by Althea Need Kaminske

It has been difficult to watch the news in the U.S. this past week, to say the least. In the midst of a global pandemic a recent string of racially motivated incidents, most notably the murder of George Floyd, has led to nation-wide protests. These protests have been met with force by militarized police forces and journalists have been shot at and arrested. Many of my white colleagues have expressed their shock and dismay at the current state of our country. “Why does this keep happening? What can we do?” one colleague asked in an email to faculty and staff. This is my response to my colleague.

We Need to Educate Ourselves

These issues are not new and people have been writing about them and studying them for a long time. There are so many books and articles written about understanding race and racism in America, specifically about the experience of black students and teachers. 

As educators, we need to understand how racism is harming our students. Our advice and recommendations from the research from cognitive psychology presupposes that students are being treated fairly and that they have equal access to the resources they need. For many black students that simply is not true. If you implement retrieval practice and spacing in the classroom, what good does that do if students aren’t in the classroom because they are being expelled or suspended at higher rates than their peers (1)? We recommend that students actively participate in the classroom by asking questions and elaborating on material. But that advice doesn’t work well for students whose questions are perceived as disruptive and disrespectful (2, 3). In this global pandemic we are all dealing with the new reality and demands of online teaching, but COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting certain groups, particularly black Americans. We can improve and streamline online teaching, but that is hollow comfort for our students who are losing family members.

Understanding the history of racism in America can help explain the gross inequities in the American education system. Funding for education in America is tied to local property taxes. Therefore, school districts in poorer neighborhoods have fewer resources than school districts with affluent neighborhoods. While money does not necessarily equate to better education, there is evidence of a widening achievement gap between rich and poor (4). Redlining policies that were put in place in the 1930s, and persisted through the 1960s, segregated neighborhoods by refusing to insure mortgages in and around Black neighborhoods (5). The equity and stability that comes from home ownership was explicitly denied to Americans based on their race, disrupting black Americans’ ability to generate wealth. Not only were generations of black Americans blocked from owning homes, this also contributed to greater segregation. Ensuring that black neighborhoods stayed black and stayed poor, while allowing white people from white neighborhoods to move more fluidly between low and high-income areas (6). This has had long lasting effects and contributed to the segregation of public school systems today, which are more segregated than they were in 1980 (7). 

We Need to Confront Our Biases and Understand Where they Come From

We need to come to terms with our own implicit bias. Implicit bias refers to the unconscious bias and preferences we hold about certain groups. Whether it’s race, gender, or occupation, we all have biases that we often are not aware of (We have gathered several resources on understanding and teaching about implicit bias here and here). This is a disturbing thought. The unconscious nature of implicit bias means that we are not in control. That years of social experience and programming can undermine our best intentions to treat people fairly. 

It is important to understand the complicated and nuanced ways that racism seeps into our everyday lives. I believe that understanding the psychological mechanisms behind implicit bias can empower us to make positive change. By understanding how implicit bias works, I can take active steps to counteract it. However, if we only cite implicit bias when we talk about racism then we imply that everyone is well-meaning and only accidentally, unconsciously racist. It does not address explicit racism and bias. The protests in Charlottesville in 2017 were very explicitly about white supremacy. We cannot assume that overt, explicit racism is over and that we only have the subtle, implicit racism to deal with.

Biases and prejudices don’t come out of thin air. There is a long and pervasive history in the US of othering, particularly of othering black Americans. “Othering” refers to portraying a group of people as a group distinct and separate from the in-group. In-group/out-group behavior is studied extensively in social psychology and sociology. Once a group is labeled as “other” we view that group as homogeneous and potentially threatening to our in-group. I.e., “They’re all the same!”. This post from sociologist Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos explains otherness in much greater detail.

We Need to Actively Promote An Inclusive Classroom with Best Practices for Diverse/Multicultural Education

We can help our students by using best practices in the classroom. The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) has resources on evidence-based best practices. One of the shockingly simple things you can do to help your black students build positive academic identities is just get to know them. Build relationships with them and connect the material to their lives (8, 9, 10, 11). According to NAME, “...students of color can learn to connect their own knowledge and sense of purpose with challenging academic skills and concepts when the curriculum and pedagogy explicitly build on their experiences and cultural frames of references from their lives outside of school”. As a cognitive psychologist this seems an awful lot like building on pre-existing schemas and providing concrete examples; strategies that help all students. However, if you are a white teacher this is something that is easier to do for your white students - who you likely share similar life experiences and cultural frames of reference with - than for your black students who have probably had different experiences than you. By taking the time to get to know your students you can better understand how to connect the material to their lives. 

Another best practice is to work with student leaders who have the power to influence their peers to see the value in learning. When students don’t have a strong academic identity it can be difficult for them to see the value in learning. It can be frustrating to teach students who seemingly have little to no interest in learning. Who do not see the value in learning what we are teaching. In his book, “Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There”, Milner (11) suggests that rather than struggle against these students, we should identify the natural leaders among those students and work with them to help them realize the value of learning so that they can, in turn, help other students see the value in it as well. Milner’s book comes highly recommended - see this review of it by Jennifer Gonzalez over at Cult of Pedagogy. 

We Need to Advocate for Better Representation and More Inclusive Hiring Practices

If your institution has trouble hiring and retaining black academics there is no time like the present to ask yourself why. What are the barriers in your field or institution for black academics? As every publication in higher education keeps reminding us, we currently have more Ph.D.s than jobs for Ph.D.s in academia (though there might be a “slight dip” helping to stem the tide of unemployed Ph.D.s). We should be spoiled for choice when it comes to hiring. But only roughly 5% of these Ph.Ds are being awarded to black people (12). There are a number of reasons why black students chose not to persist to graduate programs, and ultimately into the professoriate. 

In research fields, one way to combat this is to actively promote black students so that they gain experience and exposure. If you supervise student research and you do not work with black students ask yourself why. After my first few years as a professor I was supervising several very talented and motivated students who all happened to be men. This did not sit well with me. Psychology happens to be a female dominated field, at least at the undergraduate level. I also feel particularly strongly about promoting women in the sciences. So why was I only working with men? Where were all the women? It occurred to me that I was being very passive in my recruitment of student researchers. I simply accepted students who approached me about doing research. This gaffe was particularly embarrassing since I know how shy and hesitant I was as an undergraduate despite being well-qualified. After that realization I started actively recruiting student researchers. At the end of the semester I sent an email to students who did particularly well in my class to let them know that they did well and that if they were interested I would be happy to do research with them. The change in the makeup of my research assistants was dramatic. Now my lab is almost entirely composed of women, many of them women of color. 

As much as I would like to take total credit for this transformation in my lab, it was not my one email alone that convinced students to join my lab. The same semester I decided to start actively recruited I was approached by one of my top students about doing research. She had gotten advice to get involved in research early and wanted to know more about how to do it. She was a black woman who was also very active in other clubs and activities on campus, and a role model for other students. When I asked my student researchers why they wanted to get involved with research several of them said it was this student’s passion and enthusiasm for research that got them interested. Representation matters. These students saw someone like themselves, someone they could relate to, being involved in research and that opened up the possibility to them.

Beyond promoting black students, we also need to be promoting black colleagues and asking what we can do to make more supportive and inclusive environments. Several of my colleagues have said they want to hire more diverse faculty in their departments, but can’t seem to find any applicants of color in their field. Our job postings say that we believe in diversity and that we want to hire people from all backgrounds - but only people from certain backgrounds are applying. Why? How are we building a supportive and inclusive environment on and off campuses? How is that being communicated to the outside world so that a potential applicant would feel comfortable applying? Are we actively recruiting and seeking out black academics? 

Repeat.

We will not fix these problems overnight. We cannot attend one workshop on diversity and think that we have now become experts. We cannot check off best practices on a list and claim to solve racism in the classroom. We cannot hire one black faculty member and say that we have solved representation in our field. We need to commit to continuing to educate ourselves and to continue to listen to our students and colleagues about the issues that affect them. We need to know that we will make mistakes and that we can learn from those mistakes to do better. 

References

(1) U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. (2014). Civil rights data collection: Data snapshot (School discipline; Issue Brief No. 1). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.

(2). Scott, T. M., Gage, N., Hirn, R., & Han, H. (2019). Teacher and student race as a predictor for negative feedback during instruction. School Psychology, 34(1), 22-31.

(3) Blake, J. J., Butler, B. R., Lewis, C. W., & Darensbourg, A. (2011). Unmasking the inequitable discipline experiences of urban black girls: Implications for urban educational stakeholders. Urban Review, 43, 90-106

(4) Reardon, S. F. (2013). The widening income achievement gap. Educational Leadership, 70(8), 10-16.

(5) Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law. Liverright.

(6) Roithmayr, D. (2014). Reproducing Racism: How everyday choices lock in white advantage. NYU Press.

(7) Kaestle, C. F. (2016). Federalism and inequality in education: What can history tell us?, inKirsch I., Braun, H. (eds) The Dynamics of Opportunity in America (pp 35-96). Springer, Cham.

(8) Peterson, D. S. (2014). A culturally responsive alternative to “drill and kill” literacy strategies. Multicultural Perspectives 16(4): 234-239. 

(9) Adjapong, E. S., & Endim, C. (2015). Rethinking pedagogy in urban spaces: Implementing hip-hop pedagogy in the urban science classroom. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, 11: 66–77. 

(10) Bishop, R., Ladwig, J., & Berryman, M. (2014). The centrality of relationships for pedagogy: The whanaugatanga thesis. American Educational Research Journal, online

(11) Milner, H. R. (2010). Start where you are, but don’t stay there: Understanding diversity, opportunity gaps, and teaching in today’s classrooms. Harvard Education Press.

(12) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2018). Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2017. Alexandria, VA. National Science Foundation