Information shapes how we see the world, but not everything we hear or read is true. Knowing the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation is an important first step in understanding how false narratives take hold and how they can cause real harm, especially to marginalized communities.

What is Misinformation?

Misinformation is false or misleading information that gets shared, often without the person sharing it realizing it is wrong. It is not necessarily created with harmful intent, but it can still cause significant harm.

Misinformation can show up in many ways: a catchy headline that leaves out key facts, a photo used in the wrong context, or a story that is only partially true. It spreads easily, especially on social media, where people often share things quickly without checking them first.

An article from the American Psychological Association explains that people are more likely to believe and share information that matches what they already think, especially when it triggers strong emotions. This makes misinformation particularly hard to correct once it starts circulating.

What is Disinformation?

Disinformation is also false or misleading, but unlike misinformation, it is created and shared intentionally to deceive, divide, or manipulate. The goal is often to push a specific narrative, undermine trust, or influence how people think and act.

The distinction matters: misinformation spreads by accident; disinformation is a deliberate strategy.

A Historical Example: The Rwandan Genocide

One of the most devastating examples of disinformation in modern history occurred during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Radio stations, most notably Radio Milles Collines (RTLM), were used to deliberately broadcast propaganda that dehumanized Tutsi people and called for violence. These were not careless errors or misunderstandings. They were coordinated, intentional campaigns designed to incite harm.

This example illustrates why it is so important to name disinformation accurately. Calling it misinformation would obscure the intent behind it and minimize the responsibility of those who created and spread it.

What Is Malinformation?

Malinformation is true information that is shared with the intent to harm. Unlike misinformation, it isn't false, and unlike disinformation, it doesn't have to be fabricated. What makes it harmful is the purpose behind sharing it and the context in which it is used.

Examples include sharing someone's private communications without their consent, outing a person's identity, or presenting accurate data in a deliberately misleading frame. In racial justice conversations, malinformation often appears as the selective use of real statistics, stripped of historical context, to reinforce harmful stereotypes or justify discriminatory policies. The facts may be real, but the intent is to mislead or cause harm.

Recognizing malinformation asks us to think beyond "is this true?" and ask "why is this being shared, and who could be hurt by it?"

Why All Three Matter Today

Whether information is false by accident or by design, the harm it causes is real. Today, misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation continue to reinforce harmful stereotypes about racial and cultural groups. They shape public opinion, influence policy decisions, and make it harder for communities to access resources or feel safe.

Understanding the difference helps us ask better questions: Was this shared carelessly, or intentionally? Who benefits from this narrative being believed? Who is harmed by it?

A Restorative Lens

When we encounter inaccurate information or information used to enact harm, our first instinct is often to correct or call out the person who shared it. A restorative approach offers a different path, one focused on understanding and repairing harm rather than assigning blame.

Restorative practices come from a broader framework used in schools, workplaces, and communities to address conflict and harm through dialogue rather than punishment. Instead of asking “who did wrong and what should their consequence be,” a restorative approach asks: “What harm was done? How do we repair it? What can we learn?”

Applied to misinformation, this might look like asking: Why did this seem believable? Where did it come from? Who may have been hurt by it being shared? These questions create space for honest conversation without shutting people down, which is especially important when talking about topics as complex and personal as race and identity. People are more likely to reflect and grow when they feel heard rather than attacked.

Organizations like the International Institute for Restorative Practices emphasize dialogue and accountability as pathways to repairing harm. Similarly, Facing History and Ourselves helps people connect historical events to present-day actions through reflection and learning. At YWCA Spokane, restorative practices inform how we approach our work and our community, believing that lasting change comes from understanding, not shame.

Moving Forward

We all have a role in what we share. Taking a moment to pause, check sources, and ask questions can go a long way. By being thoughtful about the information we pass along, we can help build a community that values truth, trust, and fairness.

As you move through this challenge, we invite you to stay curious, sit with discomfort, and approach these conversations with both honesty and care.

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Social media is one of the most common ways we stay connected and informed. It allows people to share stories, raise awareness, and speak out about injustice. At the same time, it plays a powerful role in how all three types of harmful information, misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, spread and how quickly they reach others. Understanding how each shows up online can help us become more thoughtful and responsible participants in digital spaces.

How Platforms are Designed

Social media platforms are designed to keep our attention. They often prioritize content that is emotional, surprising, or controversial because those posts get more engagement. Unfortunately, all three types of harmful information tend to fit those categories. This means false, misleading, or weaponized content can spread faster than accurate information and the platform's own design makes that harder to resist.

Real-World Impact

We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic, when harmful content about the virus circulated widely online. Some of it was misinformation, people genuinely confused about how the virus spread or how to stay safe. But much of what targeted Asian communities was disinformation: deliberately crafted narratives designed to scapegoat a specific group. Organizations like the World Health Organization emphasized that viruses do not target specific groups and warned about the harm caused by stigma. The distinction matters because it points to different kinds of accountability, one calls for correction, the other calls for naming intent.

Following the killing of George Floyd, many images and videos were shared out of context to increase fear or confusion rather than to help people understand what was actually happening. This is a clear example of malinformation, real content, deliberately framed to cause harm. The footage existed. The harm came from how it was selected, cropped, or stripped of context to shape a particular narrative.

Algorithms and Echo Chambers

Algorithms also shape what we see. They track what we like, share, and comment on, then show us more of the same. Over time, this can create "echo chambers" where we mostly encounter information that matches our existing beliefs. This makes all three types of harmful information harder to recognize, because they feel familiar. They confirm what we already think we know.

The narratives that spread on social media today don't emerge from nowhere. They often echo harmful stereotypes that have historically shaped policies affecting communities of color. Research from the Brookings Institution documents how misinformation about racial groups has reinforced those stereotypes over time, making it easier for discriminatory policies like redlining, which limited where people could live and build wealth, to take hold and persist. When those same narratives circulate online today, they carry that history with them.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach encourages accountability and learning instead of blame. When harmful information is shared, whether carelessly, intentionally, or through the weaponization of real content, it can become an opportunity to ask questions, reflect, and correct the record together. The restorative question remains the same across all three types: what harm was done, who was affected, and how do we repair it? The response may look different depending on whether information was spread by accident or by design, but the commitment to accountability and care applies in every case.

This approach reminds us that there are real people behind every post. Even online, we can choose empathy, respect, and responsibility in how we engage with others.

Moving Forward

We all play a role in shaping what spreads online. Taking time to check sources, pausing before sharing, and asking not just "is this true?" but "why is this being shared, and who could be hurt by it?" can make a real difference. Social media can be a powerful tool for truth and justice when we use it with care and intention.

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CHECK OUT THIS TRAINING designed to help participants sift through information and fear-mongering messaging.	and	CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE demonstrating real-world harm that can be caused by the spread of false rumors on social media.	and	CHECK OUT THIS RESOURCE including modules that teach you how to spot misinformation online.

 

Harmful information, whether spread carelessly, deliberately, or through the weaponization of truth, does not affect everyone equally. Communities that have historically faced discrimination are often more deeply impacted, especially when false or misleading narratives target their access to resources, safety, and representation.

A Patterns with Deep Roots

Throughout history, all three types of harmful information have been used to shape how people see different groups. False narratives have been used to justify discrimination and exclusion. A 2021 article in a Harvard Kennedy School review found that disinformation has historically functioned as a deliberate media strategy in the United States, one that has reinforced systems of power at the expense of communities with less social, cultural, political, or economic influence. Today, similar patterns continue in areas like healthcare, voting, and public safety.

The impact can be long lasting. A 2023 study published in Societies, a peer-reviewed journal, examined over 45,000 tweets related to migration and found that misinformation fosters false representations of groups, reinforces negative attitudes, and deepens mistrust in institutions. For communities already navigating significant barriers, these effects can be even more pronounced, limiting access to resources and making it harder to find accurate information from trusted sources.

Harmful Information in Education

Conversations about school curriculum are frequently shaped by disinformation, not just misunderstanding, but organized, deliberate campaigns to spread false narratives about what students are learning. Lessons about history and inclusion have been publicly described as divisive or indoctrinating, claims that research has repeatedly shown to be inaccurate. These narratives spread quickly on social media, often far faster than accurate information from schools themselves.

The impact of these narratives fall unevenly. Students and families of color, who may already feel underrepresented in schools, are often most affected when false stories circulate about curriculum, discipline, or school culture. Because of this, many communities emphasize the importance of open, honest dialogue ensuring everyone has direct, accurate information about what is actually happening in classrooms.

Long Lasting Impact

Harmful information doesn't just cause confusion in the moment,  it can have ripple effects that last for years. Some examples include:

• Loss of trust in institutions. When people repeatedly encounter false or misleading information, especially about schools, government, or the media, it can become difficult to trust those systems even after the truth comes out. Rebuilding trust takes far longer than spreading a rumor.
• Barriers to resources and opportunities. Disinformation about housing assistance, healthcare services, job programs, or voting rules can prevent people from accessing resources they are eligible for. Historically, targeted disinformation campaigns have been used to suppress voter participation in communities of color, a deliberate strategy, not an accident.
• Reinforcing stereotypes. Deliberate disinformation about racial or cultural groups shapes how others perceive them over time. This can influence how people are treated at work, in public spaces, or by systems like law enforcement.
• Impacts on community safety and well-being. Misinformation and malinformation about crime, public safety, or specific neighborhoods can create fear and stigma. This can affect how communities are policed, how resources are distributed, and how safe people actually feel where they live.
• Policy and funding decisions. When public opinion is shaped by inaccurate information, it influences decisions about funding and policy including where to invest in healthcare, housing, transportation, or community programs. These decisions have long-term effects, especially for under-resourced communities.
• Effects across generations. Harmful information can be passed down over time, becoming part of how families and communities understand history, institutions, and opportunity. This can shape beliefs and decisions for years, even after the original false narrative has been corrected.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach focuses on repairing harm and building understanding. When harmful information impacts communities, whether it was spread carelessly, intentionally, or by weaponizing truth, it is important to center the voices of those most affected. This can look like creating space for conversations where people can share their experiences and ask questions. It also means addressing misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation in thoughtful ways that encourage learning rather than shame.

Misinformation about school discipline and communities of color is itself a driver of harm, shaping how students are perceived and treated. One local example of a community pushing back against that harm is Spokane Public Schools' restorative practice work, which uses restorative practices instead of punitive measures to connect students with support and community resources focused on improving outcomes including graduation rates. This program reflects a broader truth: that repairing harm requires investment in people, not just correction of facts.

Moving Forward

Each day of this challenge asks something of us. Today's ask is perhaps the most personal: to consider who is most harmed when false narratives go unchecked, and to ask whether we have been passive participants in those narratives by sharing, by staying silent, or by failing to seek out the voices of those most affected.

Listening to impacted communities, sharing accurate information, and staying aware of how all three types of harmful information spread are not just individual habits. They are commitments to the kind of community we want to build, one where truth is not a privilege, and where everyone has access to accurate information about the resources, systems, and opportunities that shape their lives.

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Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation are part of everyday life. Learning to recognize all three is an important step in protecting ourselves and our communities. While harmful information can seem convincing, there are ways to pause, question, and better evaluate what we encounter and different types of harmful information call for slightly different questions.

Why Harmful Information Feels Believable

A 2018 MIT study published in the journal Science found that false information spreads faster and reaches more people online than accurate information, largely because it tends to feel more surprising or dramatic. This is true whether the information was created carelessly, deliberately, or by weaponizing something real.

Some examples of how this plays out:

• A misleading social media post about a local policy might use alarming language to prompt quick reactions before people have a chance to check the facts.
• A viral image shared without context can make a situation seem more extreme or different than it actually is.
• A real statistic about a community, stripped of historical context and shared to stoke fear, can cause just as much harm as an outright lie, even though no false claim was made.

Because of this, it helps to slow down and ask a few key questions before sharing:

• Where did this come from?
• Is there evidence to support it?
• Is this true information being shared out of context or to harm someone?
• And perhaps most importantly for identifying disinformation: who benefits from people believing this?

How to Recognize Harmful Information

• Check the source. Not all sources are equally reliable. Peer-reviewed research, established news organizations, and official public agencies are generally more trustworthy than anonymous or unverified accounts. Research published in Nature Human Behaviour found that people who take even a brief moment to consider accuracy before sharing are less likely to spread misinformation. With disinformation especially, it also helps to ask who created the content and whether they have a clear motive for misleading people.

• Look for supporting evidence. Credible information is usually backed by data, multiple sources, or direct quotes presented in full context. Be cautious of claims that rely only on opinions, lack clear sourcing, or present evidence selectively in ways that seem designed to provoke a specific reaction.

• Watch for emotional language. If something makes you feel immediate anger, fear, or urgency, that can be a signal to pause. All three types of harmful information rely on emotional reactions to travel quickly and disinformation in particular is often crafted specifically to trigger those reactions.

• Verify images and quotes. Images and quotes are frequently taken out of context. A photo from years ago might be shared as though it is current, or a quote may be shortened in a way that changes its meaning entirely. This is the mechanism of malinformation. The content may be real, but the way it is being used causes harm. Asking "when was this taken?" and "what was the full context?" are essential habits.

• Ask who is affected. When evaluating information about a community or group of people, ask whose voices are represented and whose are missing. Harmful narratives about racial or cultural communities often persist because the people most affected by them are not part of the conversation.

A Restorative Lens

Responding to harmful information with a restorative approach means choosing conversation over confrontation. Rather than shaming someone for sharing false or misleading information, a restorative response creates space to ask questions, share accurate information, and reflect together.

In practice this might look like asking "Where did you see that?" instead of "That's wrong." It might mean sharing a verified source and inviting discussion rather than debate, or listening to understand why the information felt believable in the first place.

It's worth noting that the restorative response may look different depending on what type of harmful information you're encountering. When someone has shared misinformation carelessly, curiosity and gentle correction go a long way. When the information is part of a deliberate disinformation campaign, naming the intent, calmly and clearly, is also an act of care for the community. And when real information is being weaponized to harm someone, centering the wellbeing of the person or group being targeted matters most.

In all three cases, building trust and keeping people open to learning is more effective in the long run than correction alone.

Moving Forward

Building these skills takes practice. By staying curious, checking information before sharing, asking not just "is this true?" but "why is this being shared and who could be hurt by it?", and supporting trustworthy local sources, we can all play a role in reducing harm and building a more informed community.

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Over the past four days, we have looked at how harmful information, misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, shapes what communities believe, who gets trusted, and who gets harmed. Today we turn inward. Because harmful narratives don't just circulate online or in history books. They settle inside us, quietly shaping how we see and treat the people around us. This is the work of understanding implicit bias.

What Is Implicit Bias?

Implicit bias refers to the attitudes, assumptions, and stereotypes that operate below the level of conscious awareness. Unlike explicit bias, which people are aware of and can choose to express or conceal, implicit bias influences our thoughts and actions without our realizing it. Most people who hold implicit biases do not consider themselves prejudiced, and many are genuinely committed to fairness. That is precisely what makes implicit bias so important to examine.

Psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji first brought widespread attention to implicit bias through their development of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in 1998, a tool that measures the unconscious associations people hold between concepts, such as race and capability, or gender and leadership. Their research demonstrated that implicit associations are widespread, cutting across lines of identity, education, and stated values.

Where Implicit Bias Comes From

These biases form over time. They come from what we see in the media, what we hear from others, and the communities we grew up in. The harmful narratives we examined in Days 1 through 4, false stories about racial groups, disinformation campaigns that dehumanize communities, malinformation that strips context from truth, all contribute to the implicit associations people carry. When those narratives go unexamined, they shape how we see people before we have even spoken a word to them.

Even when we try to be fair, these hidden associations can still influence our actions and decisions. Research has found that implicit racial bias affects outcomes in employment, education, school discipline, and healthcare. A 2016 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Kelly Hoffman and colleagues found that some medical providers held false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white patients, such as the belief that Black patients feel less pain, which led to unequal treatment. The study's findings were striking not because the providers were overtly racist, but because many were not. The bias was operating beneath the surface.

How Implicit Bias Shows Up

Because this challenge focuses on racial justice, it is worth being specific about how implicit racial bias operates in everyday life, while also acknowledging that bias intersects with many aspects of identity, including disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and class.

In the context of race and ethnicity, implicit bias can lead to people being judged as less capable, less trustworthy, or more of a risk based on their race alone. This shows up in who gets called back for a job interview, how students are disciplined in schools, who receives adequate pain treatment, and how people are treated during encounters with law enforcement. We might also make quick judgments based on someone's name, accent, clothing, or neighborhood, small, often unconscious assessments that accumulate into real barriers over time.

Implicit bias also intersects with other identities. People with disabilities may be underestimated or spoken over. LGBTQ+ people may face assumptions about their relationships or identities. These forms of bias are not separate from racial justice work, they are part of understanding how systems of power use assumptions to sort, limit, and harm people.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach to implicit bias focuses on reflection rather than shame. The goal is not to make people feel guilty for biases they did not consciously choose, but to build the awareness and accountability needed to make different choices going forward.

This means being willing to ask ourselves honest questions:

• Where did this assumption come from?
• How might it be affecting someone else?
• What would it look like to slow down and respond differently?

These questions can be explored individually, but they are most powerful in community, through dialogue, talking circles, trainings, and honest conversations where people share experiences and learn from one another. A great local example of this is through Spokane NAACP's Building Restorative Communities Initiative.

Restorative approaches also ask us to consider impact alongside intent. Even when a biased action is unintentional, the harm it causes is real. Acknowledging that harm, without defensiveness, is one of the most important steps in repair.

Ways to Work on Implicit Bias

Becoming aware of our biases is a lifelong practice, not a one-time exercise. Some concrete places to start:

• Pause and reflect on your first reaction to someone. Ask yourself honestly where that reaction comes from. Notice whether it is based on who the person actually is, or on an assumption you brought to the interaction.
• Slow down decisions. Taking more time in hiring, teaching, lending, or daily interactions creates space for deliberate thinking to override unconscious bias. Research consistently shows that quick, instinctive decisions are more vulnerable to bias than considered ones.
• Seek out different perspectives actively, not passively. Reading, listening to, and engaging with people whose experiences differ from your own builds new associations over time. This is not about consumption, it is about genuine relationship and curiosity.
• Use inclusive language. Ask for pronouns, avoid assumptions about family structure or identity, and speak with the same respect you would want extended to yourself.

Keep learning. Implicit bias is not something you fix once and move on from. It is something to notice, examine, and work on throughout your life, and the willingness to keep doing that work is itself an act of care for your community.

Moving Forward

Implicit bias is not about blame. It is about awareness, honesty, and growth. The harmful narratives we have examined throughout this challenge, the disinformation campaigns, the stereotypes reinforced through malinformation, the false stories that travel faster than the truth, do not disappear when we log off. They become part of the associations we carry. Examining those associations is one of the most direct ways we can interrupt the cycle.

Tomorrow we will look at how implicit bias often shows up in everyday interactions, in the form of microaggressions and their cumulative effects on individuals and communities.

If you or someone you know has been affected by a hate crime or bias incident in Washington State, the Washington State Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents Hotline offers guidance and support. You can find information and contact details at the Washington State Attorney General's Office website: atg.wa.gov.

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Yesterday we explored implicit bias, the unconscious associations we carry that shape how we perceive and respond to others. Today, we look at how those associations often surface in everyday interactions, in the form of microaggressions. Understanding microaggressions is inseparable from understanding implicit bias: one is the internal pattern, the other is how it shows up out loud.

What Are Microaggressions?

The term microaggression was first coined by psychiatrist Chester Pierce in the 1970s to describe the subtle, automatic put-downs directed at Black Americans in everyday life. Psychologist Derald Wing Sue, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, later expanded the framework significantly, defining microaggressions as "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to members of marginalized groups." His 2007 article in American Psychologist remains one of the most cited works on the subject.

Sue's framework identifies three distinct forms.

1. Microassaults are conscious and deliberate, closer to what most people recognize as overt bias.
2. Microinsults are communications that convey rudeness or insensitivity, often without the person realizing it.
3. Microinvalidations are perhaps the most subtle and the most common, comments or behaviors that exclude, negate, or dismiss someone's experiences and identity. "Where are you really from?" is a microinvalidation. So is expressing surprise at someone's competence, or complimenting someone by saying "You're so articulate," as though articulateness were unexpected.

What makes microaggressions particularly important to understand is their cumulative nature. A single comment may seem minor in isolation. But for people who experience them regularly, the accumulation of small slights creates a persistent and exhausting weight. Research by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues found that repeated exposure to microaggressions is associated with increased stress, anxiety, and feelings of isolation, affecting mental health, workplace satisfaction, and a person's sense of belonging over time.

The Connection to Harmful Narratives

Microaggressions do not arise in a vacuum. They are often the interpersonal expression of the same harmful narratives we examined in Days 1 through 4. When disinformation repeatedly portrays a community as less intelligent, less capable, or less trustworthy, those messages become the unconscious scripts people draw from in everyday interactions. When someone tells a Black colleague "You're so articulate," they are often, without realizing it, operating from a narrative that did not expect articulateness in the first place. Naming this connection matters because it shows that the work of combating harmful information and the work of addressing interpersonal racism are not separate. They are the same work at different scales.

How Microaggressions Show Up

Because this challenge is focused on racial justice, it is important to be specific about how microaggressions affect BIPOC communities while also acknowledging that microaggressions operate across many dimensions of identity including disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and class.

For BIPOC communities, microaggressions often take the form of comments that signal someone doesn't fully belong: "You speak English so well," "You don't sound Black," or questions that treat someone's racial or ethnic identity as exotic or surprising. They show up in assumptions about someone's role in a workplace, in being followed in a store, in having contributions talked over in a meeting. They appear in the classroom when a student of color is asked to speak on behalf of their entire community, as though individual people are interchangeable representatives of a group.

Microaggressions also intersect with other identities. Disabled people may hear "You don't look disabled" or be praised as "inspiring" simply for doing ordinary things, a form of microinvalidation that denies the fullness of their experience. LGBTQ+ people may be asked questions that assume heterosexual or cisgender norms. These experiences, while distinct, share a common thread: they communicate, however subtly, that some people are more fully at home in public life than others.

Microaggressions are also connected to larger systems of inequity. They reinforce ideas about who belongs and who does not, and over time those reinforced ideas shape opportunities, relationships, and access. They are not separate from structural racism, they are how structural racism lives in the body and in daily life.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach to microaggressions centers on listening and repairing harm, and it places responsibility on the person who caused the harm, not solely on the person who experienced it. This is an important distinction. It is not the job of the person who was hurt to educate, manage the emotions of, or reassure the person who caused harm. The work of repair belongs to the person who caused it.

In practice, a restorative response might begin with the person who caused harm simply pausing and listening, not defending, not explaining intent, not minimizing. Acknowledging impact is more important than clarifying intention. A response like "I hadn't thought about how that might land, thank you for telling me" is more restorative than "I didn't mean it that way." The distinction matters because, as we noted in Day 5, impact and intent are not the same thing. Harm caused without intent is still harm.

For people who witness microaggressions, a restorative approach might involve gently naming what was said, "I want to come back to that comment for a moment", or checking in with the person affected afterward. Bystander intervention doesn't require confrontation. Often the most powerful thing a bystander can do is simply make visible that they noticed.

Reflective Questions for Practice

Just like with implicit bias, awareness and practice can help reduce microaggressions. The below questions are not a checklist to complete once and set aside. They are meant to be returned to, especially in moments of discomfort or after an interaction that didn't feel quite right.

• Before speaking, pause and ask yourself: Could what I am about to say make someone feel excluded or reduced? Am I assuming something about this person based on how they look, sound, or identify?
• After an interaction, consider: How did that comment land? Am I listening to understand what happened, or am I focused on defending my intent? What might I do differently?
• Consider challenging stereotypes: Can I politely speak up when I hear a harmful comment? Can I offer a different perspective that doesn’t rely on stereotypes? How can I respond in a way that supports the person affected?
• In ongoing relationships and communities: Whose stories are missing from my reading, my social circles, my frame of reference? Are there patterns in my assumptions or language that keep showing up? What small, consistent changes can I make to be more present and more accountable?

Moving Forward

Microaggressions may feel small in the moment, but their effects accumulate. For people who experience them regularly, they are not small at all. They are the texture of daily life in spaces that were not fully designed with them in mind.

Over these two days, we have moved from the internal landscape of implicit bias to how it surfaces in everyday words and actions. These are not separate from the information ecosystem we explored in Days 1 through 4. The narratives that travel online, the disinformation campaigns that dehumanize communities, the malinformation that weaponizes truth, all of it shapes what we expect of people before we have ever met them. Addressing interpersonal racism means doing both kinds of work: examining the information we consume and the assumptions we carry.

Tomorrow the challenge continues. As you move through the rest of your day, we invite you to notice, without judgment and with curiosity, one moment where an assumption surfaced. That noticing is the beginning of change.

If you or someone you know has been affected by a hate crime or bias incident, the Washington State Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents Hotline offers guidance and support. Contact information is available through the Washington State Attorney General's Office at atg.wa.gov.

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Over the past two days we examined how racism operates between individuals, through the unconscious associations we carry and the everyday words and actions that reflect them. Today we zoom out. Unconscious assumptions and microaggressions do not exist in isolation. They take place within systems, housing, employment, education, healthcare, that have their own histories of exclusion built into their structures.

What are Structural Barriers?

Structural barriers refer to the ways that policies, institutions, and social structures, many of them created long ago, continue to produce unequal outcomes for people of color, even when no individual actor intends to discriminate. These barriers are distinct from interpersonal racism in that it does not require a biased person to perpetuate them. The structures themselves carry the inequity forward through documented policies, funding mechanisms, and institutional practices. 

It is also worth naming something we examined in Days 1 through 4: the narrative that obscures these structural barriers most effectively is one of the most durable myths in American public life. The idea that individual effort alone determines outcomes, the American Dream, has itself functioned as a form of harmful disinformation, a story that benefits those who hold structural power by attributing documented systemic failure to personal shortcoming. When people believe that anyone can succeed if they simply work hard enough, it becomes easier to ignore the structures that make that harder for some communities than for others. Examining these structural barriers means examining that narrative too.

Housing and Generational Wealth

One of the clearest examples of documented structural barriers in Spokane's own history is redlining. From the 1930s through the 1960s, the federal government and private lenders used maps to designate neighborhoods as acceptable or unacceptable for mortgage lending and those designations followed racial lines. Black families in Spokane, as in cities across the country, were systematically denied access to home loans in certain neighborhoods, limiting their ability to purchase property and build the generational wealth that homeownership makes possible. The effects did not end when redlining was outlawed. Neighborhoods that were redlined decades ago continue to show lower rates of homeownership, lower property values, and less access to well-funded schools today.

Women-led households have faced compounding barriers in housing as well, as shared by a 2023 article from the National League of Cities, including lower wages, limited access to credit, and the financial weight of caregiving responsibilities, challenges that intersect with race for women of color in particular.

Pay Gaps and Economic Inequality

Even when people have equivalent education and experience, people of color are consistently paid less than their white counterparts. According to the National Partnership for Women & Families' annual analysis, America's Women and the Wage Gap, Black women are paid significantly less than white non-Hispanic men for every dollar earned, with Hispanic women facing an even wider gap, disparities that compound over a lifetime of work into dramatically different levels of financial security and wealth accumulation.

Women are also more likely to work part-time or in lower-paying jobs due to caregiving responsibilities, compounding the long-term effects on earnings. These gaps are not explained by differences in effort, education, or ability. They are the result of systems, hiring practices, occupational segregation, and wage structures, that have historically undervalued the labor of people of color and women, and that continue to do so today.

Education Barriers

Schools in under-resourced neighborhoods often lack qualified teachers, updated materials, and enrichment programs, not because the students or families in those communities value education less, but because school funding in the United States has historically been tied to local property taxes. In communities where redlining and discriminatory lending practices suppressed property values and homeownership rates, that funding structure has produced persistently under-resourced schools. The connection is direct: housing discrimination created the conditions for educational inequality.

Students of color, girls of color in particular, and students from low-income families can face additional barriers within schools themselves such as being steered away from advanced coursework, discouraged from leadership opportunities, or held to lower expectations. These experiences are not separate from the unconscious assumptions and microaggressions examined in Days 5 and 6. They are how those patterns operate at an institutional scale.

Health and Economic Mobility

Health is deeply connected to economic opportunity, and access to health is not equally distributed. Communities facing structural barriers often have less access to healthcare, healthy food options, and safe living environments, a pattern sometimes called the social determinants of health. Poor health makes it harder to maintain steady employment, manage financial planning, and build a stable future, creating a cycle that compounds over time.

A December 2024 study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, titled Juggling to Stay Afloat: Debt and Health Under Financialization, found that people who are low-income and low-wealth, particularly people of color, are more likely to carry high-interest debt, creating a financial cycle that further limits long-term stability and opportunity. The study's findings reflect a broader pattern: economic precarity and health precarity reinforce each other, and communities of color bear a disproportionate share of both.

How These Systems Connect

These barriers do not operate independently. Housing discrimination affects access to well-funded schools, which affects educational attainment, which affects employment and income, which affects health, which affects the ability to build wealth and the cycle continues across generations. This is what makes these barriers structural: it is not one policy or one institution acting alone. It is the interlocking of multiple systems, each shaped by histories of exclusion, producing outcomes that look like individual failure when they are actually the result of documented policy and institutional design.

The harmful narratives that sustains these systems is equally interlocking. Narratives about who is hardworking, who is trustworthy, who belongs in certain neighborhoods or schools or professions. These are not neutral observations. They are stories that have been constructed, repeated, and amplified to make documented inequality appear natural and inevitable. Recognizing them as narratives, not facts, is part of what this challenge has been building toward.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach to these barriers means more than individual reflection, it means centering the voices of those most affected in the design of solutions. This is a meaningful distinction. Communities that have experienced housing discrimination, wage theft, educational neglect, and health disparities are not simply beneficiaries of solutions designed elsewhere. They are the people with the clearest understanding of what has caused harm and what repair actually requires.

In practice, this looks like:

• Community conversations where residents shape local policy rather than respond to it after the fact.
• Advocacy for fair housing, equitable school funding, and equal pay that is led by the communities most affected.
• Programs that give access to loans, scholarships, childcare, job training, and healthcare designed in partnership with the people they are meant to serve, not just delivered to them.

Moving Forward

Understanding how documented barriers shape opportunity means moving away from explanations that locate the problem in individuals and toward the systems and histories that shape what is possible for different communities. That shift is not about absolution or blame. It is about accuracy.

Here are some concrete ways to deepen this work locally.

• Explore redlining history. The Mapping Inequality project draws on digitized federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation maps from the 30s and 40s, making the documented geography of lending discrimination visible.
• Learn about local organizations doing the work. This includes working on housing equity, wage fairness, and educational access, many of which have appeared in the resource sections of earlier days in this Challenge.
• Pay attention to local data. Spokane's own community indicators, school funding reports, and housing statistics tell the story of how historical barriers continue to shape present-day outcomes.
• Advocate for change. Share what you learn with friends, family, and neighbors. Ask local leaders to address gaps in housing, education, and employment.

By taking action, we can help make Spokane a place where everyone has a fair chance to succeed.

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If you have...

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5 Minutes	and	15 Minutes	and	1 Hour
	and		and
CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE showing WA state's gender wag gap widening.	and	CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE titled, Native Americans and the elusive American Dream.	and	CHECK OUT THIS REPORT on Spokane’s 2025 Racially Disparate Impacts Analysis.

Yesterday we examined how systems, housing, employment, education, healthcare, create structural barriers that fall unevenly along lines of race, gender, and class. Today, we add a framework for understanding how those lines interact. Because people do not experience only one aspect of their identity at a time and the barriers they face rarely operate along only one axis.

What is Intersectionality?

The term intersectionality was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 in her groundbreaking paper "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex." She described how race and gender overlapped in the experiences of Black women in ways that existing legal frameworks failed to recognize. Today, intersectionality is widely used across public health, education, social work, and policy to better understand how people with multiple identities experience compounded barriers.

Intersectionality was born from the specific experiences of Black women, and that origin matters. It is a framework rooted in racial justice, one that insists on the fullness and complexity of people's lives rather than reducing them to a single dimension. As this challenge expands its lens today to include disability, sexual orientation, and other identities, it does so through that lens: understanding that racism rarely operates in isolation, and that the most marginalized members of any community are often those navigating multiple forms of exclusion at once.

Overlapping Barriers in Everyday Life

The compounding effects of intersecting identities show up concretely across healthcare, safety, and access to services.

Healthcare Access for People of Color with Disabilities

Black and Hispanic adults living with disabilities face greater barriers to healthcare than white adults with disabilities. Research published through the National Institutes of Health has found that this population reports higher rates of unmet healthcare needs, including difficulty accessing quality care, insurance barriers, and communication challenges with providers. The barriers are not simply additive, being both a person of color and a person with a disability in a healthcare system that was largely designed around neither creates challenges that are qualitatively different from facing either barrier alone.

Compounding Pressures for LGBTQ+ Youth of Color

LGBTQ+ youth of color face a similar compounding of pressures. A study published in the National Institutes of Health found that this population experiences stigma related to both their racial identity and their sexual or gender identity, increasing their risk for stress, mental health challenges, and exposure to violence. Importantly, the study also examined resilience, the ways young people draw on their intersecting identities as sources of strength, not only as sources of burden. Systems designed to support LGBTQ+ youth may not account for racial dynamics, while systems designed to support youth of color may not account for LGBTQ+ experiences, leaving those who navigate both without adequate support in either.

Women, LGBTQ+ Adults, and Barriers to Basic Services

LGBT adults, and particularly women who are also LGBTQ+ or living with a disability, face multiple overlapping barriers to accessing basic services including transportation, healthcare, and safe housing. A 2024 KFF report that included a survey on racism, discrimination, and health, documented these compounding disparities in detail, finding that intersecting identities consistently produced greater barriers than any single identity dimension would predict.

Single Parents Navigating Intersecting Constraints

Single parents, especially single mothers of color or those living with disabilities, often navigate limited childcare, transportation, and income simultaneously. When racial or gender bias is layered on top of those practical constraints, the cumulative weight can become significant, not because any one barrier is insurmountable, but because the combination leaves little margin for error and few pathways for relief.

Accessibility Beyond the Physical 

Intersectionality also asks us to examine how services and spaces are designed and for whom.

What Accessibility Really Includes

Accessibility is not just about physical ramps or curb cuts, though those matter enormously. True accessibility also means asking:

• Does public transit reach the neighborhoods where people of color are most concentrated?
• Are materials available in multiple languages?
• Do meeting times account for people who work multiple jobs or provide care for family members?
• Do the assumptions built into program design reflect the full range of people those programs are meant to serve?

When Systems Leave People Out

When systems are designed without considering the full range of human identities and experiences, needs go unmet, not by accident, but because the people whose needs were not considered were not in the room when the design decisions were made. This is where intersectionality and the restorative principle of centering affected voices connect most directly. Inaccessibility is often the result of whose knowledge and experience is treated as the default.

How Harmful Narratives Contribute to Erasure

The harmful narratives examined in Days 1 through 4 play a role here as well. Disinformation and misleading coverage of communities of color rarely account for intersecting identities. Coverage tends to treat communities as monolithic, "the Black community," "the immigrant community", erasing the experiences of:

• LGBTQ+ people of color
• Disabled people of color
• Undocumented women of color
• Others who navigate multiple forms of marginalization at once

That erasure is itself a form of harm, one that makes it harder for those communities to be seen, counted, and served.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach to intersectionality means more than acknowledging that people hold multiple identities. It means actively designing processes, programs, and spaces so that people navigating the most complex combinations of barriers can actually participate, not just in theory, but in practice.

This looks like:

• Inviting community members who navigate multiple barriers into planning conversations early, not as an afterthought, and building in the conditions that make participation possible: accessible locations, multiple language options, childcare, flexible timing, and compensation for people's time and expertise.
• It means co-designing programs with the people who face the barriers rather than on their behalf, and being willing to hear that the solutions designed without those voices are incomplete.
• It also means asking, at every stage of program design and community engagement: who is missing from this conversation, and why? That question is not rhetorical. It requires looking at who is present, examining what structural, practical, or cultural factors might be keeping others away, and doing the work to address those factors rather than treating absence as indifference.

In Spokane, organizations including Mujeres in Action, Asians for Collective Liberation, Latinos en Spokane, Manzanita House, the American Indian Community Center, and Nuestras Raíces work with communities that navigate intersecting barriers of race, immigration status, language, and economic precarity. Their work reflects the intersectional principle in practice: meeting people where they are, in the fullness of their identities and circumstances, rather than asking them to fit a single-axis framework.

Moving Forward

Understanding intersectionality starts with a willingness to hold complexity. To resist the urge to simplify people's experiences into a single story and to stay curious about what a single-axis view might be missing. It means asking not just "how does racism affect this community?" but "how does racism interact with gender, disability, sexual orientation, and class to shape different people's experiences within that community differently?"

Some concrete ways to carry this forward:

• when you encounter data about a community, ask whether it is disaggregated, broken down by multiple identity dimensions, or whether it treats the community as a single group.
• When you are involved in planning or advocacy, ask who is not in the room and what it would take to include them.
• When you encounter a policy or program that is meant to serve a broad community, ask whether it has been designed with the most marginalized members of that community in mind, or with the most visible and easiest-to-reach members.

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If you have...

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5 Minutes	and	10 Minutes	and	20 Minutes
	and		and
CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE exploring how race, class, and gender influence dreams for the future.	and	CHECK OUT THIS REPORT examining intersecting realities for women and girls in Spokane.	and	CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO of Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term, intersectionality.

Yesterday we examined intersectionality, the framework that helps us understand how multiple aspects of identity combine to shape people's experiences.

Today, we apply that lens to one of the most consequential areas of American public life: the criminal justice system. Because the story of how race and crime became linked in the American imagination is not simply a history of policy. It is a history of deliberate disinformation, of false narratives constructed, circulated, and amplified to justify the targeting of communities of color, to concentrate power, and to make structural violence appear natural and necessary.

This is where the information literacy work of Days 1 through 4 meets the systemic analysis of Days 7 and 8. The harmful narratives that sustain racial criminalization are not accidental. They were built.

How Narratives About Race and Crime Are Constructed

One of the earliest and most consequential pieces of disinformation in American history is the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, which portrayed Black men as violent predators threatening white women and society, a narrative used directly to justify lynching, voter suppression, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The film was screened at the White House. It was not fringe content. It was mainstreamed disinformation, and its effects on public perception and policy were devastating and long-lasting.

That pattern, the deliberate construction and amplification of false narratives about Black and Brown criminality to justify exclusion, violence, and control, has repeated across American history. Key examples include:

• The "super predator" myth of the 1990s, coined by political scientist John DiIulio and amplified by politicians of both parties, predicted a generation of remorseless young Black criminals. The prediction was false. The policy response: mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, and trying children as adults was real and catastrophic.
• The Willie Horton campaign of 1988 used a single case of a Black man's violent crime to generate fear that shaped a presidential election and a generation of criminal justice policy.

These are not fringe examples. They are how disinformation functions at scale in the criminal justice context: a false or distorted narrative is introduced, amplified through media and political channels, and translated into policy before the evidence can catch up.

Understanding this pattern is not separate from the work of recognizing misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation examined in Days 1 through 4. It is the same work applied to one of the most consequential domains in American life.

The Historical Roots of Racial Criminalization

How we think about crime in the United States did not happen by accident. It has a long and documented history of deliberately tying race and criminality together.

Convict Leasing and the Black Codes

Following the end of slavery, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime. That exception created the legal foundation for convict leasing, a system in which imprisoned people, overwhelmingly Black, were leased to private businesses and landowners to perform forced labor under brutal conditions.

Black Codes enacted in 1865 made this system possible by criminalizing everyday behavior such as unemployment, gathering in groups, and being outside after dark which specifically targeting newly freed Black people and funneling them into the convict leasing system. This was not an unintended consequence of emancipation. It was a deliberate mechanism for maintaining the economic and social control that slavery had previously enforced.

Jim Crow and the War on Drugs

Jim Crow laws from 1877 through the 1960s codified racial segregation and unequal treatment under the law across virtually every domain of public life, including the justice system. The criminal codes of the Jim Crow era were not neutral. They were tools of racial control, enforced with extraordinary violence and with the full sanction of state power.

The War on Drugs, launched in the 1970s and intensifying through the 1980s and 1990s, produced dramatically higher arrest and incarceration rates for Black and Brown communities despite research consistently showing that drug use rates are similar across racial groups. What is especially important to understand is that this disparity was not simply an unintended outcome. John Ehrlichman, a domestic policy adviser to President Nixon, later admitted that the War on Drugs was deliberately designed to target Black communities and the anti-war left in order to disrupt those communities politically by associating them with drugs and crime. That admission matters because it names the War on Drugs not as a policy that went wrong, but as a policy that worked exactly as intended.

Violence Against Mexican and Mexican American Communities

Mexican and Mexican American communities faced systemic over-policing and racial criminalization throughout the early 20th century, and in some cases outright state-sanctioned violence:

• During La Matanza (1910–1920), hundreds of people of Mexican descent were killed by Texas law enforcement officials and vigilantes acting with near-total impunity.
• The Porvenir Massacre of 1918 saw Texas Rangers and ranchers execute 15 unarmed Mexican men and boys without investigation or prosecution.
• During the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, white servicemen attacked Latino youth in Los Angeles while police stood by or arrested the victims rather than their attackers.

What connects these events is not simply racial bias, but the use of law enforcement power, and the absence of accountability, as tools of racial control. Much of this history remains absent from mainstream American education, which is itself a form of erasure.

Criminalization and Exclusion of Asian Americans

Asian Americans have faced a long and documented history of racial criminalization, exclusion, and targeted violence, much of it sustained by deliberate disinformation campaigns portraying Asian immigrants as inherently dangerous. Key moments include:

• The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first U.S. law to explicitly prohibit immigration based on race or nationality, denied Chinese residents the right to naturalization and was preceded by laws making it impossible for Chinese immigrants to testify in court against their attackers.
• Anti-Chinese violence in Washington Territory in the 1880s produced massacres and organized expulsions in Tacoma, Seattle, and mining communities across the region, carried out with the participation of civic leaders and without a single conviction.
• Japanese American incarceration during World War II saw over 120,000 people, more than two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, imprisoned by their own government based solely on race, without evidence, charges, or hearings. A congressional commission later confirmed the "military necessity" justification was false. No Japanese American was ever convicted of espionage or sabotage. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 issued a formal apology and reparations.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans experienced a sharp rise in harassment and violence fueled by political rhetoric deliberately attaching the virus to Asian identity, the same disinformation dynamic examined in Day 2, with measurable real-world consequences for safety and belonging.

Criminalization of Indigenous Communities in the Inland Northwest

In the Inland Northwest specifically, Indigenous communities have faced criminalization through systems including the boarding school era, forced removal, and ongoing overrepresentation in the criminal justice system:

• A 2025 collaborative investigation published by The Imprint found that for thirty years, Native American children in Washington State have been far more likely to be arrested and jailed than white children and that the gap has worsened over time. Native American youth are now more than 4.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers statewide, with disparities particularly pronounced for nonviolent offenses.
• In Spokane specifically, a report commissioned by the Spokane Police Department found that Native American subjects are 49% more likely to have force used against them during an arrest than white subjects.
• Spokane Trends data documents persistent racial disparities in the Spokane County jail population, with Native Americans consistently overrepresented relative to their share of the county population.

These disparities reflect not a difference in behavior but, as researchers and advocates consistently note, the accumulated weight of systems designed to target and control.

What connects these events across more than a century is the role of deliberately constructed narrative. Disinformation was deployed to justify exclusion, violence, and state control, with the communities targeted bearing the full weight of harm while those responsible faced little or no accountability.

Intersecting Identities, Compounding Criminalization

Building on yesterday's intersectionality framework, it is important to name that criminalization does not operate along a single axis. Those who hold multiple marginalized identities often face the most severe consequences.

LGBTQ+ People and the Criminal Justice System

LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented at every stage of the criminal justice system, from juvenile justice through parole, compared to straight and cisgender people. This overrepresentation reflects the historical criminalization of same-sex relationships and gender nonconformity, as well as ongoing bias at every decision point in the system. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, LGBTQ+ people face:

• Higher rates of incarceration
• Greater likelihood of experiencing discrimination while incarcerated
• Harsher conditions and mistreatment during incarceration

Transgender People, Especially Transgender People of Color

Transgender people, and particularly transgender people of color, face some of the most severe consequences of this intersection:

• They are frequently housed in facilities that do not align with their gender identity, where they face disproportionate rates of violence and abuse.
• A report by Solitary Watch found that transgender people are among those most likely to be placed in solitary confinement which is sometimes framed as protective isolation, but also used as punishment for gender expression, for filing grievances, or for forming personal relationships.
• The United Nations considers solitary confinement beyond 15 days to constitute torture. More than 120,000 people in the United States are currently held in solitary in prisons and jails.

The overrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people, and particularly transgender people of color, in the criminal justice system is not explained by behavior. It is explained by the same pattern that has structured racial criminalization throughout American history: bias, fear, and the exercise of power against those perceived as outside social norms.

A Restorative Lens

Restorative justice offers a fundamentally different framework, one focused on repairing harm and rebuilding community rather than punishment alone.

Where the punitive model asks "what rule was broken and what is the punishment?", the restorative model asks "what harm was done, who was affected, and what would repair look like?"

In practice, restorative justice can include:

• Restorative circles where those affected by harm come together to discuss what happened and what healing might look like
• Community accountability processes that bring together those who have caused harm and those who have been harmed
• Support programs that address root causes through education, employment, mental health care, and housing rather than incarceration

Restorative justice does not mean the absence of accountability. It means redefining what accountability can look like when the goal is healing rather than punishment and when the system administering punishment has its own history of racialized harm.

Local and Statewide Organizations Doing This Work

• In Spokane, Spokane Community Against Racism (SCAR) has documented racial disparities in the local criminal justice system and advocated for community-based alternatives to incarceration and policing.
• The Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (PJALS) has organized directly around criminal justice reform, including the successful campaign against the expansion of the Spokane County Jail in 2023.
• The Washington State Racial Justice Consortium, established by the state Supreme Court, works to address racism within Washington's judicial systems.

Moving Forward

Understanding how false narratives about race and crime were constructed, and how they continue to circulate, is one of the most direct applications of the information literacy work that opened this Challenge. When you encounter a news story about crime, the questions from Days 1 through 4 apply directly:

• Who is being named?
• Who is left unnamed?
• Whose behavior is described as criminal and whose is not?
• Who benefits from this framing?
• What history is being omitted?

Ways to deepen this work locally:

• Explore the racial disparity data in Spokane County's own criminal justice system: arrest rates, incarceration rates, and use of force records are public documents.
• Learn about Washington State's ongoing criminal justice reform efforts, including bail reform, sentencing reform, and community alternatives to policing.
• Support organizations in Spokane working at the intersection of racial justice and criminal justice reform, several of which have been named throughout this Challenge.

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If you have...

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5 Minutes	and	10 Minutes	and	30 Minutes
	and		and
CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE  reflecting high-profile incidents of hate in the region.	and	CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE  showing how race is tied to criminality in the U.S.	and	CHECK OUT THIS JOURNAL of Black residents recounting segregation in Spokane.

Ten days ago this Challenge began with a question about information: how does what we see, read, and hear shape what we believe? Today, on the final day, we return to that question, but now with the full weight of everything examined along the way.

We have looked at how harmful information spreads, how bias operates between individuals, how systems have been built to exclude and control, how intersecting identities compound those experiences, and how false narratives have shaped criminal justice. All of it runs through media. The stories and images we encounter in movies, television, news, and social media are not neutral. They are the primary channel through which many of the narratives this challenge has examined are constructed, circulated, and reinforced.

Media representation is where information literacy, racial justice, and everyday life converge.

How Media Shapes What We Believe

When certain communities are consistently left out of stories, their absence sends a message. When they are consistently portrayed in limited or harmful ways, that sends a message too. Research has consistently shown that repeated exposure to particular portrayals of who is dangerous, who is capable, who belongs in positions of power, and who is worthy of sympathy shapes how audiences think about those groups in real life, affecting how people are treated in schools and workplaces and how systems respond to entire communities.

The connection to Day 9 is direct. One of the most well-documented patterns in American media is the racialized coverage of crime. A 2021 report by the Equal Justice Initiative found mugshots were used in coverage of 45% of cases involving Black people accused of crimes, compared to only 8% of cases involving white defendants, and that white victims were nearly four times more likely to be presented in photos with friends and family than Black victims of crime. The framing of who is humanized and who is not, who receives a name, a school portrait, or a description of their family is not incidental. It is a pattern with documented consequences for how communities are perceived and how juries, judges, and the public respond.

A 2022 peer-reviewed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by researchers from Stanford, Duke, and the University of Chicago, analyzed nearly 100,000 crime-related posts from close to 14,000 law enforcement Facebook pages. They found that Facebook users were exposed to posts that overrepresented Black suspects by 25 percentage points relative to local arrest rates and that this overexposure occurred across crime types and geographic regions. Law enforcement agencies are not simply reporting crime. Through their social media choices, they are actively shaping the public's understanding of who commits it.

Why Representation Matters

The inverse of harmful representation is meaningful representation and its effects are equally real.

When people see themselves portrayed as doctors, leaders, parents, and heroes, it expands what they and others believe is possible. Research by the Trevor Project has found that LGBTQ+ young people who have access to spaces, including media, where they feel safe, understood, and authentically represented have better mental health outcomes and lower rates of suicidal ideation. Representation is not simply a matter of fairness. For many young people navigating their identities in environments that do not affirm them, it is a matter of survival.

A sponsored report from the Seattle Times in partnership with Sesame Workshop found that diverse representation in early childhood media directly supports children's sense of self-worth and their capacity to develop empathy for others, making representation important from the earliest years of development.

The demand for more diverse representation is real and growing, while the industry has been slow and uneven in response. UCLA's 2025 Hollywood Diversity Report found that 2024 saw a significant reversal of progress, BIPOC lost ground in all key Hollywood employment areas including leads, directors, writers, and total actors in theatrical film. As the report's co-founder noted, when the industry retreats from diversity it loses not just opportunity but revenue: films with population-representative casts consistently outperformed less diverse films at the box office. The industry is leaving both money and human dignity on the table.

Media Representation in Spokane

Media representation is not only a national or Hollywood question. It is a local one. Who tells stories about Spokane's communities of color matters. What narratives dominate local news coverage of neighborhoods, schools, crime, and policy shapes how residents understand their city and each other.

The Black Lens, Spokane's Black community newspaper, now published by Comma, a nonprofit community journalism lab, is a direct response to this gap. It exists because mainstream coverage has historically left Black Spokane residents' stories undertold, misrepresented, or absent. Supporting local community journalism that centers the voices and experiences of communities too often overlooked by mainstream media is one of the most concrete ways to act on what this challenge has examined.

The Northwest Alliance for Media Literacy, based at Gonzaga University in Spokane, provides community education on exactly these questions, helping people of all ages think critically about the media they consume and the messages embedded in it. Their work is a local resource for anyone who wants to continue building the skills this challenge has introduced.

A Restorative Lens

A restorative approach to media means slowing down and bringing critical questions to what we consume rather than absorbing it passively. It means asking:

• Which communities in this story have been stereotyped or overlooked, and how does that shape our understanding of them?
• Whose voices are missing, and how might the story change if they were telling it themselves?
• What assumptions is this media reinforcing, and what would it look like to question them?

It also means making active choices. Seeking out stories told by and for the communities they represent. Supporting local media that reflects the full complexity of Spokane's community. Noticing when coverage of crime, poverty, or public safety uses language and imagery that dehumanizes some people while humanizing others and naming that pattern when you see it.

Bringing these questions to the media we consume is itself a restorative act, one that creates space for more honest, complete, and human storytelling.

Moving Forward 

As you engage with various media, pay attention to who is represented and who is left out. Seek out stories that portray people in honest, complex, and multifaceted ways. Support local storytellers and community media that elevate voices too often overlooked. The choices we make as audiences help shape the kind of media landscape we all share.

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If you have...

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5 Minutes	and	10 Minutes	and	20 Minutes
	and		and
CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE  sharing how the media coverage of crime differs by race.	and	CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE  The Seattle Times shares diverse media representation impacts early learning.	and	EXPLORE THIS MEDIA The Black Lens amplifies Black voices, shares stories, and drives change for community empowerment here in Spokane.

Reflecting on Ten Days of Learning

We have reached the completion of YWCA Spokane's 2026 Racial Justice Challenge but it is not an ending. It is an invitation to keep going.

Over the past ten days, we have explored how information, media, and bias shape the way we see the world and interact with each other. Each topic built on the last, and together they paint a picture of how deeply interconnected these issues are in our daily lives.

We began by examining misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation and how false, misleading, or weaponized information spreads, sometimes by accident and sometimes by design, affecting what we believe, who we trust, and the choices we make. We looked at the role social media plays in accelerating that spread, particularly when content is emotional, surprising, or controversial, and how algorithms shape what we see in ways that can reinforce rather than challenge what we already believe.

From there, we turned inward. Implicit biases, the unconscious attitudes and stereotypes we carry, shape how we perceive others, often without our realizing it. These biases surface in everyday words and actions known as microaggressions, which may seem small in the moment but carry real weight over time, reinforcing broader patterns of inequity. Examining those patterns honestly, without shame but with accountability, is part of what restorative practice asks of us.

We explored the systemic barriers that make it harder for many communities to access opportunity in housing, employment, education, and healthcare, barriers that are not random, but reflect systems deliberately built over time. The concept of intersectionality helped us understand how race, gender, ability, class, and other aspects of identity combine to create experiences that cannot be understood by looking at any single factor alone. The history of racialized criminalization showed us how false narratives were constructed and institutionalized, and how those narratives continue to shape policy, policing, and public perception today. And media representation showed us how the stories we consume every day either challenge or reinforce all of the above.

None of this is purely historical. The disinformation campaigns of the past are the racialized crime coverage of the present. The redlining of the mid-20th century is the housing disparity data of today. The boarding school era's forced erasure of Indigenous identity is the intergenerational trauma visible in current criminal justice statistics. These are living systems, and understanding them is the foundation for changing them.

Throughout all of it, a restorative thread ran through each day: the importance of listening, reflection, and accountability over blame. Awareness and critical thinking are not endpoints, they are the beginning of more thoughtful engagement with the world around us.

What's Next

The challenge may be over, but the learning does not have to stop. We hope the past ten days have offered you new perspectives, useful tools, and moments of genuine reflection that you can carry into your daily life.

The real impact of this work shows up in small moments: a conversation you choose to have, an assumption you pause to question, a story you listen to more carefully. As you move forward, carry the questions. When you encounter information, ask who created it, why it is being shared, and who it harms or helps. When you encounter a story about a community, ask whose voices shaped it and whose are missing. When you see a gap between what you have learned in this challenge and how the world around you is operating, that gap is where the work lives.

Here are a few ways to stay connected and keep the momentum going:

• Complete Our Post-Challenge Survey Let us know what this experience meant to you. Your feedback directly shapes how we design this series each year and helps us understand the difference it is making in our community. Post-Challenge Survey
• Join Our Live Debrief — Wednesday, May 27th, Noon–1:00 pm We invite you to join a virtual, facilitated debrief session where participants can gather to share thoughts, feelings, and reflections together. This is a guided, supportive discussion held as a brave space for honest and meaningful dialogue. Come as you are. Register Here
• Support YWCA Spokane If this challenge has been valuable to you and you would like to help us continue offering it each year, please consider making a financial contribution to YWCA Spokane. Your generosity sustains this work and so much more. Give Today

Thank you for showing up and being part of the 2026 Racial Justice Challenge. It is because of participants like you that this work continues to grow and Spokane moves closer to the community we are all working to build together.