Sometimes Kathie Starkweather starts with a cartoon.
A picture of a bear chasing two people -- the larger of the two trailing behind the slimmer of the two -- and the words: BE NICE TO FAT PEOPLE. One day they might save your life.
People laugh.
And then Kathie begins her presentation on the unconscious biases we all have -- the assumptions and prejudices about race and gender and ethnicity (and size) we carry in our brain’s filing cabinet.
And how we can change them.
“It isn’t blame-based at all,†says the rural sociologist. “It’s, ‘This is how it happens, and this is what you can do about it.’â€
It’s hard to explain Kathie’s work in writing, but it’s worth a try, because the way we think influences the way we treat others and the way we raise our children and the way we vote and the way our policies and institutions are shaped and perpetuated.
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“It’s a normal brain process to put things in categories,†Kathie explains. “It’s like when you learn how to use a pen. You didn’t know what it was so you look at it and ponder it.â€
Pretty soon you no longer have to ponder, you know it's a pen.
"We do the same kind of thing with people," she says. "We categorize them by gender and race and ethnicity.â€
It's a helpful shortcut, but it often leads to stereotyping instead of critical thinking.
Pretty soon our brains say ALL women are like this, or ALL black men are like that, or ALL overweight people are slower than ALL slender people -- despite evidence to the contrary.
It’s taught, she said. By our parents and neighbors, by television shows and movies.
Children as young as 3 show racial and gender bias in their thinking, according to research.
It’s about repeated exposure to words and attitudes, Kathie says.
“If you see or hear it often enough that becomes truth to you," she says, "until you ask yourself the question, why am I thinking this?â€
Kathie works for the Center for Rural Affairs as its farm and community program director.
She works with new farmers and with veterans and women and tribes. She works on cool projects, like helping to start a community garden at a trailer park in Columbus for the Latino families who live there.
“My work boils down to people -- helping them make a better life for themselves and their small towns,†she wrote on the center’s website.
Kathie’s roots are rural. She grew up on a farm near Raymond. She lives in the middle of Lincoln now in a gray bungalow with hibiscus as big as salad plates in the front yard and a playhouse for her two cute grandchildren out back.
She has a dog named Hank and a family of orange cats and two grown daughters and those two grandbabies just down the block.
She’s always had a heart for justice, modeled to her by her parents, and a mind that questioned inequalities.
She developed her powerful Powerpoint 15 years ago, when she worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Nebraska. A class-action lawsuit had been filed against the USDA for discriminating against black farmers. The black farmers won. Eventually, more class-action lawsuits followed on behalf of Hispanic farmers and female farmers.
“It raised awareness about discrimination,†she says.
And it brought out inequities in the organization: “And it was very clear there were very few women and minorities in leadership positions at the USDA.â€
Kathie had taken a graduate class in social psychology. The class explored how the brain stores ideas about groups of people based on past experiences and other influences, like media.
She thought that information might be valuable to her colleagues.
So she translated the research into everyday language and shared it. The African-American chairman of one of the groups she spoke to in Minnesota spread the word within the agency. “Shouted it,†Kathie says.
In the next several years, she found herself in nearly every state, including Hawaii.
“I’d think it was dying down and then the phone would ring again,†she says.
She calls her talk “Non-Conscious Discrimination,†and for 45 minutes she works her way through explanations of the ways our brains categorize people.
She gives examples. A black woman in the checkout line, disheveled, with two small, misbehaving children, and the woman is buying frozen pizza and soda. Kathie poses a question: How do you think she's paying? (Food stamps, people invariably answer.)
Then she describes a white man, well-dressed with children, buying frozen pizza and soda.
“People never think he’ll pay with food stamps," she says, "it never crosses their minds.â€
She talks about name bias research -- the man named Jose Miller who couldn't get a job interview until his resume said Joe Miller instead. The white boss and the Hispanic receptionist who were always late to staff meetings -- people assuming that he was busy doing important work and the secretary was disorganized. In fact, she was working, and he was checking the futures market.
“It’s actually a true story,†Kathie says.
She figures she’s given her presentation more than 100 times since 2000.
Several years ago, she conducted random sampling with former audience members, curious to see if the talk had mattered.
“It was kind of astonishing," she says. "Seventy percent of the people had at least remembered something.â€
It might be one of the examples she gave.
Or remembering to check themselves when they automatically assumed something.
Christa Yoakum, who attended Kathie’s talk two years ago, said, “Most people don’t want to be discriminating, or prejudiced. Once you recognize, oh, it’s not just me, and you own up to it, then you can check your language -- or your body language.â€
Or your behavior.
That’s the point, Kathie said, changing behavior on a personal level and on a societal level -- in hiring practices and in schools and in evolving communities.
The sociologist gave her presentation again this spring, when columnist Leonard Pitts spoke at a Peacemaking Conference in Lincoln. The church was packed for his keynote, and nearly 100 people showed up at her session, too.
The columnist visited the Journal Star a few days later to talk about race and class in America. He talked about the assumptions white people make about black people: lumping them, he said, into one homogeneous whole, instead of seeing them as they are. Good people and bad people and rich people and poor people, just plain people.
The sociologist does the same thing.
“I like to challenge people,†Katie says. “The next time they see someone who is not the same skin color to ask themselves, what are you thinking and why are you thinking that? Why do you care?
“Why can’t you just stop and say hi?â€