particular attributes (e.g., good, bad, cooperative, and stubborn). The IAT operationalizes unconscious bias by hypothesizing that subjects will match a group representative to an attribute more quickly if they connect these factors in their minds, regardless of their awareness of this connection. For instance, the more strongly subjects associate pictures of white persons with good concepts and pictures of black persons with bad concepts, the more quickly they will match them, and vice versa. The computerized IAT measures the aggregate time required for these matching tasks under two conditions (pairings). A difference in average matching speed for opposite pairings (e.g., black+bad/white+good vs black+good/white+bad) determines the IAT score (Fig. 1). Subjects are typically aware that they are making these connections but unable to control them given the rapid response times and structure of the test. To understand the IAT procedure, readers can sample the test at www.implicit.harvard.edu.20
Figure 1 Figure 1
Implicit Association Test (IAT) sample screens and stimuli. This figure displays sample screens and stimuli from the race preference (black-white/good-bad) IAT. Sample screens a, b, c, and d represent examples of pairing tasks that participants rapidly (more ...)

Although more than 200 studies have employed numerous versions of the IAT,19,20–24 and data from 5 million tests has accumulated from www.implicit.harvard.edu, the test has not been used to systematically observe the behavior of health care professionals. Given questions about the source of observed disparities in health service use, the IAT might provide insight into the contribution of implicit biases among physicians. In this study, we used a race preference IAT to measure implicit biases among emergency medicine and internal medicine residents. We also developed two new tests to measure stereotypes about general cooperativeness and specific cooperation with medical procedures. We tested whether both preferences and stereotypes affected physicians’ clinical decisions for white and black patients. More specifically, using a case vignette with patient race assigned randomly, three IATs, and a questionnaire, we sought to determine whether implicit or explicit race biases predict physicians’ decisions to give thrombolysis for acute myocardial infarction.
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>METHODS
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METHODS

Participants and Study Procedures
In April and May 2005, we e-mailed a study invitation and three weekly reminders to all 776 internal medicine and emergency medicine residents in four academic medical centers in Boston, Mass, and Atlanta, Ga. The emails included a link to the research web site and a login code. Using an honor system administered by the chief residents, we offered participants a $10 gift certificate and entry into a lottery ($200 and $100 prizes for each site) for completing the 20-minute, anonymous, web-based study. Of the 776 residents, 393 (50.6%) participants completed the randomized vignette questionnaire and explicit bias section of the study. We excluded 25 participants who were not residents in an eligible program (n = 2) or had previously completed part of the study (n = 23). Fifty-seven participants failed to complete the IATs or had unusable IAT results, as described elsewhere.21 Twenty-four participants failed to complete the demographics section. This left 287 participants (37.0% of 776) who completed all aspects of the study. On a posttest question, 67 of these 287 participants reported some awareness of what the study was about through discussions with colleagues who had completed it. Because this awareness may have biased their responses to the case vignette, we omitted these participants from the analyses. All results (unless otherwise specified) are based on the 220 participants (28.4%) who completed the study and were unaware of the nature of the study.

Study Design
We created a web-based survey instrument that randomly assigned participants to see a picture of a black or white patient while reading a clinical vignette. From hundreds of shareware photographs, we chose 58 whose facial expressions appeared neutral. We created new patient images by morphing together these photographs using Photo Morpher Software (Morpheus Software, LLC, Santa Barbara, Calif, USA). The 21 best quality images were chosen and 19 independent evaluators (physicians, research assistants, and graduate students of various racial/ethnic backgrounds and not involved in the study) reviewed these. We chose four (two black and two white) that were most closely matched on apparent age (approximately 50 years) and attractiveness (7-point scale). The vignette (see Appendix) describes a 50-year-old male presenting to the emergency department with chest pain and an electrocardiogram suggestive of anterior myocardial infarction. It is stated that primary angioplasty is not an option and no absolute contraindications to thrombolysis are evident.

We asked participants to rate the likelihood that the chest pain was because of coronary artery disease (CAD) (5-point scale, very unlikely to very likely), whether they would give the patient thrombolysis (yes/no), and the strength of their recommendation (5-point scale, definitely to definitely not). To assess explicit bias, the software then asked participants several questions about whether they preferred white or black Americans (5-point scale with preference expressed as somewhat or slightly prefer black or white Americans, and 10-point thermometer scale of warm feelings toward each group separately). We also asked about their beliefs about patients’ cooperativeness in general and with regard to medical procedures such as thrombolysis (5-point scale—black patients somewhat less cooperative, slightly less cooperative, equally cooperative; white patients slightly less cooperative or somewhat less cooperative). Finally, the online survey included queries about respondent demographics, effectiveness of thrombolysis, and pre- and posttest opinions on unconscious bias and IATs. The vignettes and survey are available upon request.

Participants also completed three IATs corresponding to the explicit bias questions. The Race Preference IAT measured implicit association of white and black race with good and bad terms. We created the next two IATs specifically for this study. The Race Cooperativeness IAT measured implicit associations between race and general cooperativeness. The Race Medical Cooperativeness IAT measured implicit associations between race and cooperativeness with medical recommendations. All IAT scores are expressed as normally distributed continuous variables. For efficiency we used a 5-block structure for the IATs, with the specific pairing received first (e.g., black-bad/white-good) counterbalanced across participants. We scored IATs according to published guidelines with zero representing no racial bias, positive values representing prowhite bias, and negative scores representing problack bias (range typically −0.6 to 1.2).21 Figure 1 shows the faces representing white or black race and the terms used as stimuli for the concepts of good/bad and cooperativeness/uncooperativeness.

Analysis
We examined differences in demographic characteristics, likelihood of CAD, and decisions to treat with thrombolysis between participants assigned to black versus white patients using chi-square and t tests as appropriate. We compared mean IAT scores for various demographic groups using t tests. To look for relative disparity by race between diagnosis and treatment, we compared participants’ ratings of the likelihood that the chest pain was because of CAD (the diagnosis variable, 1–5 scale as above) with the likelihood of treating the patient with thrombolysis (the treatment variable, yes/no). To do this we put both the diagnosis and treatment variables on the same scale using z-scores. We then subtracted the treatment variable from the diagnosis variable to create a delta variable. A delta score of zero indicated that treatment was commensurate with diagnosis. A negative score indicated that treatment was more likely than diagnosis, and a positive score indicated that diagnosis was more likely than treatment. We used a one-way ANOVA to test whether diagnosis-treatment delta was different for black versus white patients.

To test whether bias predicted physicians’ use of thrombolysis for black and white patients, we used moderated multiple linear regression analysis with thrombolysis decision as the dependent variable, bias (implicit or explicit) as the independent variable, and patient race (black or white) as the moderator, adjusting for analysis-relevant covariates (e.g., physician race, sex, socioeconomic background, explicit race bias, implicit race bias, and belief in the effectiveness of thrombolysis). We then added the 67 physicians who were aware of the nature of the study back into the dataset and used moderated multiple linear regression to examine the potentially moderating impact of physician awareness on the relation between bias and thrombolysis decision. We performed all analyses using SPSS statistical software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Ill, USA). The study received approval from the Institutional Review Boards at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Partners HealthCare System, and Emory University.
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METHODS
>RESULTS
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RESULTS

Table 1 describes demographic characteristics of the participants stratified by whether they were randomly assigned a black or white patient. Participants assigned black vs white patients did not differ significantly, except that first- and second-year residents were more likely to be assigned white patients. Year of residency did not have any significant effect on either likelihood of recommending thrombolysis (chi-square P = .98) or on IAT scores however. Table 1 shows mean IAT scores for all three IATs by participants’ demographic characteristics. Physician race was the only consistent demographic predictor of IAT scores. Black physicians had mean scores on all three IATs near zero, whereas all other groups had scores in the positive, prowhite range. Emergency medicine residents also had somewhat less prowhite IAT sores on the general cooperativeness IAT. There was no difference in the IAT scores of participants randomized to black versus white patient vignettes.
Table 1 Table 1
Baseline Characteristics and IAT Scores of Physician Participants

Physicians’ Explicit and Implicit Racial Biases
On the measures of explicit bias, participants expressed equal preference for black and white Americans on the 5-point scale of race preference (mean difference = 0.03, P = .36) and on the 10-point thermometer scale measuring warmth toward black and white Americans separately (mean difference = 0.04, P = .61). They reported black and white patients to be equally cooperative on a 5-point scale of cooperativeness with medical procedures (mean difference = 0.01, P = 1.00) and on a 10-point thermometer scale measuring cooperativeness separately for black and white patients (mean difference = 0.08, P = .49).

On the measures of implicit bias, all three IATs showed statistically significant effects (P < .001), with stronger associations of negative attributes (e.g., bad and uncooperative) to blacks than to whites. Figure 2 displays a graph of the magnitude of physicians’ bias on the 4 explicit measures (top half) and 3 implicit measures (bottom half). Because measures of explicit bias (5- and 10-point scales) and implicit bias (reaction time scores ranging from −1.01 to +1.35) were on different scales, the magnitude of physicians’ bias across the seven measures could only be directly compared by converting them all to the same metric—Cohen’s effect size d. Cohen’s d is conceptually defined as the magnitude of an effect independent of sample size (see conversion formula at the bottom of Fig. 2) and is widely used in empirical research and meta-analysis in the behavioral sciences. Cohen’s d values range in size from small (0.20), to medium (0.50), and large (0.80).25 As shown in Figure 2, none of the explicit effects approached the cutoff for a small effect. In contrast, all of the implicit effects were medium or large in magnitude.
Figure 2 Figure 2
Magnitude of physicians’ explicit (self-reported) and implicit (Implicit Association Test) race bias on a standardized scale—Cohen’s effect size d

Aggregate scores on the three separate IATs were all somewhat correlated (average pairwise correlation r = .32, P = .001). We found some correlation between implicit bias (IAT score) and explicit bias (composite 5-point scale and 10-point feeling thermometer) for general racial preference (r = .28, P = .001) and no correlation for cooperativeness with medical procedures (r = .05, P = .50).

Diagnosis of CAD and Treatment with Thrombolysis
On a scale from 1 (less than 20% likely) to 5 (more than 80% likely), physicians were more likely to diagnose black patients (M = 4.08) than white patients (M = 3.71) with CAD as a cause of their chest pain (P = .02). However, participants were equally likely to give thrombolysis for black (52%) and white (48%) patients (chi-square P = .68). In absolute numbers 29.8% (33/112) of physicians who saw a white patient vignette thought he was very likely to have CAD versus 40.1% (43/108) for black patients. Within this subgroup 58.2% of physicians were very likely to offer white patients thrombolysis versus 42.7% for black patients (P = .12) (results not shown). Using the delta score (z-score relating likelihood of diagnosis and treatment) we were able to adjust for covariates and show a racial disparity in thrombolysis relative to CAD diagnosis. For blacks, delta was 0.11, indicating lower likelihood of thrombolysis relative to the physician’s perception of the likelihood of acute myocardial infarction. For whites, delta was −0.14, indicating higher likelihood of thrombolysis (P = .06).

Implicit (But Not Explicit) Bias Predicts Differences in Physicians’ Thrombolysis Decisions
Physicians’ explicit (self-reported) attitudes toward patients (preference) or stereotypes about cooperativeness by race did not influence their decision to give thrombolysis for black versus white patients. A moderated multiple linear regression analysis showed no evidence of an interaction between self-reported attitude and patient race on thrombolysis recommendation (P = .82) (results not shown). This result remained nonsignificant after controlling for physicians’ implicit bias, race, sex, socioeconomic status (SES), and belief in thrombolysis effectiveness (P = .64).

Physicians’ implicit biases, however, showed strong associations with their decisions to give thrombolysis. Figure 3 illustrates how each of the three IAT results and the combined IAT composite predicted thrombolysis decisions for black and white patients. Subpanel A shows that as the degree of antiblack bias on the race preference IAT increased, recommendations for thrombolysis for black patients decreased. The interaction between implicit antiblack bias and patient race on treatment recommendation was significant (P = .009). After controlling for physicians’ explicit race bias, race, sex, SES, and belief in thrombolysis effectiveness, the interaction effect of patient race and thrombolysis remained significant. A composite IAT measure combining all three IATs (race, attitude, and stereotypes) showed the same pattern (subpanel D) and was statistically significant both with and without the covariates included in the model (P = .04). The same general pattern also held for the medical cooperativeness IAT (subpanel C); however, the interaction was not statistically significant (P =.21).
Figure 3 Figure 3
Relationship between physician race preference Implicit Association Test (IAT) score and thrombolysis decisions by patient race. *P < .05, **P = .05–0.11, B values are standardized regression coefficients (more ...)

Participants Who Were Aware of the Study’s Purpose
Results presented above excluded the 67 participants who reported some awareness of the nature of the study. Additional analyses including these 67 aware physicians demonstrated a two-way interaction between awareness and IAT score on thrombolysis recommendation (P = .001) (Fig. 4). As unaware physicians’ bias on the composite IAT variable increased, their likelihood of recommending thrombolysis to black patients decreased, as described above. In contrast, increase in bias among aware physicians was associated with more thrombolysis for black patients. All P values remained significant after adjusting for covariates and the same general pattern held for all three IATs.
Figure 4 Figure 4
Relation between physicians’ awareness of the study’s purpose and Implicit Association Test (IAT) bias on recommendation for thrombolysis (black patients only). B values are standardized regression coefficients that describe the magnitude (more ...)

Before completing the IAT section of the study, 60.5% of physicians agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “Subconscious biases about patients based on their race may affect the way I make decisions about their care without my realizing it.” When shown the same statement after taking the IATs, 71.6% of physicians agreed or strongly agreed with this statement (difference in mean 5-point score = 0.33, P < .001 by paired t test). Meanwhile 74.8% felt that taking IATs is a worthwhile experience for physicians, and 76.1% felt that learning more about unconscious biases could improve their care of patients.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND
METHODS
RESULTS
>COMMENT
REFERENCES

COMMENT

The IAT has been used to study implicit preferences and stereotypes for over a decade. It is a new method in its application to studying health care provider bias as a potential root cause of racial/ethnic disparities in health care. This is the first study to use a sociocognitive measure of bias among physicians, and to correlate this with treatment decisions according to patient race. It also represents the first time that the IAT, first published in 1998,19 has been modified to measure and demonstrate an implicit stereotype specific to medical care (i.e., that black patients are less willing to undergo medical procedures).

Not surprisingly, most physicians did not admit to any racial biases explicitly. However, on the implicit measures of bias (IATs), most nonblack physicians demonstrated some degree of bias favoring whites over blacks. Participants’ scores on the race preference IAT showed a range of implicit race bias similar to previous experiments on nonphysicians.21,26 The new cooperativeness IATs were normally distributed and somewhat correlated with the well-studied race preference IAT, suggesting that they measure different but related components of race bias.

Findings of implicit bias and its effects on clinical decisions may surprise physicians who tend to view their work as both altruistic and evidence-based.27 Implicit race biases are prevalent in the United States in general,26 and as such it should not be surprising that they are prevalent among physicians as well. The neural and cognitive processes underlying these biases are assumed to reflect both evolutionary bases and socially acquired orientations. The content of implicit biases(e.g., that black Americans are less cooperative than white Americans) are assumed to derive from sociocultural learning (e.g., explicit instruction and implicit messages) that accumulate over time. Implicit biases are primarily unconscious and do not imply overt racism. This is supported by the strong dissociation in the average level of expressed, explicit preferences and elicited, implicit ones, as well as the low correlation between explicit and implicit preference observed in this study. Critics of implicit measure of social cognition have asserted that such preferences and beliefs may reflect messages about the state of social groups in the larger culture but cannot be said to reflect an individual’s own preferences. If that were the case, doctors’ own decisions should not have been predicted so clearly by their implicit biases. The fact that they do remind us that implicit biases may affect the behavior even of those individuals who have nothing but the best intentions,24 including those in medical professions.12,13,15 The IAT is but one method for detecting implicit social cognition and it is the first to be put to use in the present study in a medical context. As such, the meaning and significance of implicit biases in health care deserves much greater investigation.

We found no difference in the crude rate of thrombolysis between study participants assigned a black patient versus those assigned a white patient. However, this race equality in treatment occurred in the presence of greater diagnosis of CAD in black than white patients. Equal treatment in the face of unequal diagnosis between the two groups constitutes a disparity.

The result of interest did not depend on demonstrating disparities in treatment. Rather, this study was designed to determine whether physicians’ implicit biases (IAT scores) predicted different patterns of thrombolysis recommendation for black and white patients. We found that implicit bias against blacks (as measured by the race preference IAT) was negatively correlated with likelihood of recommending thrombolysis for black patients and positively correlated with likelihood of recommending thrombolysis for white patients. This finding suggests that unconscious race biases among physicians may influence their decisions about important interventions such as thrombolysis for suspected myocardial infarction. Whereas several studies have pointed to unconscious biases as one potential root cause for racial and ethnic disparities in health care,9–14 this is the first evidence directly supporting this link. We were encouraged to find most resident physicians open to the idea that unconscious biases could affect their clinical decisions, and that learning more about these biases could improve their care of patients. After completing the IATs, residents acknowledged greater vulnerability to unconscious bias than they did at the start, suggesting that the experience heightened their awareness. Also, those physicians who were aware that the study had to do with racial bias, and who had higher levels of implicit prowhite bias, were more likely to recommend thrombolysis to black patients than physicians with low bias—the opposite of the study’s main effect. This suggests that implicit bias can be recognized and modulated to counteract its effect on treatment decisions. These finding support the IAT’s value as an educational tool.

There are several limitations inherent in this study. Response rates were relatively low and the sample size smaller than ideal, making it difficult to detect smaller effects that may exist. Resident physicians, particularly those at large academic health centers in Boston and Atlanta may differ from physicians who typically make thrombolysis decisions, so it remains to be seen if those with greater experience show the same pattern. Nevertheless, our primary findings are based on an experimental manipulation involving randomized assignment of the physician to a black or white patient vignette, which provides confidence in the causal interpretations that are drawn. A second limitation derives from the use of a computerized presentation of a patient, which may, for reasons that may not be obvious, have contributed to an outcome that may not occur in a typical in-person encounter. The result of predictive validity we report may be an overestimation, but equally likely an underestimation of the role of implicit bias in clinical decision making.

Future studies might do well to examine actual patient-physician interactions, introducing such dimensions as communication, rapport, and other nonverbal behaviors that are known to be related to implicit discrimination. It may in fact be the subtleties of interracial interactions that lay the foundation for differential treatment to occur.28 IATs can be developed to provide a broader range of clinically relevant stereotypes, in addition to the tests we used. Studies should continue to obtain detailed measures of participant awareness because this did show impact on treatment decisions in our study.

In conclusion, our findings suggest that physicians, like others, may harbor unconscious preferences and stereotypes that influence clinical decisions. Further study is needed to confirm our findings, and to determine the extent to which unconscious racial biases contribute to health care disparities. Given the potential existence of these biases, new approaches to addressing disparities might include confidential feedback mechanisms to make physicians aware of disparities in their own cohort of patients, securely and privately administered IATs to increase physicians’ awareness of unconscious bias, and targeted education to mitigate its effects on clinical decision making. We cannot and do not suggest that unconscious bias among health professionals is the largest or most important factor leading to disparities in health care. However, the fact that it is, by its very nature, hidden from conscious awareness suggests that it receive explicit attention.

Acknowledgment

We are grateful to Joseph Betancourt at Massachusetts General Hospital and to Ron Walls and Tom Stair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for support and mentorship; to Elizabeth Donahue at Massachusetts General Hospital for assistance preparing the manuscript; and to Elizabeth Mela at Harvard University for help with all stages of this research and manuscript preparation. We are also grateful to Brian Nosek and his team at University of Virginia for developing the web-based study software and implementation. We are especially grateful to those who helped us coordinate data collection at each site: Art Kellerman, Phillip Shayne, Donald Brady, Joshua Larned, and Inginia Genao at Emory University, Carlo Rosen, Nate Shapiro, Eileen Reynolds, and Janet Buccola at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Valerie Stone and Deborah Wexler at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Eric Nadel, Peter Reese, and Joel Katz at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Funding and Support This study was funded by the Esther B. Kahn Fund of the Department of Emergency Medicine of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Green received support from a National Research Service Award, grant no. T32HP11001-15. Dr. Banaji and Dr.Carney received support from the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative at Harvard University and Dr. Banaji received support for the development of the internet-based portion of this study from the National Institute of Mental Health Grant HL-0000013 as well as the Mind Science Foundation. The funding organizations had no role in the design and conduct of the study, including data collection and management, analysis, interpretation of the data, and preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.

Conflict Of Interest None disclosed.

Appendix

Clinical case vignette

Mr. Thompson is a 50-year-old man with a history of well-controlled hypertension and smoking, but no other risk factors for CAD, who presents to the emergency department with chest pain. He appears to be in a lot of pain describing it as “sharp, like being stabbed with a knife” and pointing to the midsternum. He has had it about 3 hours, and it has waxed and waned, but is now an 8 out of 10 in intensity. The pain is not exacerbated by movement or deep inspiration. It does not radiate and is not accompanied by shortness of breath, nausea, or diaphoresis. His vital signs, oxygen saturation, and physical exam are normal except for some mild sternal tenderness to palpation. His EKG shows 2 mm horizontal ST elevations in the anterior leads (not J-point elevation), but there is no prior EKG for comparison and there is no time for cardiac enzymes. He did not have access to a cardiac catheterization lab. He has no absolute contraindications to thrombolysis.
Top
Abstract
BACKGROUND
METHODS
RESULTS
COMMENT
>REFERENCES

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Development vs. Growth in the Global Recession

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November 18th, 2008 8:30 am

Brooks said about so-called "developing" nations but more accurately these are nations that were exploited and systematically 'underdeveloped' by colonial (example Britain) and later neo-imperial (U.S.) powers:

"Over the past decade, millions of people in these societies have climbed out of poverty. But the global recession is pushing them back down. Many seem furious with democracy and capitalism, which they believe led to their shattered dreams."

As a person born and raised in a "developing" nation, our greatest challenge is to forge economies and social justice systems that are NOT based on the U.S model of militaristic capitalism, and where the greatest freedom is the unlimited freedom to shop.

Each formerly oppressed nation-state will have to find its own economic and social justice trajectory. For example Gandhian-type (India) self reliance or Nyerere-type (Tanzania) Ujamaa African socialism is a more apt and necessary alternative. The elites in our Global South countries are the biggest roadblocks to this alternative because they have joined with the dominant economic order that we now see, justifiably, turned upside down.

The U.S.-initiated global recession offers an opportunity to THE PEOPLE of Global South nation-states to build self-reliant, interdependent and yes, innovative green, social-justice economies to primarily benefit their peoples, not serve as sweatshops to produce shoddy, ever-cheaper goods for the consuming West.
Development is not the same thing as growth.

Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogpost.com

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

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Hillary for State? What would Change?

Comment # 115. NYTimes
November 16, 2008 10:52 am

Link:
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/11/16/opinion/16dowd.html?permid=115#comment115


Hillary has a higher profile and proven capability in international affairs and has more credentials in foreign policy than Barack Obama or ANY of her colleagues in Congress.
Hillary would be an invaluable asset to the Obama cabinet and she would probably, given her energy, drive, ambition, political astuteness, prove to be a great Secretary of State.

If Hillary is appointed Secretary of State, it would then be up to informed and progressive members of the U.S.electorate, NOT to support the 60-year policy of the U.S. State Department to meddle, with disastrous consequences, in the internal affairs and foreign policy priorities of sovereign states.

To name a few:

Pakistan is trying its best to deal with its own extremist threat within its own borders. The U.S. better not conduct so-called counterterrorist incursions (with loss of civilian life)into Pakistan because the U.S. will undoubtedly unleash a long-term backlash against itself in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Russia has a right to reconfigure relationships with republics of the erstwhile Soviet Union without a Cheney-type threat to Putin and Medvedev.

Iran, like every sovereign nation-state has every right to develop its nuclear capability. It is NOT for the U.S. (which has the MOST nuclear warheads and is the ONLY nation-state that has used nuclear against another nation-state) to decide who should or should not develop nuclear capability.

The U.S. can certainly boost humanitarian aid (with no-strings attached) in Africa. That would be a beneficial use of the State Department's resources.

No matter who is appointed to lead State, that individual will likely continue to follow an unfair, unethical, undemocratic pro-Zionist policy in the so-called Middle East (it is West Asia).

The people of the nation-states of West Asia, especially the Palestinian people have long suffered the consequences of first British/French and now U.S. neo-imperial greed and manipulation.

So, I have only modest hopes about the Hillary candidacy for Secretary of State. I am pragmatically aware that the US under Barack Obama will NOT be progressive, but neoliberal and militaristic.

The U.S. will continue to DOMINATE instead of PARTICIPATE in international initiatives and alliances to build a more equitable world order. The U.S. will continue to distort international politics with its direct interventions and its self-serving, supremacist divide-and-rule strategy.

In my view the U.S. has proven to be the greatest threat to world peace, stability and an equitable world economic order, in the last 60 years. This is not going to change in any substantive way, no matter who becomes the U.S. Secretary of State.

Much of the world is moving in the direction of new multi-polar alliances and reconfigurations but the U.S. continues to be uni-polar.

How 20th century!

An ethical electorate (can this admittedly small section of the U.S. electorate coalesce around progressive goals?) that places the Greater Collective Good(GCG) of ALL of the world's peoples, over the aggressive and destructive stance of the Cheney-Bush U.S. State Department can attempt to make a difference.

Will the "change" at State really mean, in practice, no change at all? Just hype, no change?

The burden of proof is on the incoming Obama administration.

Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommend Recommended by 0 Readers

An Obama "Transition" to Public Education?

My post is Recommended by the NYTimes editors, well sometimes they do that!

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/11/14/us/politics/14obama.html?s=1&pg=2
Post #42.
November 14, 2008 9:50 am

The pic accompanying a story in the NY Times today on the Obama family's "transition" since he became the President-elect, shows Obama's daughters arriving at school.
Private school.

During his almost-two-year campaign, Obama repeatedly promised to "fix" education. By that he and everybody else means PUBLIC education. Even though we have an unequal two-tier system of private/elite vs. public/mass education, it is always public education that apparently needs fixing. The elite private education system goes unexamined, unregulated.

Obama is no Jimmy Carter. When Carter was President, he sent his daughter Amy to a public elementary school in Washington DC. It was a predominantly Black school. When Obama becomes President, he will send his two daughters to an elite private predominantly white school. Like the Clintons, Obama will choose an elite (which also means predominantly upper middle class, white) private school for his daughters.

The real "transition" would be if the Obama parents sent their daughters to public school. But then, that would make Obama what we need in a leader -- a social, economic and political PROGRESSIVE, rather than a NEOLIBERAL who maintains and enforces the political, economic and social status quo while gaining immediate benefits for themselves, to the detriment of the Greater Collective Good in civil society.

Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York (a public education institution)
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
====================================================================================

Covert Aggression Under the Guise of Counterterrorism

Today, the NYTimes reported that a 2004 secret order had been issued authorizing U.S. attacks on suspected "terrorists" in 20 sovereign nation-states.

The New York Times published my comment on this report:

NYTimes blog

The U.S. has a right to defend its own territory against attacks.

But wait. What gives the U.S. the right to carry out attacks (which frequently end in the death of innocent civilians), into sovereign states that are themselves trying to curb extremist elements within their own borders?

Is this "secret order" an act consistent with ethical democracy or are these actions illegal, arrogant, futile, counter-productive and likely to unleash a backlash?

The perilous Cheney-Bush Ideology of Exceptionalism (" we are so special, there's nobody in the entire world quite like us so we can do whatever we want, invade, occupy, kill, threaten, impose sanctions, etc. etc."), has led the U.S. headlong into a dangerous and futile engagement OUTSIDE its own territory and WITHIN the territory of sovereign states.

This covert aggression has clearly inflamed civilian sentiment especially when local residents lose a family member who is not involved in any extremist activity.

Don't we by now know about the failures of U.S. "intelligence"? This lose-lose strategy will hopefully be halted, beginning in January 2009. Otherwise it will signal a continuation of the same failed policy of the Cheney-Bush regime.

Regime change, Bush-Cheney to Obama-Biden, cannot afford to be merely symbolic.

Chithra KarunaKaran

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Democracy on Wheels, Corruption on Wheels

Democracy on Wheels, Corruption on Wheels

TTE corruption is rampant on IR. Train Ticket Examiners (TTEs) are stealing from the Indian riding public.

Yeah sure, going green on train toilets is fantastic provided they work.If they don't work (wanna bet?) they'll STINK worse than ever. Green toilets are a welcome, long overdue innovation that will be kind to the environment and generate savings to the public. It will contribute to the Greater Collective Good, my qualitative/quantitative measure of Ethical Democracy.


But what really stinks is flagrant bribe-taking by train ticket examiners and almost equally flagrant bribe-giving by the public.

When I am in India which is at least five months every year, I use ONLY PUBLIC MASS TRANSIT. Buses, trains. No, not even autorickshaws. No dumb SUVs and private cars for me. I ride our wonderful always-in-need-of-improvement Indian Railways all the time. From Kolkata to Kochi and all points in between. This is DEMOCRACY ON WHEELS.

But what is completely unacceptable and damaging is corruption by Train Ticket Examiners. TTEs collect cash payments on every shift, from everybody they can squeeze money out of. Remember, TTEs are already paid wages out of taxpayer money and have secure lifetime jobs and healthcare, with pensions and benefits upon retirement.

I have NEVER given TTE's a paisa, and never will. Many of my friends and relatives regularly offer bribes to TTE's. They complain they cannot 'get anything done' unless they proffer a bribe, whether to a TTE or a municipal bureaucrat or a constable who issues them a ticket for a traffic violation.

What distorted, undemocratic, unethical thinking and action.

Many Indians, especially middle and upper class Indians (of course they also belong to the privileged dominant castes) degrade democracy, abuse their civic rights as well as their privileges and responsibilities as lawful citizens in India -- an unprecedented democratic nation-state, the world's most populous democracy.

The TTE's "sell" berths to passengers who have not paid their full fare to the IR. In fact the TTEs run a PARALLEL ECONOMY. The TTE's run an underground illegal economy that drains money from the Indian Railways. The TTEs steal money from taxpayers and line their own pockets, to the detriment of a public sector service -- rail transport for everybody.

I have seen this happen right in front of my eyes whenever I ride the trains (second class of course, I am no elitist), of the Indian Railways.

The PEOPLE have the power to change business-as-usual in the IR, by NOT giving bribes to TTEs. But will they? Will they practice Ethical Democracy?

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York (CUNY)

http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Choosing a U.S. President in the Corporate Bailout era

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/1722


Obama is the president- elect. I voted for Barack Obama. This is a momentous, historic, powerfully symbolic, unprecedented election result.

When I went into my voting booth in my election district in Manhattan, I voted Obama, not on the Democrat line, but on the Working Families Party line. I rejected a chance to also vote for Charles Rangel, the longterm Harlem Democrat for whom I had voted several times before, who is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, because Rangel failed to pay taxes. I also refused to cast a vote for my local NYS Assemblyman who is a donor to landlords, against the rights of tenants.


Now let me submit some qualifiers:

I refused to contribute one penny to either the Obama or McCain campaigns, instead holding out for long overdue campaign finance reform. Unfortunately, campaign financing reform will not be enacted by the majority Democrats anytime soon, because their product (Obama) sold well this election cycle. Large sections of the U.S. consuming electorate bought Obama, fewer U.S. consumers bought McCain.

In US-style advanced capitalism, most recently in its corporate bailout phase, all discourses, (from slavery onwards), are commodified. Brand Obama prevailed (for now) against Brand McCain, in a Coke vs. Pepsi contest. This does not imply that there are no differences between Barack Obama and John McCain. But, no matter who is elected, entrenched multinational corporatism and a multinational weapons industry will trump democracy and civil society in the U.S.

Barack Obama was elected because he can best satisfy the American electorate's need to continue to engage in the commodified discourse of U.S. exceptionalism "we are the best" "we are the greatest" "there's no one quite like us so we can do whatever we want, invade, occupy threaten, whatever..." etc. etc. ad nauseum.

The US public wants to consume at ever cheaper rates, without producing what they consume (the Walmart model); wants a "tough" President and Congress and Supreme Court (which means the US does not want to be a co-equal player in the world community of nations), but instead will continue to try to dominate, interfere and distort global politics and the globalized economy even though the U.S. has a failed foreign policy and a failed economy; violate human rights in Iraq and elsewhere which it invaded and continues to occupy; make threats to invade Iran; continue to support illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine; continue to operate in Afghanistan inflicting a high civilian toll; enter Pakistan allegedly to kill "insurgents"; send Cheney to threaten Putin; consume energy resources in a wasteful and harmful manner.

Barack Obama is a neoliberal rather than a radical progressive. He is no FDR.
He is not even a Carter.

He is a Clintocrat without a zipper problem.

He will maintain the status quo while appearing to be progressive. That's the neoliberal spin tactic.

Obama is certainly no Mandela, no Kenyatta, no Nkrumah, no Nyerere and most certainly he is no Gandhi in-the-making, even though Gandhiji's portrait supposedly hangs in his Senate office.
His life is not his message.

I voted for Obama because he (possibly) is likely to be able to do less harm than McCain, in the U.S. and in the world.

The U.S. is still a long, long way from Ethical Democracy as we embark upon an Obama Presidency.
Still, I am cautiously joyful for the remotest hint of ethical progress towards democracy in the U.S.

Chithra Karunakaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Posted by: Chithra KarunaKaran | November 8, 2008 7:55 AM

The Murder of Marcelo Lucero: Diversity, Equity and the Challenge for Ethical Democracy

The Murder of Marcelo Lucero. How could this happen?

Q. If a sovereign nation-state has long articulated a code of racialized, supremacist Whiteness, is the murder of Marcelo Lucero, incomprehensible and inexplicable OR possible and predictable?

See "Theory of Systemic Whiteness" in this Blog (or Google it)

It is important to read something of the history of Suffolk County where Marcelo Lucero an Ecuadoran immigrant lived before he was murdered by Suffolk County teen and high school athlete Jeffrey Conroy and his pals. What kind of place is Suffolk County? What is its history, demography? Suffolk County is 86% White. (Note: racial categories are self-ascribed and this self-ascription is mandated by the US Census Bureau which has racialized the census from its inception. Even this fact is part of the structural, systemic, ideological content of Whiteness. Whiteness is first and foremost a system of unearned,unequal, unshared, dominant POWER.

Finally it is important to focus on WHITENESS rather than racism. To call someone a racist is to impugn their individual behavior rather than to place that individual's behavior within the context of "White supremacism". That individual can and must be held responsible and accountable for his/her actions, but those actions are explainable with the larger societal context.

But again "white supremacism" is attributed
dismissively to belong to a few 'ignorant' individuals or even small radical fringe groups like the KKK, neo-Nazi and punk groups. By imputing white supremacist ideas to only a few misguided and violent individuals, the real POWER of structural systemic and ideological Whiteness is made invisible and its dominant power is further strengthened.

In contrast to the term "racism" or even "white supremacism" the term "WHITENESS" focuses on a power construct of structural, systemic and ideological supremacist racialization, by which so-called OTHER(s) like Lucero are permitted to be constructed as despicable,somehow less than HUMAN, which is a central organizing strategic principle of the US racialized history of slavery of Africans and genocide of indigenous peoples, as well as directly related to contemporary experience.

Q. Are Palestinians and Iraqis the new "others" along with Latinos in the contemporary American racial experience?

An essential raw data source for the demographics of Suffolk County would be:

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet (For Suffolk County). You might even want to compare census factfinder data for Nassau County. Both these counties together make up Long Island.

It is also important to analyze press reports on the murder. In particular the comments of Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive are important in providing political context for the murder.

Most important read the comments of Lucero's brother, Hispanic civic leaders, ACLU officials, prosecutors and defense attorneys.

We cannot come to grips with the murder of Marcelo Lucero unless we examine the

Systemic, structural and ideological constructions of Whiteness that were central in to murder of Marcelo Lucero. The demonized construction of the racialized OTHER is central to the affirmation of Whiteness.

Both the murder and the search for justice are part of the American Experience.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
======================================================================================
This article is protected by New York Times copyright.

link to New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/nyregion/14immigrant.html?emc=eta1

New York Times article
Title:
A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate
Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times

image
Caren Cajamarca, 9, of Patchogue, N.Y., at a memorial near the site of the fatal stabbing of Marcelo Lucero last Saturday night. Prosecutors call it a hate crime.


By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: November 13, 2008

PATCHOGUE, N.Y. — It was an occasional diversion among a certain crowd at Patchogue-Medford High School, students said: Drink a few beers, then go looking for people to mug, whether for money or just for kicks.
Skip to next paragraph

Joselo Lucero, brother of the victim, Marcelo Lucero, said Marcelo had warned him to stay safe.

Friends of Jeffrey Conroy, a star athlete at the school, say he was known to do it, too. And last Saturday night, after drinking in a park in the Long Island hamlet of Medford, Mr. Conroy, 17, and six other teenagers declared that they were going to attack “a Mexican” and headed to the more ethnically diverse village of Patchogue to hunt, according to friends and the authorities.

They found their target in Marcelo Lucero, a serious-minded, 37-year-old immigrant from a poor village in Ecuador who had lived in the United States for 16 years, mostly in Patchogue, and worked in a dry cleaning store, sending savings home to support his mother, a cancer survivor.

After the boys surrounded, taunted and punched Mr. Lucero, the authorities say, Mr. Conroy plunged a knife into his victim’s chest, fatally wounding him.

The attack has horrified and puzzled many in this comfortable Suffolk County village of 11,700. Prosecutors have labeled it a hate crime and County Executive Steve Levy called the defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, “white supremacists.” And some immigrant advocates on Long Island have described the attack as a reflection of widespread anti-Latino sentiment and racial intolerance in Suffolk County.

Interviews with business owners, students, government officials and immigrants in the area suggest that illegal immigration has been a wellspring for anger and tension in the neighborhood, with day laborers drawing the greatest fire. Indeed, a number of people — adults and students alike — drew sharp distinctions between assimilated immigrants, who they said should be welcomed as friends and neighbors, and newly arrived illegal immigrants, who they said do not belong.

“No disrespect here, but I’m a firm believer that if you want to come to this country, you should have a job waiting for you,” said the co-owner of the Medford Shooting Range, who gave only his first name, Charlie, and is known by the nickname Charlie Range.

He said he was offended by the behavior of some day laborers — throwing trash in the street, urinating in the bushes, hooting at passing women — and complained that illegal immigrants were crowding rental apartments and swelling the ranks of criminal gangs.

“How do you stop the illegal alien influx?” he wondered aloud. “How do you stop the rain?”

Thousands of immigrants from Latin America have flowed into Long Island in the past two decades, attracted by employment opportunities, particularly in the construction industry, which until recently was booming. Patchogue’s Latino population has risen sharply during this time, village officials say, with Ecuadoreans now being the single largest Latino group.

According to the 2000 census, Latinos were 24 percent of Patchogue’s population, up from 14 percent in 1990, and government officials say the percentage has continued to grow. In just the past five years, the Latino student population of the Patchogue-Medford School District has risen to 24 percent from about 4 percent, said Michael H. Mostow, the district’s superintendent.

Anti-immigrant hostility has led to several highly publicized attacks in recent years in Suffolk County, including the near-death beating of two Mexican day laborers in 2001 and the burning of a Mexican family’s house in 2003, both in the nearby town of Farmingville.

Immigrant advocates have accused some local politicians, particularly Mr. Levy, of helping to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment by promoting tough policies against illegal immigration. But Mr. Levy said this week that the attack on Mr. Lucero “wasn’t a question of any county policy or legislation; it was a question of bad people doing horrific things.”

For all the parsing of motives and rationales in the case, many Latino immigrants here describe Suffolk County as a place where daily life can be a struggle for acceptance in a predominantly white population, particularly in this time of economic crisis. Rocio Ponce, a Brentwood resident and real-estate agent from Ecuador, said that many residents had developed a hatred against recent Latino immigrants “because they think they’re coming to take their jobs.”

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Next Page »

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 15, 2008
An article on Friday about fear and anger in Patchogue, N.Y., after the stabbing death of an Ecuadorean immigrant in what prosecutors have called a hate crime, referred incorrectly to Jeffrey Conroy, 17, a high school athlete who has been arrested in the case. He has not been offered a lacrosse scholarship to the University of Maryland, as several of his classmates reported. (His lawyer, William J. Keahon, said on Friday that Mr. Conroy had been offered athletic scholarships to other colleges.)
More Articles in New York Region » A version of this article appeared in print on November 14, 2008, on page A25 of the New York edition.
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Past Coverage

* THE ISLAND; Salvadorans, Building Their Own Cultural Bridge (May 4, 2008)
* As Primary Nears, Voters Critique Field (February 3, 2008)
* Lawmaker on L.I. Wants Worker Status Verified (February 1, 2008)
* Filipino Nurses, Healers in Trouble (January 27, 2008)

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A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate


Published: November 13, 2008

(Page 2 of 2)

Latinos say the attack against Mr. Lucero, if not his murder, was foretold. Some report being threatened and physically harassed in the streets, with bottles thrown at them and their car windows smashed during the night. Anti-immigrant epithets and racially motivated bullying are common in the hallways of the schools, children say.
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James Carbone/Newsday

Jeffrey Conroy, front, 17, and other suspects in Mr. Lucero’s killing.

“They tell us to go get a green card, ‘Go back to your community!’ ” said Pamela Guncay, 14, an Ecuadorean-American born in the United States.

Many Latinos, particularly those who are here illegally, say they would never report such incidents because they do not trust the police and fear deportation.

“We’re here to work, we’re not here to do any damage,” pleaded César Angamarca, 45, who rents a room in a small house where Mr. Lucero lived. “We’re working honorably.”

Friends of Mr. Conroy and the other suspects insisted that the defendants were not racist and said they were shocked that a frivolous escapade by bored, drunken teenagers had quickly turned tragic. They pointed out that one of the defendants, José Pacheco, 17, is the son of an African-American mother and a Puerto Rican father, and that Mr. Conroy counted Latino and black classmates among his closest buddies.

“They were good kids,” said Sean Ruga, 19, who graduated from the high school in 2006 and remained friends with the defendants. “It’s not something I could see them capable of doing.”

Mr. Pacheco’s uncle, Jerry Dumas, said his nephew was with the group because he was looking for a ride home and would not have knowingly joined an attack against a Latino, especially considering his ethnic heritage. He also said that Mr. Pacheco’s parents had themselves been apparent victims of violent racism: When they moved into the Patchogue area in the early 1990s, Mr. Dumas said, their house was burned down twice.

Mr. Conroy was the best known of the defendants and, according to prosecutors, the leader of the group. He was on the school’s lacrosse and wrestling teams, according to his friends, and his lawyer, William J. Keahon, said he had received “a number” of offers of college athletic scholarships.

Jeffrey Francis, 18, who is black, said Mr. Conroy befriended him soon after he transferred into the school this fall. They were on the wrestling team together, he said.

Acquaintances of the defendants said it was not unusual for groups of students from the high school to go out looking for people to mug. “It was just for fun, or for money,” said Taylor Fallica, 15, a student at the high school who said he was a friend of Mr. Conroy and the other defendants.

A friend who said he had been hanging out with the seven defendants in the park that night said there had not been much in the way of a plan before the group set out.

“We were just chilling, having a few beers,” said the friend, who requested anonymity because he had also been interviewed by the police and feared making contradictory statements.

Toward midnight, he recalled, “they said they were going to go jump a Mexican,” and they left.

Mr. Lucero had come to the United States to help support his family in Gualaceo, Ecuador, said his brother, Joselo, 34, in an interview this week in Patchogue, where he lives. Their father had died when they were young and Marcelo assumed the role of father figure in the family, Joselo said.

Marcelo Lucero was a hard worker and had little social life, according to his brother and a resident in a house where he rented a room. When Joselo joined Marcelo in Patchogue in the mid-1990s, the older brother frequently counseled him on how to take care of himself and be safe.

“He was a like a protector,” Joselo recalled. “He told me: ‘You have to be a man here. There’s no mom here anymore.’ ”

As the mob descended, Mr. Lucero’s friend managed to escape and contact the police, who rounded up the suspects minutes later.

Mr. Conroy was charged with first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and first-degree gang assault; the others were charged with first-degree gang assault. They were arraigned on Monday and the case was sent to a grand jury, which began reviewing evidence on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

Joselo Lucero said his priorities were now to get his brother’s body back to Ecuador for burial and to ensure that justice was served. But he said he felt no bitterness or vengefulness toward his brother’s attackers.

“I don’t really feel hate,” he said.

“I feel sorry for the families, in some way, because they have to be responsible for their kids.”

Since Mr. Lucero’s death, local officials have almost universally played down any suggestion that ethnic and racial tension had been prevalent in the community. Nonetheless, local, county and state officials have responded to the killing with various plans, including the introduction of sensitivity task forces, outreach programs in the Latino community and community forums.

“It is imperative that we bridge the divide,” Patchogue’s mayor, Paul V. Pontieri Jr., said on Thursday, “and realize that the things we have in common far outnumber those that divide us.”

END of New York Times article A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate
Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times
This article is protected by New York Times copyright.
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KarunaKaran, Chithra Theory of Systemic Whiteness

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Reading List

Ababio-Clottey, Aeesha, and Marianne Williamson. Beyond Fear: Twelve Spiritual Keys to Racial Healing. HJ Kramer, 1999.

Armour, Jody David. Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism : The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

Bailey, Alison, and Jacquelyn Zita. "The Reproduction of Whiteness: Race and the Regulation of the Gendered Body." Hypatia 22.2 (2007): vii-xv.

Bash, Harry H. " If I'm So White, Why Ain't I Right? Some Methodological Misgivings on Taking Identity Ascriptions at Face-Value." Critical Sociology 32.4 (2006): 675-97.

Bell, Derrick A. Faces at the Bottom of the Well : The Permanence of Racism. New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1992.

Berard, Tim J. "The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism." Sociology Compass 2.2 (2008): 734-64.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists : Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.

Brown, Michael K. Whitewashing Race : The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Butterworth, Michael L. "Race In "The Race": Mark Mcgwire, Sammy Sosa, and Heroic Constructions of Whiteness." Critical Studies in Media Communication 24.3 (2007): 228-44.

Dei, George J. Sefa. "Critical Perspectives in Antiracism: An Introduction." The Candaian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 33.3 (1996): 247-68.

Dwyer, Owen J., and John Paul Jones III. "White Socio-Spatial Epistemology." Social & Cultural Geography 1.2 (2000): 209-22.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 1st ed. New York Berkeley, Calif.: Grove Press ; Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2008.

Gillborn, David. "Rethinking White Supremacy." Etnicities 6.3 (2006): 318-40.

Griffin, Anya T. "Racism, Stress, and Health in African American Females: The Impact of Stress Experienced from Perceived Racism on Cardiovascular Reactivity in African American Adolescent and Adult Females." Dissertation. Fielding Graduate University, 2005.

Guess, Teresa J. "The Social Construction of Whiteness: Racism by Intent, Racism by Consequence." Critical Sociology 32.4 (2006): 649-73.

Hartmann, Douglass. "Rush Limbaugh, Donovan Mcnabb, and a Little Social Concern: Reflections on the Problems of Whiteness in Contemporary American Sport." Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31.1 (2007): 45-60.

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Sexual Politics : African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Hoelscher, Steven. "Making Place, Making Race: Performances of Whiteness in the Jim Crow South." Annals of Association of American Geographers 93.3 (2003): 657-86.

Holloway, Sarah L. "Burning Issues: Whiteness, Rurality and the Politics of Difference." Geoforum 38.1 (2007): 7-20.

Hooks, Bell. Black Looks : Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992.

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. Color of Violence : The Incite! Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2006.

Leary, Dr. Joy Degruy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Milwaukie, Oregon: Uptone Press, 2005.

Levine-Rasky, Cynthia. "Framing Whiteness: Working through the Tensions in Introducing Whiteness to Educators." Race Ethnicity and Education 3.3 (2000): 271-92.

Lewis, Amanda E. ""What Group?" Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era Of "Color-Blindness"." Sociological Theory 22.4 (2004): 623-46.

Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness : How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Rev. and expanded ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.

Markovitz, Jonathan. Legacies of Lynching : Racial Violence and Memory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.

Memmi, Albert. Racism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Mills, Charles. "White Ignorance." Suny Series, Philosophy and Race. Eds. Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana. vols. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. 13-38.

Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, N.Y. ; London: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States : From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Ortega, Mariana. "Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of Color." Hypatia 21.3 (2006): 56-74.

Prividera, Laura, and John W. Howard III. "Masculinity, Whiteness, and the Warrior Hero: Perpetuating the Strategic Rhetoric of Us Nationalism and the Marginalization of Women." Women and Language 29.2 (2006): 29-37.

Pulido, Laura. "Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in South California." Annals of the Association of American Geography 90.1 (2000): 12-40.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.

Said, Edward W., Moustafa Bayoumi, and Andrew Rubin. The Edward Said Reader. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Saxton, A. "Whiteness and Reconciliation: A Discursive Analysis." Australian Psychologist 39.1 (2004): 14-23.

Shearer, Tobin Miller. Enter the River : Healing Steps from White Privilege toward Racial Reconciliation. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1994.

Simpson, Jennifer Lyn. "The Color-Blind Double Blind: Whiteness and the (Im)Possibility of Dialogue." Communication Theory 18 (2008): 139-59.

Staurowsky, Ellen J. "“You Know,We Are All Indian” Exploring White Power and Privilege in Reactions to the Ncaa Native American Mascot Policy." Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31.1 (2007): 61-76.

Sullivan, Shannon, and Nancy Tuana. Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. Suny Series, Philosophy and Race. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.

Sullivan, Shannon, and ebrary Inc. Revealing Whiteness the Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. American Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Tochluk, Shelly. Witnessing Whiteness : First Steps toward an Antiracist Practice and Culture. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2008.

Trepagnier, Barbara. Silent Racism : How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.

Vanderbeck, Robert M. "Vermont and the Imaginative Geographies of American Whiteness." Annals of Association of American Geographers 96.3 (2006): 641-59.

Vanderbeck, Robert M. "Inner-City Children, Country Summers: Narrating American Childhood and the Geographies of Whiteness." Environment and Planning A 40.5 (2008): 1132-150.

Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid : The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2006.

Welcome, H. Alexander. ""White Is Right": The Utilization of an Improper Ontological Perspective in Analyses of Black Experiences." Journal of African American Studies 8.1 (2004): 59-73.

Williams, David R., and Ruth Williams-Morris. "Racism and Mental Health: The African American Experience." Ethnicity & Health 5.3/4 (2000): 243-68.

Wise, Tim J. White Like Me : Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Rev. and updated ed. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2008.

Yancy, George. What White Looks Like : African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question. New York: Routledge, 2004.
October 12, 2008 12:27 PM

Ethical Democracy is GREEN Democracy

As I continue to investigate for my own understanding, what it takes to make progress toward becoming an ethical democratic nation-state, I became interested in the role of IT's in helping us develop ethical green democratic nation-states.

Global South nation-states can learn from such models especially when they are located in Global South nation-state geopolitical contexts.


I was encouraged by the following news report which contained a lot of measurable specifics:


Patni centre gets LEED Platinum rating

Green IT-BPO centre
Patni centre gets LEED Platinum rating
The eco-friendly facility is now the largest LEED Platinum rated building outside USA and the second largest in the world
Friday, October 03, 2008
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BANGALORE, INDIA: Patni Computer Systems, a leading global IT and BPO services provider was awarded the prestigious LEED Platinum (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating for its Green IT-BPO Centre inaugurated earlier this year in Noida.

Set up with an investment of Rs. 175 crores, this Green IT-BPO centre is spread over 5 acres of land and seats over 3,500 people. It has been jointly audited by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) and US Green Building Council (USGBC) and publicly reviewed by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC. The LEED Platinum rating recognizes the company's commitment to superior standards of quality, and efficient utilization and conservation of energy, water and natural resources.

Commenting on the occasion, Narendra. K. Patni, Chairman & CEO, Patni said, "We are extremely proud of achieving the LEED Platinum certification for our Knowledge Centre. This reiterates Patni's commitment to energy conservation to reduce adverse environmental impact. A Platinum certification is indeed a significant step for Patni as we consciously embrace a greener business model."

Said P. C. Jain, Chairman of the IGBC, "We are delighted that a leading IT and BPO organization like Patni is one of the front runners in the green architecture brigade. We are confident that Patni's initiative will inspire other companies to pledge their support for environment conservation."

Patni currently offers a variety of outsourcing facilities and this Centre will support the company as it diversifies into other areas of operation. It will also give Patni employees a healthier and environmentally-friendly workplace, thereby increasing productivity levels. Studies from institutes like IGBC have shown that there is almost a 15% increase in employee productivity by using such green initiatives.

Green facts on Patni Knowledge Centre

* Climate responsive architecture
* Over 50% green area
* 75% of the area receives natural daylight
* 95% of the occupants get access to outside views
* Zero discharge building; 100% recycling of sewage
* Drip water irrigation and solar water heating
* Interior materials with low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions
* Healthy air quality with CO2 sensors for adding fresh air on demand
* Maximum use of eco-friendly recyclable material.
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also check this out -- green IT in Silicon Valley:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1

How Did U.S. Individualism Become U.S. Exceptionalism?

Individualism is the core value of the U.S. nation state.

At what point did U.S. Individualism become U.S. Exceptionalism?

I'm in the process of researching this question mainly for my own understanding of what it takes for a sovereign nation-state to develop Ethical Democracy.

Why?

Because lessons from the U.S. history of democratic nation-statehood can be important cautionary lessons, as other nation-states, particularly in the Global South develop more complex democratic institutions and democratic civil society.
Our Global South nation-states can attempt to avoid the destructive trajectory of U.S style militarist predatory market fundamentalism masquerading as democracy.

The "I" in Psychology: The Ethical Self & the Nation-state

In "The Financial Advisor as Handholder", the New York Times today asked the following question and solicited reader comments. Read my response to the question, as well of course, the article.
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September 27th, 2008 9:60 am
Q. How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks?

In response to the question, which in itself is disingenuous, my answer is, not really. Just leaving out "How" would make it less of a leading question and invite a more open-ended, thought-provoking, reflective response.

My Comment:

I read Ron Lieber's NYTimes piece (see below) with interest (though I am not earning any) in this bailout phase of late capitalism.

Psychology as a discipline cannot reasonably or logically be divested of its moorings within US style militarist democracy.
I teach psychology at my public higher ed institution.
It would be intellectually remiss of me NOT to present,
especially to my students of color who constitute the majority of our enrollment, that psychology is solely the scientific study of "I" (it is, but not solely)

and that that "I" in the U.S. is embedded in a macrostructural ideology of inequity, predation and supremacist notions that reject other perspectives, lifeworlds and diverse trajectories of the self within and across the nation-state.

Who are the handholders? Whose hands are in temporary need of holding? Who will be the main beneficiaries of this collapse? The same individuals embedded in the institutions that wreaked havoc in the first place.

Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York

Theory of Systemic Whiteness
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Back to Article »

The Financial Adviser as Hand-Holder

* comments (2)

By RON LIEBER
Published: September 26, 2008


How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks?

* Post a Comment »
* Read All Comments (2) »
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ARTICLE by RON LIEBER

After all, uncertainty breeds anxiety. This week alone, we witnessed the market plunge on Monday, a tussle over the scope of the federal bailout that grew on Tuesday and the unfamiliar sight Wednesday night of watching our normally cocksure president pleading for support on national television.

By Thursday, Washington Mutual was dead and gone and on Friday, the politicians in Washington still hadn’t settled their differences over the bailout. We can only hope that the package will allow the federal government to quickly clear bad debt from companies’ books and grease the wheels of the economy. But who knows how long it might take or if it will even work?

All of these uncertainties weigh heavily on our minds. So this week, I turned to financial planners and investment advisers who got their start as psychologists or studied the field as graduate students, plus a few ringers who are adept observers of minds and money, even though they have formal training only in the latter.

I asked them this: At this troubling moment, what’s the best way to reorient how we think about money, before we make any rash decisions about what to do with whatever we have left?

Start, just for a minute, by giving yourself over to the worse case. The visceral fear here is of dying in the poorhouse, as Richard Schroeder, a certified financial planner with Schroeder, Braxton & Vogt in Amherst, N.Y., put it. And his answer to clients who articulate that nightmare is this: the markets will eventually recover.

So let’s reel ourselves back from the edge of oblivion. Most of us can take some comfort in the fact that we have time on our sides. Managing our money is a process that unfolds over decades, not days. It’s easy to forget that, when one company after another is falling victim, week after week, and we can track their disintegration on an hourly basis.

“The individual needs to go back to that personal road map,” said Sharon Rich, a financial planner with a doctorate from Harvard who studied women, psychology and education. “Where are you right now, where do you want to be and how do you get from here to there?”

And then apply that to an investment portfolio. “I think reminding people in this environment of why we’ve chosen the investment strategy that we have is a good thing for those who are a little bit antsy,” said Constance Barber, a certified financial planner with Barber Financial in Natick, Mass., who got her start as a school psychologist. “We’ve usually not set this up because it’s money that you’ll need tomorrow.”

Even if we don’t need the money right now, it doesn’t feel good to look at a retirement portfolio and find that it’s down 15 percent from its peak a year ago.

“People rely on selective memory when they’re only looking at losses from the high point that the portfolio reached,” said Victoria Collins, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and has worked as a certified financial planner for more than two decades.

This was a point echoed by many people I spoke with this week. On one hand, it’s certainly depressing to be down to $340,000 from $400,000, for instance. The basic math doesn’t help the mood either, given that after a decline of 15 percent, a portfolio needs to gain 17.6 percent just to get back to $400,000 again. “This is real money in people’s lives,” said Ms. Rich, who runs Womoney, a financial planning firm in Belmont, Mass. She noted that some people added up how many years it took them to save the money that just disappeared.

We can mimic that mindset if we choose, or we can consider what our balance was, say, a decade ago. Chances are we’ve made a lot of progress since then, if we’ve been saving all along. “There are clients who will say, ‘Yes, it’s down, but look where I started,’ ” said Ms. Barber, the former school psychologist. “ ‘I’m hanging in there, and we’ve come a long way, baby, and it’s O.K. for now.’ ”

Next, put down the retirement account statement and consider the credit and debit card bills and the checkbook. Ms. Rich put some clients with job security anxieties through this exercise this week. It isn’t a budgeting drill exactly. “The question is how the way I’m spending reflects my values and what I think is important in the world,” she said.

For those of us who pay someone to clean our house, she said, perhaps having a clean house isn’t really that important when we reconsider. Or if we think it’s crucial for our children to experience nature, perhaps a series of day trips can have the same effect as going to the Grand Canyon.

School costs are an issue here too, Ms. Rich said, and she noted that such reconsideration may mean spending more, not less, on certain items.

One tricky part about the last several weeks is confronting all the headlines declaring this the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. “Most of the individuals that I find who need more handholding are the ones who’ve had some connection with the Great Depression,” says Ms. Collins, the Berkeley Ph.D., who is now an executive vice president and principal with Keller Group Investment Management in Irvine, Calif.

These people tend to be retirees, who may have had parents who told them stories about living through the 1930s or are old enough to remember it themselves. If they have little or no earning capacity now, they feel especially helpless when they see parts of their portfolios disappearing.

“I try to remind them that even they don’t need all of that portfolio today,” she said. “You’re only withdrawing a certain amount.”

Ms. Rich suggested that people reach out to someone else to discuss their situation if they don’t have a hybrid financial adviser-shrink to counsel them through the crisis. It could be a peer, a family member, a member of the clergy or staff at a senior center.

Even that support network may not be enough to bring the most anxiety-prone among us back from the edge. “For those who cling to doomsday scenarios we can also say, ‘So what?’ ” Mr. Schroeder, the financial planner in Amherst, N.Y., said in an e-mail message. “If the markets go to zero, if the whole system crashes, there is no safe haven, so it doesn’t matter whether you buy Treasuries. The currency will be worthless and there will be chaos in the streets. Your only alternative is to stock up on guns, ammunition and goods that are easily tradable and will become valuable, such as sewing needles, good Scotch, etc.”

Now, forget about hoarding sewing supplies and remember that things are much more likely to get better than they are to get that bad.

How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks? Post your comment at nytimes.com/yourmoney or write to rlieber@nytimes.com.
More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on September 27, 2008, on page C1 of the New York edition.

* Health Care Costs Increase Strain, Studies Find (September 25, 2008)
* Retirees Filling the Front Line in Market Fears (September 23, 2008)
* YOUR MONEY; Minimizing Your Own Exposure To Risks (September 20, 2008)
* Wall Street and You: Sorting Out the Changes in the Financial World (September 16, 2008)

image of
Victoria Collins, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology, is an executive vice president for Keller Group Investment Management
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The More Things Change......

I wrote the following response to an article "Don't go Changing" that appeared in Inside Higher Ed today

The More Things Change.........

Did I read too fast and miss the corollary? More of the same. As much ( or as little?) change from the academy as from other components of the entrenched U.S. system.

Change — part of the vocabulary of commodified discourses in late capitalism in its bailout phase?

Still, the enduring optimism that change can occur through our own efforts sustains many of us.

Chithra KarunaKaran City University of New Yorkhttp://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Chithra KarunaKaran, City University of New York, at 11:50 am EDT on September 25, 2008
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Hopefulness?

Great article. I wonder, though, if the disproportionate language used to describe change in higher education is generated less by a desire for change (i.e. a hopefulness), than a recognition that change is being demanded, and that in the absence of real change, the language of change will have to do. Colleges and universities in many developed countries are being asked by governments, taxpayers, and think-tanks to change how they conduct themselves. In the U.S., for example, the Spellings Commission made ‘threatening noises’ about increased scrutiny and transparency requirements for post-secondary. In this climate, it’s not wise to appear to be sitting on your hands. Just like the politicians Rafael Heller cites in his article, higher education’s rhetoric of change may be more tactical than visionary.

Keith Hampson, Director, at 10:45 am EDT on September 25, 2008
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Sept. 25

Don’t Go Changing
By Rafael Heller

Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in,” will never be mistaken for a classic of the genre. It has none of the poetry of “morning again in America,” the precision of “a chicken in every pot,” or the back-slapping bonhomie of “I like Ike.”

Nevertheless, Obama has succeeded in placing “change” at the rhetorical center of this year’s presidential contest. In just the last few weeks alone, he introduced his new and improved tagline, “the change you need,” John McCain countered with “change you can trust,” Joe Biden scoffed, “That’s not change, that’s more of the same,” and Sarah Palin hit back at “candidates who use change to promote their careers,” as opposed to “those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”

Of course, sophisticated pundits and politicos would never let themselves be snookered by this sort of rhetorical gamesmanship. They’ve called out Obama on his messaging numerous times, dating to the Iowa caucuses when, for example, the editors at USA Today asked, “As the candidate of ‘change,’ what changes does he want? Could he deliver them?” Obama “seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public” with nothing more than the “vague promise of ‘change,’” complained the Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson. And even John McCain — who was against such tactics before he was for them — rebuked Obama for making “an eloquent but empty call for change.”

Higher education, on the other hand, seems very much to enjoy snookering itself. Academic reformers have been making lofty appeals to change (and its souped-up partner, “transformation”) for years now, rarely stopping to ask what, if anything, such terms mean or whether anybody could deliver on them.

A quick search of scholarly publications turns up literally hundreds of titles such as “10 bellwether principles for transforming American higher education,” “Organizing adjuncts to change higher education,” “Transformation of the community colleges for the 21st century,” “Virtual transformation: Web-based technology and pedagogical change,” “Transformation of higher education: The transdisciplinary approach in engineering,” and “Transforming library and higher education support services.”

Appearing in the pages of the Journal of Transformative Education are pieces such as “Mentoring for transformative learning” and “Transformative higher education: A meaningful degree of understanding.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning chimes in with “Teaching and learning in the service of transformation” and “Creating change in engineering education.” Fordham University Press just released Class Degrees: Smart Work, Managed Identities, and the Transformation of Higher Education, Routledge offers Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education, Jossey-Bass presents Latino Change Agents in Higher Education and even TIAA/CREF, the retirement planning giant, has gotten into the act, with Transformational Change in Higher Education.

Recent events have included the National Conference on Civic Engagement: Creating Agents for Change, the Annual Conference on Teaching for Transformation, Vision 2020: Digital Ubiquity & University Transformation and the 18th annual Teaching for a Change conference. The state of New Mexico hosted Changing for Learning’s Sake: A Focus on Assessment and Retention, Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership sponsored Women Moving Forward: Navigating Change, the Council on Independent Colleges offered workshops on the Transformation of the College Library and the U.S. Department of Education held an event that it billed as a “National Higher Education Transformation Summit.”

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual at the University of Michigan’s Work Group on Organizational Change and Transformation in Higher Education, the University of Maryland’s project on Change and Sustainability in Higher Education and the independent National Center for Academic Transformation. The American Council of Education’s Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation finished up its work a few years ago, taking with it ACE’s series of occasional papers titled On Change. However, for academics still needing a fix, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO continues to host discussions of “Working Together to Transform Higher Education,” the report of the 2003 World Conference on Higher Education.

So what’s wrong with all of this change-mongering?

To be fair, much of it perfectly harmless. People have to find something to name their articles, conferences, and institutes, and if nothing clever comes to mind, then “transformation” makes for a convenient rallying cry. As Barack Obama knows (and let’s not forget Walter Mondale, who went with “America needs a change” for his 1984 campaign slogan, and Jimmy Carter, who had a somewhat more successful 1976 run with “A leader, for a change”), change sounds like a pretty good thing to pursue. It captures people’s attention, makes them feel hopeful, and probably helps draw them to workshops and conferences.

The problem isn’t that academic reformers try to put a positive spin on their work. Rather, the problem is that they’re not very good at it, whether as producers or consumers of rhetoric.

As producers, they’re simply unimaginative. Again and again, they dip into the very same rhetorical well, as if there were no means by which to inspire audiences but to speak of transformation, and no way to stir people to action but to warn them that they live in a time of great change (as though that couldn’t be said of every decade since the Mesozoic era), one that compels a response.

And as consumers of this sort of rhetoric, academics are far too easy to please. Journalists and politicians pride themselves on their ability to dissect the candidates’ slogans and bumper stickers. But college professors and provosts seem all too happy to take such language at face value, smiling sweetly at the latest call for transformation.

Perhaps the appeal of such promises stands in inverse relationship to their likelihood of being fulfilled. As numerous historians of higher education have documented, for all the bold words and big plans of academic reformers, the “basic grammar” of higher education — the familiar ways in which faculty teach, students learn, departments function, administrators govern, and so on — has proven to be extremely durable, evolving little over the past century. It could be that reformers go easy on the vaguest of slogans precisely because they know how difficult it is to achieve the concrete goals toward which they work so hard, such as to get students to drink less and study more, to create tenure systems that reward excellent teaching, to graduate much larger numbers of low-income students, to devise a truly coherent undergraduate curriculum, and so on. Maybe academic reformers talk so often about transformation precisely because they see so little of it and they need the occasional dose of hopefulness.

Some such hopeful “audacity,” as Obama would put it, may be necessary, inspiring faculty and administrators to press on with the painfully slow and necessarily incremental march of academic reform. But too much of it can ruin their sense of direction, leading them to believe that “change” is actually a meaningful objective, and leading them to mistake every new curricular policy or departmental initiative for a dramatic transformation.

Those of us who care about higher education certainly wouldn’t want to forego the audacious optimism that sustains us, but it may be time to ditch, or at least tone down, the empty calls for change.

Rafael Heller is an independent consultant and education writer in Washington.

Tata Nano & Ethical Democracy: How The Consuming Classes Impede Equitable Development

Chithra KarunaKaran
http://myfinancetimes.com/2008/09/13/tata-nano-singur-story-revisited/
September 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

Isn’t this Singur Tata Nano discussion ass backwards? Most of the readers appear to have unexamined bourgeois positions on this issue.
Yeah, the neoliberal Indian middle class in which they have membership is the worst enemy of equitable democratic development.

Let me suggest some

Alternative Questions:

Q. Why are farmers being displaced? Isn’t agriculture of PRIMARY importance in a developing country? Should manufacture be undertaken at the expense of agriculture? What about dispossessed farmers, especially when they fall prey to unscrupulous politicians, whether Left, Trinamool or Congress? What about FARMERS RIGHTS and FOOD SECURITY for our people? Does India have one of the world's highest rates of malnutrition among young children and women? Are India's farmers being pampered with fancy subsidies like the one Tata was offered in Uttarkhand and Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal or are they committing suicide because they cannot pay back usurious bank loans and lack a safety net?

Q. Why is Tata manufacturing a CAR when the urgent national priority is PUBLIC MASS TRANSIT — buses, trains etc. ? Do we really need yet another private vehicle on already crowded city streets? Since Tata already has manufacturing expertise in buses etc, that is what it should be manufacturing in the first place.
Shouldn’t the Left Govt. insist that Tata manufacture MASS PUBLIC TRANSIT vehicles at Singur or elsewhere to promote the Greater Collective Good?

Q. Why should national priorities be secondary to the consuming needs of the urban middle class? Why should national development priorities be secondary to the GREED of multinational capitalists?

Think about it.

http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
See The Rise of the Car Nazis: Ratan and the Tata Wannabes


See reader comments at:

http://myfinancetimes.com/2008/09/13/tata-nano-singur-story-revisited/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article from "The Hindu"
How Tatas chose Singur as base for Nano plans

Our Bureau

Chennai, Sept. 12 A comprehensive package of incentives — subsidy on land, concessional power, a soft loan and tax paybacks — to match the benefits that Tata Motors would have got in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh, was what got it to choose Singur in West Bengal for making its low-cost car Nano.

The agreement between Tata Motors, West Bengal Government and the State industrial promotion agency — West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation — available on the corporation’s Web site, provides details of the incentives offered.

The Government has said that it approached Tata Motors to persuade it to locate an automobile project in the State, including the project to make the small car. Tata Motors showed interest in locating the plant in West Bengal, provided the State offered fiscal incentives equivalent to the value of total incentives it would have received by locating the plant in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh.

According to the agreement, the West Bengal Government will provide Tata Motors a loan of Rs 200 crore at 1 per cent interest, repayable in five equal annual instalments starting from the 21st year from the date of disbursement of the loan. This loan will be disbursed within 60 days of signing this agreement (The company signed an agreement with the Government on March 9, 2007 for the land at Singur).
Electricity clause

The Government will provide electricity for the project at Rs 3 a kWh. In case the tariff is increased by more than 25 paise a unit in every block of five years, the Government will provide relief through additional compensation to neutralise the increase.

The West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) will provide 645.67 acres of land to Tata Motors on a 90-year lease, on an annual lease rental of Rs 1 crore a year for the first five years, with a 25 per cent increase after every five years till 30 years.

After 30 years, the lease rental will be fixed at Rs 5 crore a year, with a 30 per cent increase after every 10 years till the 60th year. After this, the lease rental will be fixed at Rs 20 crore a year, which will remain unchanged till the 90th year. After the 90-year lease period, the lease terms will be fixed on mutually-agreed terms.

The agreement says that WBIDC will provide an industrial promotion assistance in the form of a loan at 0.1 per cent per annum for amounts equal to gross value-added tax and Central Sales Tax received by the State Government in each of the previous years ended March 31, on the sale of the small car from the date the sales begin.

This benefit, says the agreement, will continue till the balance amount of the Uttarakhand benefit (after deducting the amount from the land lease rental and the soft loan) is reached on net present value basis, after which it will be discontinued.
Loan repayment

The loan with interest will be repayable in annual instalments starting from the 31st year of commencement of sale from the plant. The loan availed of in the first year will be repaid in the 31st year and so on.

WBIDC will ensure that this loan is paid within 60 days of the close of the previous year, failing which the corporation will be liable to compensate Tata Motors for the financial inconvenience caused at the rate of 1.5 times the bank rate prevailing at the time on the amount due for the period of delay.

Tata Motors and the West Bengal Government will make best efforts to maximise sale of products from the small car plant, the agreement says.

As far as the land for the vendors is concerned, about 290 acres will be leased to the vendors on payment of premium equal to the actual cost of acquisition plus incidentals, to be calculated on the basis of the total acquisition cost and other incidental expenses incurred by WBIDC or any of its subsidiaries, averaged over the total land acquired.
Lease rental

The vendors will have to pay a lease rental of Rs 8,000 an acre for the first 45 years and Rs 16,000 an acre for the next 45 years. The initial lease tenure will be 90 years, after which it will be fixed on mutually agreed upon terms.

Tata Motors will invest about Rs 1,500 crore at Singur with the vendors bringing in another Rs 500 crore. The plant was to have a capacity of 2.5 lakh units a year on a two-shift basis, going up to 3.5 lakh units on three shifts. In addition, it would have vendors and act as a mother plant for many aggregates to the tune of five lakh cars a year.

Tata Motors, which unveiled the Nano at the auto expo in New Delhi in January 2008, suspended work at Singur on September citing the hostile environment at the site and said it was drawing up detailed plans to relocate the plant and machinery. The company was to roll out the Nano in the quarter beginning October.

Related Stories:
Singur: Differences over amount of land to be returned to ‘unwilling’ farmers
Tata Motors gearing up to pull out from Singur

U.S. Raids inside Pakistan an Affront to Sovereignty of Nation-States

U.S. Raids inside Pakistan an Affront to Sovereignty of Nation-States

September 11th, 2008 9:21 am
Raids (actually acts of terror by the U.S.) inside sovereign states is abysmally shortsighted U.S. foreign policy. This horrific search and destroy non-strategy is supported by a majority of the American electorate, as numerous polls have shown. The American PUBLIC is largely accountable.

In their we-are-the-greatest-nation-on-earth, shop-until-we-drop stupor, despite record high joblessness, homelessness,lack of universal healthcare and a plummeting economy, the majority of American voters apparently thinks that a 'strong' America means a threatening America, a 'strong' America means an invading, occupying America.

The U.S. PUBLIC which historically has favored short-sighted military adventurism by their government, whether Republican (the Bushes) or Democrat (Kennedy, Johnson), got the government they deserve when they elected George Bush twice. The U.S. public, AND a poll-driven Congress, supported Bush's invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation state, Iraq.

This is the same U.S. public and their leaders, McCain/Palin, as well as Obama/Biden, that now predictably supports raids against so-called "terrorists", inside a sovereign nation-state, Pakistan, and kills large numbers of women, men and children, all innocent civilians, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When will they ever learn? Is it possible that a public with various civic freedoms can undermine their own democracy and endanger the prospect of democracy in other sovereign nation-states? The frightening spectacle of U.S. democracy offers sobering lessons for other nation-states and their publics as they chart a democratic course.

The US has absolutely NO business being inside Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The mere fact of U.S. military presence within these sovereign states, nation states in which the U.S. has dangerously meddled for decades, triggers adverse and sometimes violent reaction. The US has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no respect for the sovereignty of nation-states. The chest-thumping of American triumphalism and exceptionalism is continuing to challenge an emerging and fragile multipolarity in much of the rest of the world.

What the US govt. can continue to do is use its own intelligence and international intelligence resources to strengthen its OWN borders against incursions. This it has done admirably since 9/11. This is the way to go. This is the way to keep going.

Raids inside sovereign states produce more and more "terrorists", as the evidence already shows.

Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

"Cheap" car is cheap for the environment? The case of the Tata NanC

Shame on Ratan Tata for focusing on his company's profits in Singur, instead of focusing on urgent environmental justice priorities for our nation.

What India needs is more investment in BOTH agriculture and in public mass transit. Not private car ownership and manufacture.

Tata, the West Bengal Left Govt, the neo-liberal Central Govt and the opportunist Trinamool have collectively managed to defeat both of the abovementioned urgent national priorities for a so-called "cheap" car.
Cheap for the Environment? Cheap for Farmers? Yeah right.
http://www.Ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com

See:
The Rise of the Car Nazis: Ratan and the Tata Wannabes
September 7, 2008 1:07 PM