Subconscious response to differences: Toward a fuller understanding of negative response among the well-intentioned

Negative response to differences persists in America despite concerted societal efforts to reduce it. I posit that this limited success is attributable, at least in part, to our limited understanding of that response, an understanding I seek to expand by looking at response that has had relatively little attention in the past, subconscious negative response.; I talked to 15 elementary school teachers. Elementary teachers influence children just when they are acquiring the cognitive ability to form attitudes that are their own and that endure, and when their exposure to others different from themselves is increasing.; Participation in the study was voluntary. I reasoned that only teachers with a special interest in response to differences would agree to meet with me twice to talk about this personal value laden subject. I reasoned further that if they and I, with our interest, responded negatively to differences, it would be reasonable to assume that others of our generation who live and work in predominantly white, middle class worlds do so, too.; In the initial interviews, we discussed the teachers' theories, values, and experiences relating to differences and difference education. In the second interviews, I sought their response to my preliminary findings.; Although our explicitly expressed response was almost exclusively positive, negative response, probably subconscious, was inferable from several sources.