A Correlational Study of Teacher Demographics and Racial Color Blindness
Two primary camps of thought guide K 12 education: Color blind ideology and Multiculturalism (Rattan Ambady, 2013) Color blindness implies color does not matter (Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, Browne, 2000) Shifting student demographics in K 12 education and unchanging demographics of a predominately White, female teaching force create a need for better understanding the dynamics affecting teachers and their interaction with the students they teach. This correlational study utilized multiple regression analyses to answer the following research question: How accurately can racial color blindness be predicted from the linear combination of age, years of experience, and political philosophy for K 12 teachers located in an urbanized school district in Northwest Georgia? The participating school district was an urbanized school district in Northwest Georgia, employing 425 certified teachers, counselors, and academic coaches. The demographics considered in this study were: age, years of experience, and political philosophy. Magnitude of color blindness was determined by subjects' total score on the Color Blind Racial Attitude Scale (CoBRAS; Neville et al. 2000) Multiple regression was used to examine the direction and strength of the linear relationships. There were no significant correlations identified between the predictor variables of age, years of teaching experience, and political philosophy and the criterion variable of Racial Color Blindness. Rejection of the null hypothesis was not possible based on the results of this study. However, comparison of mean scores of the CoBRAS in the current study to that of Atwater (2007) found a striking difference between the two studies. This difference suggests that further research of regional influences on Racial Color blindness is merited.