Race Talk: Assessing Awareness and Mood After a Difficult Dialogue

Abstract

Facilitating racial dialogue in higher education is challenging and taxing for instructors and students. Race, racism, implicit bias, and microaggressions are all topics that evoke strong emotions in a classroom. This can be especially challenging at a predominantly white institution. Facilitators must develop and assess pedagogical approaches for navigating these contentious spaces. This paper assesses an implicit bias lesson plan designed to educate, foster dialogue, and cultivate inclusive spaces. The lesson plan, Association Awareness, utilizes the Harvard Implicit Association Test to measure implicit attitudes. We use the Bias Awareness Scale to measure the effectiveness of the lesson plan and present findings on mood, bias awareness, explicitly stated racial preferences, and implicit racial associations. Results suggest that participation in the Association Awareness lesson significantly increased bias awareness in predominantly white undergraduates without negatively impacting their mood. Implications for action and future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Association awareness
• difficult dialogue
• implicit association test
• implicit bias

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).