Robert Johnson is a black pediatrician; Steven Simring, a main coauthor, is a white psychiatrist. Both are professors at the New Jersey Medical School, where they met in 1976 and had to reckon with the aftermath of racial confrontations brought on by New Jersey's decision to build a new health sciences university in Newark's decaying inner city. Together they worked to develop a program to enable people to become more "racially intelligent." Johnson and Simring acknowledge up front that it is "next to impossible" to eliminate existing bias. They hope, instead, to give people the skills necessary to avoid or eliminate situations in which racial misunderstandings can result. The authors developed the Racial Intelligence Quotient to help diagnose difficulties in "negotiating diversity encounters," and they explain their eight-step process for communicating effectively across racial lines. They discuss the "language of race" and contrast overt, covert, and accidental racism. Although their focus is on the workplace, the authors also consider situations in everyday life, and they devote a separate chapter to raising "racially smart" children.
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