UNCONSCIOUS BIAS AND EDUCATION

demographic, social and familial situation of Afro-Americans and Māori despite a
separation by thousands of miles as well as historical and cultural dissimilarities.”
The US academic literature shows that gaps in achievement between individuals and across
socio-economic and racial groups open up at a very young age, before children even start
school. African American children enter kindergarten behind whites, and these
achievement gaps persist at every grade level, and for every subject. However, studies have
shown that these gaps are significantly reduced once the social environment of the child is
taken into account. Children that are deprived of the opportunity to learn through poverty
and lack of education of their parents do not perform well at school. The gap that remains
after accounting for socio-economic factors may be explained by unconscious bias as
explored in the first two chapters.
The gaps that emerge at a young age strongly affect adult outcomes. It is extremely
unlikely that a child born near the bottom of the income distribution, for example, will
eventually reach somewhere near the top of the distribution. This cuts to the core of what it
means to have a fair society.
Effective solutions to the racial achievement gap aim to enrich the environments of
disadvantaged children. Early intervention is the key, and many of the policy initiatives
currently used to attempt to alleviate gaps would be better used in early interventions. One
study states that “America currently relies too much on schools and adolescent
remediation strategies to solve problems that start in the preschool years”. It is
unsurprising that the returns to investing in disadvantaged children are much larger early in
life. The reason for this is that early investment creates the foundation of skills that make
later investment more productive.
Recent research has explored the question of whether disadvantaged children can
overcome that disadvantage simply by moving. Data confirms that where one grows up has
a huge impact on success later in life. Children who move to low-poverty areas when below
the age of 13 do much better as adults. Interestingly, the same benefits do not seem to
apply to older children above the age of 13 or adults who move, emphasising the fact that
early intervention is key. The importance of movement is relevant to Māori. In general,
Māori are more geographically mobile than non-Māori.
However, as noted earlier, socio-economic factors cannot account entirely for the gaps in
achievement between racial groups. Studies have found for example, that African
American students who do well at school are picked on by their peers for ‘acting white’.
External forms of repression also come into play. Unconscious bias is a major factor, taking
the form of insidious discrimination that affects African Americans in every sphere from
getting a job to obtaining medical advice.
Overall, clear similarities can be discerned between the African American and Māori
experience. Both groups experience discrimination in societies which espouse equality.
African Americans and Māori both suffer from disadvantage which stretches from their
early childhood and persists into their adult lives. In New Zealand, overt and violent
expressions of racism are less common than in the United States, where many African
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