Diane Emiling is an Instructor at Northwestern Michigan College.  Her presentation covered implicit bias and structural racism.
 
Diane explained that the brain reacts in two different ways--the first being from a part of the brain called the Amygdala, which covers our basic emotions. Executive reactions come from the frontal lobe and take longer.  If one is raised surrounded by comfortable whiteness, the world looks very, very white.  Stereotypes begin as something useful, but they end up casting minorities in a negative light.  Implicit racism is just there--for blacks as well as whites.
 
Not being a racist is not enough; it does not make things better.  Instead we should strive to become anti-racist, which takes one through zones of fear, learning and growth.
 
Structural ("institutional") racism occurs when the government enacts legislation without taking longstanding racial disparities into account.  Thus the GI Bill led to inequitable outcomes due to the lack of equal access to education.  The same thing occurred with FHA loans, where residential segregation was ignored.
 
A first step in becoming anti-racist is becoming aware of implicit biases and their huge impact.  A thought-provoking and timely presentation!