Essay: Blink – Gladwell

In addition to experiencing segregation publicly, minorities were not given the same educational opportunities as privileged individuals were. In the book Blink, Gladwell discusses the impact of race while it effects minorities and how they view themselves. In this case, African Americans were discriminated against and became hopeless in receiving a proper education; discrimination kept minorities out of high ranked schools, causing them only to be able to grasp a partial education from what little resources they were provided with. Two Dutch researchers conducted a study in which they had two groups of students answer questions from a board game. Half of the group were asked to think about what it meant to be a professor for five minutes while the other half started with zero preparation time. The students who were given five minutes prior to the test answered 55.6 percent of the questions right while the other half answered only 42.6 percent right. One group was not smarter than the other but they were given time to put themselves in a “smarter” mindset before answering the questions. Unfortunately, society today lets a simple test dictate if someone is capable of completing certain tasks or not. In addition to this study, psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson conducted a more extreme version and tested specifically black college students. They were given questions taken from the Graduate Record Examination and when asked to identify their race on the pretest questionnaire, the numbers of the results dropped in half. Gladwell states that “as a society, we place enormous faith in tests because we think that they are a reliable indicator of the test taker’s ability and knowledge” (56). The vast majority of white students generally do not have this problem because they are more likely to be attending a private institution that provides them with whatever they need and more. After observing their results, Aronson asked them if anything lowered their performance and if they were bothered that they had been asked to identify their race; they believed they were just not smart enough for these tests and doubted themselves. Gladwell’s main idea of this section is that the way we think and act versus how well we think and act is more likely to be influenced than we realize. In 2013, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights stated that “financial support of black students has gone down which further contributes to lower admission because education has become unaffordable.” This inequality is present all over the world, unfortunately even today. According to an analysis of data from the National Equity Atlas, African American and Latino students attend schools where 75 percent qualify as low-income or poor. Isolation of these minorities in schools not only affects them emotionally but drastically lowers their chances of a better future. How many companies do you know that would hire a black student from a public school in Detroit versus a white student from a private school in New York? Slim to none. For example, in the United States and around the world, it is hard to maintain a beneficial job or career without the proper education. Since minorities aren’t given the same opportunities, they aren’t able to succeed and struggle the rest of their lives. Students of any minority descent end up at low-income schools that unfortunately cannot prepare them with the proper education because of their race and what is accessible to them.
Studies show that education inequality has affected students across the United States; the Stanford Graduate School of Education discovered this fault when they reviewed more than 200 million test scores. Research revealed that almost all U.S. school districts with minority students have massive achievement gaps. Stanford professor Sean Reardon claims “the racial difference in the proportion of students’ schoolmates who are poor is the key dimension of segregation driving [the association].” Researchers establish larger white to black student achievement gaps in major school districts such as Oakland, California; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; and Washington, D.C. “One very important takeaway is that there is not one single race/ethnic gap or income gap in the U.S. but rather that these gaps vary considerable by where one lives,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University. This research suggests that racial segregation is greatly connected to the recourses and opportunities available to different schools.
As Gladwell expresses in Blink, he is able to identify that there is a real issue with the education system and how they prepare students. However, Gladwell believes there is an advantage to how the unconscious plays its part. The unconscious mind is basically a form of mental processing that is used for decision making. It is based on factors such as emotions, experiences, and our brains guiding us to make particular decisions. Gladwell points out both strengths and weaknesses to leading with your gut feeling. For instance, he argues that in some situations, extra information can cloud one’s decision making process. So how does this come to play in the education system? Both wealthy and poor school districts have their own views of what they believe is right or wrong. Private schools have prepared their students very well because they are privileged and can afford to be there. However, public schools usually aren’t able to provide their students with the necessary resources because they can’t afford it or are already pushed to the side and not given the proper help necessary. This causes students to believe they aren’t good enough to obtain what they want and cloud their judgement of themselves. The unconscious mind plays a key role here because in reference to the survey test administered to the black students, they instantly believe they aren’t smart enough for certain tasks. This fault in the system has affected minorities across the world, affecting their conscious and unconscious minds.
Education is the process of giving or receiving instruction at a school or university; there is no place that claims education is meant to be prejudice towards minorities and less fortunate students. Gladwell believes that too much faith is put into test and how they represent individuals, a great example of what you think is right versus what is actually right. Without proper motivation and help from schools, minorities will never succeed or become engaged enough to further their education. To this day, educational inequality has not been resolved but progress has definitely been made over time. These students go to school wanting to learn and become successful but are constantly judged for who they are. With the support of the education system, low-income and minority students could be just as successful and achieve what they want if they were provided with equal opportunities.