HinesSight

Oregon State football coach made a bad decision. But don't we all?

Oregon State football fans, of whom I'm one, along with almost everybody who watched yesterday's OSU game against Arizona, are grappling with the astoundingly bad decision Jonathan Smith, the Oregon State coach, made at the end of the first half.

Jonathan Smith

This is how CBS Sports described the debacle. The game was a 27-24 victory by Arizona.

While the game ultimately came down to that final drive, Oregon State's fate may have been decided much earlier when coach Jonathan Smith dialed up one of the most questionable calls of the year. The Beavers had the ball at Arizona's 16-yard line with three seconds to play in the second quarter. Oregon State lined up for a field goal, but the holder pitched the ball to kicker Atticus Sappington for a fake.

Sappington gained nine yards, but it didn't matter because time expired. If the Beavers had kicked and made the field goal, than their late fourth-quarter touchdown would have tied the game. 

A YouTube video of the play showed how the fake punt had very little chance of success.

The Portland Oregonian had a story after the game, "What Jonathan Smith said after Oregon State's narrow loss at Arizona." Here's a couple of questions and answers about the fake punt.

Q: You said ultra aggression. I guess just in that moment, what was the decision to go for it there and why?

Smith: Yeah, it was like we had prepped the thing for two weeks because we had a bye. And I was just chomping at the bit to get the thing called because the picture what we anticipated and really what we got was a pretty good look. But the logic going into the thing was fourth down medium — fourth and 5, 6 — and I just rolled the dice on that one and in hindsight it was not good.

Q: Coach, you like to go for it on fourth down. I mean you’re pretty aggressive, generally speaking. On the fake, just how would you describe your mindset in situations like that?

Smith: There’s strategy to this thing. It’s not just like blind aggression. There’s some strategy. That one, just logically, the kicker’s got to run 20 yards. Just back off.

Q: Do you regret that call?

Smith: Sure. It didn’t work.

I liked that Smith was so straightforward about the bad decision to call the fake punt play in a situation where a field goal attempt was by far the better option.

But I was still deeply irked at the fake punt, since it played a large role in the Oregon State loss, which pretty much ended the team's chance to win a Pac-12 championship in the league's final year of having twelve members, which will dwindle to two soon: Oregon State and Washington State.

However, I felt better about Coach Smith and his botched fake punt after I began to think what would happen if bad decisions I've made -- as we all make -- were to be widely televised, then discussed in a press conference featuring me and reporters asking probing questions.

I'm reluctant to share one of my really bad decisions, so as an example I'll use an incident that happened to me today when I had my usual early Sunday get-together with a friend at the Urban Grange coffeehouse in West Salem.

I'll describe the bad decision in a pseudo news story.

On Sunday afternoon Brian Hines arrived at the coffeehouse before his friend, Jim, did. He chose one of the few two-person tables not being used by customers, which was in a corner of the coffeehouse. After toasting a bagel, Hines removed his phone from his fanny pack, which he prefers to call his hip pack, then set the hip pack on the floor under the table, as he always does when meeting with Jim.

When his friend arrived, Jim said, "Our usual table is open now. Do you want to move to it? It's more centrally located." "Sure," Hines replied, gathering up his latte, bagel, and phone. After a congenial conversation where they talked about the Oregon State game and how Coach Smith made such a bad decision with the fake punt, Hines bent down to retrieve his hip pack.

Which wasn't there. He checked again. It still wasn't there. Hines then remembered that he put it under the table he sat at originally. It was empty of customers. He walked briskly to the table and looked for his hip pack. It wasn't there. He checked again. It still wasn't there. Moderately panicked, Hines told Jim that not only were his car keys in the hip pack, so were his credit cards, drivers license, and a lot more.

Hines then walked to the counter and asked the barista if someone had turned in a black bag. "You mean a fanny pack?" he was told. "Yes," he said. "It's over here," the barista said, as she retrieved the hip pack. 

Here's some of the questions asked at the news conference.

Q: The many Americans who watched the video of you putting your fanny pack under a table, then moving to another table without bothering to retrieve the fanny pack, are wondering: what the hell were you thinking? 

Hines: First, it wasn't a fanny pack. It was a hip pack. I don't wear it on my butt. Second, I wasn't thinking at all. I'm not in the habit of deciding to leave my hip pack under a table where other people would be sitting and could have taken it.

Q: It sounds like you were really careless. Do you regret deciding to leave your fanny pack under a table, then moving to another table without taking it with you?

A: Hip pack! Hip pack! Not fanny pack. Again, I didn't decide anything. It was just a bad decision, I mean, an unfortunate happenstance, that my friend Jim suggested we move to a different table and I failed to remember to take the hip pack with me.

Q: Seems like you're blaming Jim. Do you always fail to take responsibility for your bad decisions?

A: No, I'm not blaming Jim. It was just an unfortunate happenstance. 

Q: Like Jonathan Smith calling for a fake punt at the end of the first half of the Arizona football game?

A: Yes. Just like that. No more questions, please. I've got to reconsider whether I should be irritated at Coach Smith. For this episode reminded me that if we're human, we're going to make bad decisions.

Maine mass shooting and Israel war are both result of craziness

This evening the suspect in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine and the wounding of 13 others was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot. Robert Card had suffered from mental illness, having been hospitalized for two weeks last summer.

Reportedly he had been hearing voices.

Well, while Card likely had some form of schizophrenia, what he has in common with the rest of us is substantial, for we all hear voices inside our head: our own.

Card's voices may have told him that other people were out to harm him, so he needed to kill as many of those "others" as possible.

And the Hamas terrorists who crossed the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7, killing about 1,400 people, had voices telling them that it was their duty to kill innocent men, women, and children, along with Israeli soldiers, because of the injustices Israel had wrought on Palestinians.

And leaders in Israel had voices telling them after the Hamas attack that it was their duty to kill innocent men, women, and children in Gaza, along with Hamas militants, because of the injustices Hamas had wrought on Israelis.

There's plenty of insanity evident here.

A couple of weeks ago I shared on my Church of the Churchless blog three views about the war between Hamas and Israel that I considered reasonable at the time, and still do.

(1) Hamas engaged in unforgivable terrorism when its fighters attacked Israeli citizens, killing women and children, decapitating infants, slaughtering young people at a music festival, and taking an estimated 150 people hostage. Now Israel is justified in fighting back against Hamas.

(2) Israel has fanned the flames of Islamic resentment in the Middle East by treating Palestinians in the occupied territories badly and showing little to no recent interest in pursuing a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict. The current right-wing administration of Benjamin Netanyahu has made a bad situation in the West Bank even worse through its oppressive policies.

(3) Most of the two million people living in Gaza aren't Hamas fighters. Israel should do everything possible to protect them during its war against Hamas. This entails complying with generally accepted rules of war to the greatest extent possible. 

Protecting the people of Gaza from horrendous Israel bombing attacks, as well as a ground invasion that may come soon, needs to become an Israeli priority. As President Biden said in a speech soon after the war began, a thirst for revenge can't be seen as more important than human decency. The United States learned that lesson after our 9/11.

The news out of Gaza has stopped, because today Israel destroyed the internet and cellular communication there. It is clear, though, that things are very bad and getting worse. Today on MSNBC I heard a report from a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza hospitals that there are tens of thousands wounded from Israeli shelling, 70% of them women, children, and the elderly, plus thousands dead.

How can Hamas attacks on innocent Israeli women, children, and the elderly be used as an excuse by Israel to attack innocent Palestinian women, children, and elderly? That's crazy, yet at the moment that's the insanity that seems to be holding sway among Israeli leaders.

Fortunately, voices of reason are urging Israel to reconsider the wisdom of a massive ground invasion of Gaza, and of continuing to deny the people of Gaza food, water, electricity, and fuel. Here's a post on X from Chris Hayes today, an eminently reasonable MSNBC commentator.

Thankfully, the Biden administration is urging Israel to scale back its plan to essentially demolish Gaza in order to destroy the Hamas terrorists. So says a Washington Post story, "U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign."

The Biden administration is urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and instead to opt for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure, according to five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.

The Biden administration also is worried that a ground invasion could result in numerous casualties among Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers, potentially triggering a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials think a targeted operation would be more conducive to hostage negotiations, less likely to interrupt humanitarian aid deliveries, less deadly for people on both sides and less likely to provoke a wider war in the region, the officials said.

And the United States also is in favor of humanitarian pauses in the Gaza fighting, according to another Washington Post story, "U.S., in policy shift, urges humanitarian pauses in Gaza." Good news. It's never too late to ditch the insanity of all-out war and find a more balanced approach to protecting both Israel and the people of Gaza, while eliminating Hamas to the greatest extent possible.

After weeks of declining to back growing international calls for “humanitarian pauses” in Israeli airstrikes to allow a steady flow of aid to enter Gaza, permit American and foreign citizens to exit into Egypt and facilitate the release of hostages, the Biden administration is now fully in favor of them and is pressing Israel to agree.

The abrupt policy shift comes as the humanitarian situation inside the enclave has become more dire and much of the world has declined to follow the U.S. lead in withholding public criticism of how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas.

...The administration’s public promotion this week of humanitarian pauses came after what one U.S. official said was “a lot of the groundwork in private communications.”

But it still left the United States behind the curve of international opinion, as the U.N. General Assembly Friday overwhelmingly approved an Arab-sponsored resolution calling for a complete ceasefire. Only 14 of the 193 U.N. member nations voted against the measure, including the United States, Israel and several Pacific island and eastern European states. Most close U.S. allies were in favor or abstained from the vote.

The resolution called on “all parties” to comply with international law in the conflict and specifically demanded rescission by Israel, “the occupying power,” of evacuation orders in Gaza. It did not mention Hamas by name or refer directly to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

I don't believe in free will. Here's why.

Today the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are part of spent quite a bit of time talking about free will.

This is one of my favorite subjects, for after pondering quite a few books about free will, or the lack thereof, I'm highly confident that free will is an illusion.

I can't recall exactly how our group started conversing about it, but for sure I spurred our conversation by saying that I've started reading Robert M. Sapolsky's terrific book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.

To give you a feel for his general view of free will, here's an eight-minute interview featuring Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor of biology, of neurology and neurological sciences, and of neurosurgery.

I was worried that my passion for this subject wouldn't be shared by other members of the discussion group. I was wrong. We had a really interesting discussion of free will in which some people agreed with me that we don't possess it, and others presented reasons why they think we do.

Since I'm writing this blog post, not them, I'm going to focus on briefly relating some of my arguments for why free will doesn't exist. These aren't original, obviously. They flow from the books I've read by people arguing that free will is an illusion.

(1) Humans are part of the natural world. We are animals. Animals with powerful brains, to be sure, but animals. If a grizzly bear attacks someone, we don't consider that the bear had the free will to do otherwise. We just say, it was doing what bears do. So what makes us think that we stand apart from the natural world by possessing some sort of free will magic in our brain?

(2) The core argument against free will is simple. Everything about us, and the rest of the world, is determined. That's why Sapolsky's book has that title, Determined. Sure, we make choices. So do bears. And sea slugs. Those choices, those intentions, don't spring out of nowhere. They arise out of the goings-on in our brain, which is amazingly complex, yet still determined by causes and effects that range from a few seconds ago, to the moment of our birth, and even beyond given cultural and genetic influences on us.

(3) Recall something you've done that you regret. That's easy for me. Probably is for you also. We all have regrets. Often, or usually, that regret is made more painful by believing that we could have acted differently. But consider this. If every atom in your brain and outside world were in exactly the same condition as it was when you acted the first time, you'd do exactly what you did again. No doubt about it. Free will assumes that we have a choice to act differently. That can't be true if nothing has changed from when we acted initially.

(4) But as Sapolsky says in the video above, change does happen. All the time. Life and our world as a whole is nothing but change. People change. Animals change. Rocks change. Plants change. Free will, since it doesn't exist, can't change anything. Yet circumstances change. Every thought we have, every feeling we have, every action we take, all that changes us. So there's no fatalism involved in giving up a belief in free will. In fact, not believing in free will opens us to the reality that change can occur for countless reasons. Life is a never-ending series of surprises caused by determinism.

(5) Believing in free will fosters judgmentalism. We see someone in an unfortunate situation and think, "It's their fault." Giving up a belief in free will leads to a realization that, as strange as this may sound, no one is deserving of praise or blame. They're just doing what was determined that they do. So are we. Everybody is. Sure, society is justified in imprisoning dangerous people. But not to punish them. To protect others. And to change the prisoner for the better, if this is possible.

(6) There's no reason to think that people would go wild and crazy if they didn't believe in free will. Animals don't believe in free will, yet a wolf pack, herd of deer, school of fish, or flock of birds do just fine without such a belief. Us human animals have a strong sense of community and social cohesion. We generally want to get along with our fellow humans, notwithstanding our political, religious, and other sorts of divisions. Morality flows from a much deeper source than free will. It is embedded in our being thanks to evolution.

(7) Lastly, here's an excerpt from a post I wrote for my Church of the Churchless blog about Sapolsky's book. I loved this quotation from Determined. 

Finally, any contemporary view of determinism must accommodate a profoundly important point, one that dominates the second half of the book -- despite the world being deterministic, things can change. Brains change, behaviors change. We change. And that doesn't counter this being a deterministic world without free will. In fact, the science of change strengthens this conclusion; this will come in chapter 12.

With those issues in mind, time to see the version of determinism that this book builds on. 

Imagine a university graduation ceremony. Almost always moving, despite the platitudes, the boilerplate, the kitsch. The happiness, the pride. The families whose sacrifices now all seem worth it. The graduates who were the first in their family to finish high school. The ones whose immigrant parents sit there glowing, their saris, dashikis, barongs broadcasting that their pride in the present isn't at the cost of pride in their past.

And then you notice someone. Amid the family clusters post ceremony, the new graduates posing for pictures with Grandma in her wheelchair, the bursts of hugs and laughter, you see the person way in the back, the person who is part of the grounds crew, collecting the garbage from the cans on the perimeter of the event.

Randomly pick any of the graduates. Do some magic so that this garbage collector started life with the graduate's genes. Likewise for getting the womb in which nine months were spent and the lifelong epigenetic consequences of that.

Get the graduate's childhood as well -- one filled with, say, piano lessons and family game nights, instead of, say, threats of going to bed hungry, becoming homeless, or being deported for lack of papers. Let's go all the way so that, in addition to the garbage collector having gotten all that of the graduate's past, the graduate would have gotten the garbage collector's past.

Trade every factor over which they had no control, and you will switch who would be in the graduation robe and who would be hauling garbage cans. This is what I mean by determinism. 

AND WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Because we all know that the graduate and the garbage collector would switch places. And because, nevertheless, we rarely reflect on that sort of fact; we congratulate the graduate on all she's accomplished and move out of the way of the garbage guy without glancing at him.

 

Ron Eachus has died. He served the world well.

Thank you, Rachel Alexander of the Salem Reporter, for writing a marvelous tribute to Ron Eachus: Ron Eachus, "incorruptible" consumer advocate and activist, dies at 76. Here's some excerpts that give a feel for this remarkable man.

Ron Eachus, a steward of civic life in Salem and former utility regulator known for his “bulldog-like tenacity,” died from a heart condition on Saturday, Oct. 14, while hiking in Bhutan.

He was 76.

Eachus worked for over 20 years as an Oregon’s public utility commissioner, earning a reputation as a fierce consumer advocate while helping steer Oregon toward a focus on energy conservation to meet electricity needs. He became an international expert in utility regulation who helped many former Soviet countries transition to privately-owned utilities.

Friends and colleagues described a life filled with public policy and adventure, from his days organizing protests against the Vietnam War as University of Oregon’s student body president to more recent work leading Salem City Club.

“He always did work in the public interest,” said John Savage, the former director of the Oregon Department of Energy, who worked closely with Eachus and ultimately became a good friend. “He had fervent convictions, that was Ron. And he acted on them.”

...After college, Eachus worked briefly for U.S. Rep. Jim Weaver, a Eugene Democrat, but hated being in Washington D.C. He returned to his home state and was elected to the Oregon House, serving from 1985 until 1987. 

Eachus resigned midway through his term after being appointed a state public utility commissioner. He held the job until 2001 and moved to Salem soon after his appointment.

...Eachus wrote a column for the Statesman Journal on politics and also wrote for Salem Weekly.

...About five years ago, he joined Salem City Club, a nonpartisan civic group that presents public programs on issues of concern. He was in the middle of his third term as president.

“Ron was on top of everything, much more than any president I know in recent memory,” said Russ Beaton, who will serve out Eachus’ term as interim president.

...Eachus was an avid whitewater rafter who traveled the Rogue River many times and made trips to Alaska and the Colorado River.

Andie Andeen, a close friend, assumed he got into the sport while living on a rural stretch of the McKenzie River outside of Eugene as a student.

She asked him once for his thoughts on living outside the city, expecting him to say something profound about rural life.

“His comment was simply, ‘It was hard to organize protests,’” she said.

...Eachus had no spouse or children but was surrounded by friends in Salem. Andeen and Savage are organizing a public memorial. 

Eachus loved Bhutan and was interested in Buddhism, spending time with monks on his most recent trip.

“The fact that he died where he did and was able to be part of a ceremony with the monk body is poetic,” Andeen said.

I didn't know Ron well, but encountered him now and then when our activist lives intersected. Mostly we agreed on issues. Even when we didn't, I found Ron to be a likable guy whose passion for making Salem, and the world, better was evident.

The last time I saw Ron was two weeks ago, when he presided over a Salem City Club meeting. He was his usual positive self. It was sad and shocking to learn of his death. Still, given Ron's love of the outdoors and of travel, dying while hiking in Bhutan was a fitting way to go.

Five miles from Salem city limits, our neighborhood is unserved by broadband

Our neighborhood, Spring Lake Estates, is only about five miles from the city limits of Salem, Oregon's capital. So it isn't like we're in Outer Mongolia -- though when it comes to broadband access, we might as well be.

For one of the things I learned by my phone conversation with a guy from the Oregon Broadband Office today, is that our neighborhood is unserved by broadband according to the federal definition: 

An unserved location is defined as a broadband-serviceable location that the Broadband DATA Maps show as (a) having no access to broadband service, or (b) lacking access to Reliable Broadband Service offered with - (i) a speed of not less than 25 Mbps for downloads; and (ii) a speed of not less than 3 Mbps for uploads; and (iii) latency less than or equal to 100 milliseconds (NOFO Section I.C.dd).

We definitely qualify as unserved, since the only non-cellular, non-satellite option our neighborhood has is crappy CenturyLink DSL, which at our house offered dismal speeds of 6-7 Mbps download and 1-2 Mbps upload.

Until Starlink came to our rescue when I was chosen to be a beta tester for this SpaceX satellite internet service. Currently it costs $120 a month for speeds that vary. At the moment I'm getting 104 Mbps download and 18 Mbps upload.

The Oregon Broadband Office guy I spoke with after I emailed that office with questions about their grant program for improving broadband in our state said that he has CenturyLink in Portland, I believe, and pays $30 a month for 200 Mbps download speed.

(He'll go nameless in this blog post, since I didn't take notes on our conversation, so don't want to run the risk of saying something that doesn't completely match what he told me. Which doesn't include the definition of "unserved" because I could check that out with some Googling.)

I was told that satellite internet isn't part of unserved and underserved broadband locations since it's available everywhere, for a steep price. And cellular broadband typically doesn't qualify since often the speed isn't reliably above 25 Mbps download.

It was a pleasant conversation for me because it gave me a chance to vent about our neighborhood's broadband woes. I told the guy that while I'm not religious, our talk sort of felt like my brief experience as a childhood Catholic when I'd go to confession. Except in this case I was complaining more than confessing.

For our neighborhood only had dial-up internet until late 2007, when I managed to bring DSL to our area by writing a pleading letter to the CEO of Qwest, which later became CenturyLink. I talked about that success in I'm the DSL King of the World!

This occurred after a Qwest broadband manager told me that even though our neighborhood was just a few miles from Bunker Hill Road, where DSL existed, Qwest would never bring DSL to our area because it would cost too much.

Then after the manager heard from the Qwest CEO, I got a phone call from him saying that, lo and behold, we'd be getting DSL. Now, I told the Oregon Broadband Office guy, I heard from the Marion County broadband coordinator a few years ago that CenturyLink is saying the same thing about bringing fiber optic broadband service to our area of about 150 homes. It'll never happen. 

The (possible) good news is that thanks to grants from both the Trump and Biden administrations, Oregon will be getting quite a bit of money to bring broadband to unserved locations like ours. I was told that $100 million from the previous administration is arriving soon, with more to come.

I was told that companies which receive contracts to expand broadband access are expected to contribute some of their own money to the project. Which is fair, because they will be the ones getting the monthly subscription fees after broadband comes to an area.

I'm hoping this will happen sooner rather than later for our neighborhood. Starlink works well for us, but it's expensive. I'd love to have fiber optic service rather than satellite internet. What's frustrating is how poorly the free market works when no broadband providers are willing to service an area like ours.

Fast reliable broadband isn't a luxury. It's a necessity. For work, for education, for entertainment, for keeping in touch with the world. 

Fairly soon, I suspect, it will be a necessity for television watching in rural area lacking cable when DirecTV and Dish go under, though they could stagger on for a while longer by merging, since they're losing customers rapidly.

With no satellite television, streaming via broadband will be the only option for many rural residents.

Death came too soon for Chris. So sad.

Today I heard about the death of Chris, a 46 year-old guy I came to first know during my Pacific Martial Arts karate days.

Chris moved to the Portland area, but he'd return once in a while to take part in the Tai Chi classes that are now the focus of Pacific Martial Arts. He was engaging, positive, funny, and a pleasure to be around. 

We were close in the way many men are: by sharing a love of a physical activity. I knew some things about Chris, but mostly I knew him through the martial arts classes we shared.

Cause of death isn't certain. An aortic aneurysm is suspected. 

The only good news is that death came quickly. Everything else is bad news. Chris had children and a wife. He was fit and athletic. 

When my Tai Chi instructor told me the news, my first reaction was to say, You've got to be kidding! But as soon as the words left my mouth, I quickly added, I know you aren't; I just can't believe Chris is dead.

That's the thing about death. It's unbelievable when it happens to someone too young for it to happen to. For people like me, in our mid-70s or older, death is entirely believable.  We don't welcome it. But it isn't a big surprise when it occurs.

I don't want to engage in platitudes. You know, like how death makes us appreciate life.

That's true. However, there's such a huge gap between the shocking finality of the death of someone too young to die and bumper sticker-like cliches, as wordy as I am, I don't want to spend words on trying to find any meaning in Chris' death.

I'm an atheist. Those of us who don't believe in God or the supernatural care as much as religious believers in finding meaning in life. And, yes, death.

But the way I see it, that meaning doesn't exist out there, like the objective universe does. It only exists in here, in our subjective feelings and thoughts.

And right now I fail to see any meaning in Chris' death. I just see sadness, grief, loss. 

A few months ago Chris took part in a three-hour Tai Chi seminar at Pacific Martial Arts with the theme of Swimming Dragon. I remember how lively Chris was, how he lightened up the room with his sense of humor.

Now he's dead. That just seems utterly wrong. I'm deeply philosophical. I understand that my feeling of utterly wrong can't be defended logically. 

It's simply what's in my heart -- a conviction that no matter what power, force, or laws of nature guide human events, it got things wrong with Chris. That makes me sad.

Talking about racism in schools reduces bias

Here in blue Oregon, we're fortunate to have avoided the absurd laws in some red states, such as Florida, that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to talk about racism. 

Obviously this head-in-the-sand approach doesn't do anything to combat racism. It just prevents open discussion that could reduce racism.

Last year I came across an article in Scientific American that cites psychological research in concluding that it's best for students to engage in honest talk about racism. The article appeared in the November 2022 issue, though apparently it was published online in August.

That issue has been languishing in a pile of magazines containing blog-post-worthy articles, where I just dug it out. Here's the article in its entirety. It makes a lot of sense. I just wish Florida Governor Ron DeSsntis would pay attention to it.

In Schools, Honest Talk About Racism Can Reduce Discrimination
New laws make it harder for teachers to discuss racism and inequality,
but psychological evidence shows  these conversations dispel causes of bias and distress

by Camilla Mutoni Griffiths, Nicky Sullivan on August 19, 2022 in Scientific American

“Where are the Native Americans now?” asked fifth grade students in an Iowa City classroom last year. There are many ways their teacher, Melanie Hester, might have answered. She could have pointed out that today Native Americans live in cities and towns across the U.S. About 20 percent live on reservations, and Hester could have used that to open a discussion of the U.S. government’s forcible movement and isolation of tribes. Hester might have also discussed how European and American settlers brutally killed many Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Instead she evaded the question and continued her lesson without offering historical context for her students to understand the present. Teachers across the country are avoiding explicit conversations about race, racism and racial inequality because of a series of recent laws passed in several states.

In Iowa, for example, a law prohibits any teaching that suggests the U.S. is “fundamentally or systematically racist or sexist.” The Iowa law also specifies that teachers must ensure that no student feels “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of that individual’s race or sex.” The laws in other states lay out similar logic.

The legal language seems, for the most part, protective of children. But the effect is quite the opposite. As psychologists who study how parents and teachers communicate with kids about race, we can attest to an ever growing body of scientific evidence that suggests these laws are failing the children they purport to help.

First, years of research make it evident that kids notice racial and ethnic disparities from an early age. For example, psychologists have found that white kids as young as age four will consistently pair white families with higher-wealth items (such as nice cars and bigger houses) and Black families with lower-wealth items (for instance, run-down cars and smaller houses).

In other words, very young children are aware of persistent racial disparities in wealth. Around the same age, children begin forming preferences for wealthier kids with more “stuff,” which, given the link between wealth and racial background in the U.S., may result in white children preferring and choosing to play with other white peers over Black peers.

Second, we know that when children notice differences between people or groups, they usually look for an explanation. Here a psychological principle called the inherence bias comes into play. In general, when we see someone behave in a distinctly different way from others, we assume there is something inherently different about that person.

Adults often fall into this trap: if someone cuts you off on the highway, you are likely to assume they are a bad driver rather than assume, for instance, that they are a good driver who happens to be rushing to a hospital in an emergency. In the same way, children are more likely to attribute a wealth difference between communities to the groups’ capabilities or intelligence rather than something external, such as a historical advantage one group has had over another.

Children often go one step further and think that groups are biologically or innately different. These attitudes are what psychologists call essentialist beliefs because they attribute group differences to some deep, underlying and often unknown “essence.”

These tendencies toward inherence and essentialism are especially harmful when we think about children’s efforts to understand racial disparities. Scientists agree that race is not biological. It is not inherent or innate. Instead race is the product of social and cultural ideas that are imposed on groups of people. These ideas become codified in our institutions and in the ways that we interact with one another, thus producing the inequalities we see in the world.

This means that children need external explanations, such as historical injustices and racial discrimination, to understand the differences between groups that they are observing. Without that context, children can mistakenly believe that racial difference is inherent, which leaves them with an inaccurate understanding of the world.

More concerning, these beliefs about the inherent or essential nature of racial difference are actually a foundation of racial bias. In fact, multiple studies have found that when kids have more essentialist beliefs about race, they also hold more stereotypes about other racial groups.

In other words, without explicit discussions about race and the external, rather than internal, causes of racial disparities, children will come to the wrong conclusions and may develop racial biases. In principle, these problems could apply to any child who is not given greater context for racial differences. White children may be especially at risk because they are often the least likely to have conversations about racism with their families.

In fact, one of us (Sullivan) tracked almost 1,000 parents in 2020 and found that white Americans were significantly less likely to talk to their children about race than Black Americans, even after the much publicized murder of George Floyd prompted national protests and dialogue about racism.

When we think about new laws limiting discussion of race in schools, it’s critical to keep in mind how they will impact children of color specifically. The research we’ve discussed suggests that students will be more likely to develop racially biased views in the absence of explicit lessons. As a result, children of color are likely to face more discrimination, not less. This outcome is clearly at odds with the language of the laws, which explicitly state that children should not be made to feel psychological distress because of their race. Yet that is precisely what will happen if children of color face more discrimination.

In contrast, explicit conversations with kids about racial disparities can help reduce some of the negative consequences we have described.

In one study, white elementary school students who received history lessons about racial discrimination faced by Black people had more positive views of Black people and were less likely to hold stereotypes than students who didn’t receive such lessons. And those lessons did not lead either white or Black children to hold more negative views of white Americans, which is a commonly voiced concern among those who oppose teaching about racism. There is also early evidence from a preprint paper (which has not yet been through peer review) that when parents engage in honest, accurate conversations about race with their children, it can decrease kids’ racial biases.

The laws passed in Iowa and elsewhere claim to protect kids from forming racist beliefs, but the research suggests they are more likely to do the opposite. When it comes to children’s understanding of racism and the development of racist beliefs, the biggest danger isn’t teaching or talking to children about these topics—it’s staying quiet.