3.1: Conclusion
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- Susan Rahman, Prateek Sunder, and Dahmitra Jackson
- CC ECHO
"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"
-Audre Lorde
Overview
As illustrated in the preceding sections, higher education is not free of the social ills that plague society at large. To assume that the strictures of culture would not be a contributing factor to the development and evolution of our higher educational systems would be at best,naive. While education has long been central to the promise of this nation, our system has never been designed to promote equitable opportunities that all of us deserve (Cantor et al.,2021). Reckoning with this past does not leave us without recourse for our future; however, nor does it diminish the incredible accomplishments made in pursuit of higher learning. It merely gives us an opportunity to grow and improve from where we are now. We have a chance to design an academy that affords all of its participants equitable access. In these times of great social upheaval, we are required to make radical change on multiple fronts, including as a nation and as a planet, thus, the commitment to restructure higher education is only one piece of a larger evolution.
In the United States, privileged whites have historically been able to take time to pursue educational endeavors in part due to having servants or slaves to perform all other activities of daily life. These folks went about creating an educational structure for their own children,without regard for the slaves and their families who were maintaining their households. Since we’ve made strides elsewhere in the culture and announced our commitment to include Black and other marginalized people in the educational system, we’ve done little to actually address the educational structure in its current form. In practice, there has been a lack of overall diversity and very little representation of the lived experience and contributions of non-white male thinkers. So for many students of color the message conveyed is akin to, “ok we’ll let you learn about us and how great we are and you should just be glad to have been invited.” This is not only disingenuous, but it makes wanting to be a part of a system that was never intended for you less than attractive to many.
It is time for an honest assessment about how far we have come since Brown v. Board of Education. How appealing was it to be integrated into a school where people who didn’t want you there taught you about how great they were and ignored contributions of non-white people or flat out disrespected your culture? A narrow curriculum focused on, and taught for the comfort of white students leaves little space for others. In higher education, it is the norm to be white, and “when it is the norm to be White, maintaining the comfort of White people becomes part of the unwritten code of a culture, a code that people of colour often follow.” (Dutt, 2019).
Beyond just comfort, in many instances we also must acknowledge the fact that the renaissance of thought perceived to come from white western thinkers was stolen from enslaved Africans, poor women and people of color, or earlier civilizations and repackaged with a white face on it (Johnson,2017).
The Academy in its present form is about certifying what is socially defined as significant and reproducing knowledge about what is of importance. It is meant to maintain the stratification of power in society. What is especially frustrating about the well documented lack of inclusion of historically marginalized groups from academic discourse is that there is this mitigated acknowledgement of the exclusion, and so only small concessions are made by the powers that be in an effort to appease the marginalized. The minimal appeasement allows for the maintenance of as close to the existing structures of power inherent in higher education and in the larger society as possible. This is insufficient. There is a need to come to terms with the fact that the history of higher education is steeped in structural racism, and it has not been modified enough to create a learning environment that is inclusive of the diversity of the United States population. Only when acknowledged, can we move to change it and become the premiere nation of innovation and technology we once were. If we are to do so, we must ask ourselves some hard questions. Why is knowledge always centered around whiteness? Who gets to say what it means to be smart? What types of knowledge and brain function is really assessed in IQ testing, and how do factors such as social class, race and gender shape what is being tested rather than “intelligence”.
As a result of higher education’s continued prioritization of whiteness above all else, we see sharp decline in enrollments and more separation of students of color. In order to learn about the totality of American history, which includes truth about a shamefully racist past and present, to great non-white or non-male thinkers, inventors, and educators, many find a better option for their educational pursuits to be in Historically Black, Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Created at first to educate when white institutions would not admit Black students,they still serve the purpose of providing a safe place to learn and critically evaluate the human condition long after colleges and universities have integrated.
How we’ve missed the mark and what is at stake
In researching this book, we identified some of the ways in which lack of inclusion in higher education has hurt the progression of society writ large by ignoring great ideas and not funding research by women and people of color. Academia is often the birthplace for scientific inventions that have saved lives via medical discoveries. Innovations in technology and brain science are made in the labs of R1 institutions and we evolve culturally, economically and environmentally thanks to the work being done in institutions of higher education. Discovering new ideas that lead to cultural shifts is the way this happens, but the processes in place limit the opportunity for everyone to put their innovations into practice. Less innovation is not the preferred outcome of maintaining the status quo, our cultural scripts are written such that we as a society value technology, innovation and freedom of thought and yet, due to the historical legacy of privilege and bias, many innovators are left unrecognized.
If we limit who gets access to research grants or internships, we limit the potential for new life changing ideas and innovations, which does a disservice to the society at large.Historically, opportunities to work toward innovation via schooling and access to patents were withheld from Black inventors. When Black inventors did create and innovate, especially during the era of slavery, their work was stolen from them by their white enslavers. Black inventors have been ignored and exploited for a very large portion of our country’s history. Black inventors have made many different contributions to our society, yet they have not been awarded the credit that they rightfully deserve. In part, this is because even though the patent law in the U.S. was said to be colorblind, rates of patents granted have disproportionately advantaged white inventors. This was very damaging to Black and Brown innovators, because without a patent it was difficult to make any legitimate money from their inventions. Many Black inventors found themselves having to partner with a white man and share the profit of their invention so that they could get the patent, and be able to reap some of the wealth from the inventions they made (Johnson, 2017).
Throughout this book, we have argued that academia lacks diversity both in students completing programs and faculty representation. This presents problems in terms of the knowledge creation that comes from these institutions. Diversifying the field of knowledge creation would allow for new innovations that may otherwise not be discovered. The process of obtaining funding for a research project is something academics who conduct research must undertake in order to conduct their research. Often that pipeline is controlled by white men,who may have unconscious biases about what makes for a “good researcher” and research worth funding.
As we begin to emerge from a global pandemic the likes of which most of the current living population on earth has never seen, we all waited with bated breath for a vaccine that would bring an end to life under quarantine. R1 institutions and pharmaceutical companies went to work to try to create a vaccine. What came of this work was a fairly new type of vaccine that worked with mRNA. What many are not actually aware of however is that this type of vaccine was in the works for over 20 years, but due to lack of funding, the finished product that could have been tested and ready to use before the death toll skyrocketed was not created. Hungarian researcher Katalin Karikó struggled to obtain funding for her pioneering work on mRNA. “Katalin Karikó spent the 1990s collecting rejections. Her work, attempting to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease, was too far-fetched for government grants,corporate funding, and even support from her own colleagues” (Garde & Saltzman, 2020). Her grant proposals were rejected over and over and she was demoted at University of Pennsylvania. It was only when a white male colleague signed on to her research that she received funding. While we cannot know for certain that lives would have been saved, one has to wonder what would be different if this type of vaccine used for COVID 19 was tested and vetted years ago. What if the medical field listened to a woman scientist? Would it have saved lives?
Racism in the STEM fields has been explored in earlier sections of this book and discussed widely among many institutions of higher learning. These discussions are robustly taking place, which is a sign that change can happen. There is a pressing need to acknowledge what is at stake for the overall field of science, technology, engineering, and math, both as academic pursuits and as fields of innovation that make our nation strong, if we fail to fund and train women and people of color. A failure to diversify any field limits what we can learn, and this in many ways has been the downfall of the United States in educational and innovation leadership.
There is a lower rate of funding of National Institutes of Health R01 applications submitted by African-American/Black scientists relative to white scientists(Hoppe et al, 2018). Efforts to close the funding gap need to be robustly focused on encouraging a more diverse applicant pool, and developing and implementing mentoring programs.In efforts to move the conversation forward with regard to a historical past and recent incidents of structural racism interfering with innovation, Harvard has put together an open list of Racial Bias in ScientificFields | Anti-Racism Resources to help educators both teach students the history of racism intheir fields, and help move forward a shift.
Microaggressions, racial bias and prejudice are all at play in the microcosm of people working in higher education. We advocate here for institutional changes to address the structural racism at play in higher education but there is also individual faculty perception and bias that contribute to student success or failure based on said bias.In,STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes, Canning et al describe the ways in which STEM faculty who believe a person’s ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes which disproportionately affect outcomes for their students of color (Canning et al,2019).
A multitude of studies have attempted to understand why retention and persistence rates of students of color are consistently lower than white students. Findings suggest that teacher perception of their students contributes to the students' success in their class. Faculty who have a fixed mindset toward their students’ ability, as well as their potential to learn, are found to be less effective or willing to teach students who they have negative connotations towards. This roadblock can be dealt with by helping faculty to develop a growth mindset towards these students, but this involves those faculty deciding to do the work. “Faculty-centered interventions may have the unprecedented potential to change STEM culture from a fixed mindset culture of genius to a growth mindset culture of development while narrowing STEM racial achievement gaps at scale” (Canning et al, 2019).
Adding an honest discussion of the history of structural racism is part and parcel to effectively engaging all students, but especially those who have historically been marginalized. Critical Race Theory is an approach that recognizes the historical legacy of race based hierarchies and the resultant inequalities our society is faced with. Rather than shying away from an honest conversation about the racialized past of the United States, Critical Race Theory helps to explain race as a social construct, and that racism is not merely an individual bias but rather embedded in legal systems and policies that shape social structure. As each preceding section demonstrated, a racialized past has contributed to the growth and development of all fields within higher education.
Telling the historical story goes a long way for a deeper understanding of our current predicament. Asking students to connect the dots between historical oppression and present day reality is a necessary exercise in critical thinking. Each discipline carries with it a history and as stewards of our respective fields, we have an obligation to teach our students how our discipline came to be. This applies to all fields. Many in the fields of anti-racist pedagogy have for years recommended that teaching about a history of structural racism and how to move the needle towards an anti-racist field is as important as learning the field itself. In 1994, the late great bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress spoke to the importance of multiculturalism as engaged pedagogy:
Multiculturalism compels educators to recognize the narrow boundaries that have shaped the way knowledge is shared in the classroom. It forces us all to recognize our complicity in accepting and perpetuating biases of any kind. Students are eager to break through barriers to knowing. They are willing to surrender to the wonder of re-learning and learning ways of knowing that go against the grain. When we, as educators, allow our pedagogy to be radically changed by our recognition of a multicultural world, we can give students the education they desire and deserve. We can teach in ways that transform consciousness, creating a climate of free expression that is the essence of a truly libratory liberal arts education (hooks, 1994 p. 44).
An acknowledgement on the part of all in academia of the ways in which structural racism is embedded into our higher education system goes a long way to include students who have felt alienated. “Colorblind” approaches to teaching STEM for example, fall short specifically because there is an aspect of denial in that approach (Sheth, 2018).
If higher education is to truly be a place for all thinkers, there is work to be done in terms of access to materials and supplies. This book is being published under an open license in order for it to be free and accessible to all. Open Educational Resources (OERs) dismantle economic barriers to student success by being freely available to everyone. Additionally, there is a strong movement within the OER community of educators to speak to an additional barrier students often find in commercial textbooks. What we know is that under-representation of diverse views in texts and other course materials hampers the progress of science and leaves students feeling left out of the field. A recent examination of biology textbooks revealed the following.
Charles Darwin. Carolus Linnaeus. Gregor Mendel. They’re all men. They’re all white. And their names appear in every biology book included in a new analysis of college textbooks. According to the survey, mentions of white men still dominate biology textbooks despite growing recognition in other media of the scientific contributions of women and people of color. The good news, the researchers say: Scientists in textbooks are getting more diverse. The bad news: If diversification continues at its current pace, it will take another 500 years for mentions of Black/African American scientists to accurately reflect the number of Black college biology students (Brookshire,2020).
Textbooks whose authors, stories, and images feature white, male focused, heteronormative imagery in any field remind those who do not fit that image that they do not belong. Many new OERs like this one feature collaborations between students and faculty,cross-racially, and not monogendered, but instead, are inclusive of multiple identities. It takes a concerted effort to update texts and materials to represent the students they are serving, but it is possible. Faculty using materials that are not representative can supplement their content to add diversity.Publishers can also do better, and if faculty are committed to working with specific publishers,they can demand it from them. Better yet, all faculty can convert their materials to OERs, which can easily be modified and created to be more representative, without any sort of prohibitive costs to students (Daly & Sebesta, 2021).
Another needed area of improvement lies in the hiring and retention via the tenure process of a diverse faculty, specifically those least represented in the academy. A recent article from Inside Higher Ed cited found that “just 2.7 percent of all academic job placements in 2019 were of Black women with Phds’” (Rucks-Ahidiana, 2021). What this looks like overall among the 1438 colleges and universities studied nationwide is that, “of all the colleges and universities in this searchable data table as many as 573 (39 percent) had no tenured Black women faculty” (Rucks-Ahidiana, 2021).
If commitments to increasing faculty diversity are more than symbolic gestures, colleges and universities should address the systemic issues creating these racialized and gendered inequities. That is the only way to increase the number of tenured Black women in our colleges and universities (Rucks-Ahidiana, 2021).
Beyond hiring and retaining faculty of color as a means of eradicating racist structures in academia, faculty can decide to take the additional step of looking to diverse author’s research and writings as sources for their own work, as well as what they ask their students to learn about. “The next project you start, do not start with the most cited, most engaged with, most validated scholarship; start with scholarship from journals that support explicitly the work of nonwhite intellectual activists and subordinated knowledges.” (Brunsma & Padilla Wyse, 2019).
By highlighting the work of less cited authors and researchers of color and women we are enriching our fields and allowing their work to rise to the level of notoriety of the predominantly white male scholarship that is most often cited.
In all honesty, higher education in the United States was not created for all people. It was created for and by white men to serve the purpose of strengthening their domination. With this in mind, there are real concerns about what a modification of a system marred by structural racism should look like. Appeasing the guilt of many in higher education, an Ethnic Studies course was added to many school’s graduation requirements nationwide. But is that enough? Many would argue it is not. If a system is broken, do we decide to patch it up in hopes that it will still function? Or do we decide to eliminate it and rebuild something new, using the previous foundation to create something that resembles what we once knew but with new focus and goals? To be for the people, higher education must also be by the people. A new academia that meets the needs of 21st century students in the United States must be representative of their students. And what is at stake if we do not change with the times and acknowledge that for many, there were no good old days, but rather a racist, white supremacist, patriarchal past that was not designed for most of us? It is hard to say, but if the mass exodus from higher education is any indication, then we may be in grave trouble.