This article continues a series on anti-racism in STEM co-authored by Northeastern alum Claire Williams. A fully collaborative effort, see the list of authors, contributors, as well as the series in its entirety at the following website: https://antiracisminstem.wordpress.com/
See other installments in this series: [ 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 ]
6. “Diversity initiatives are unfair to non-minority students/faculty; it’s reverse discrimination.”
The belief that race-conscious policies place the majority group at an unfair disadvantage is not rare. 57% of white Americans believe that white people face the same degree of racial discrimination as BIPOC, compared to only 29% of Black Americans and 38% of Hispanic Americans [1]. Belief in anti-white bias has been steadily increasing among white Americans since the civil rights movement [2]. This mindset stems from viewing racial equity and tolerance as a “zero sum game,” where more rights for BIPOC must come at the expense of white people’s rights [2]. The idea of white victimhood remains a central tenet of modern white supremacist groups [3].
Initiatives that promote racial justice and equity in STEM are not a barrier to white scientists; rather, these programs are designed to partially remove a systemic barrier that has been placed on scientists from underrepresented groups. Ibram X. Kendi discusses this idea in How to Be an Antiracist [4]. Kendi argues that racial discrimination itself is not inherently racist; the question is whether the consideration of one’s race perpetuates inequity or equity. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun described it in this way: “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.” These initiatives are created to address long-standing barriers to entry and inequity in the STEM and academic workplace (discussed further in response #5). Temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group to achieve equity is not the same thing as perpetuating inequality of wealth and power of the overrepresented group [4].
In fact, the concern that minority students are overrepresented in funding is contradicted by data showing that white students are still more likely than Black, Hispanic/Latinx, or Asian students to receive merit-based scholarships. One report found that white students receive 76% of institutional merit-based awards, despite making up only 62% of the student population [5]. Another study reported a similar trend: 16.4% of all white undergraduates are supported by at least one merit-based award, compared to only 11.6% of Black undergraduates and 8.1% of Hispanic/Latinx undergraduates [6]. Similarly, race-conscious university admissions policies have been shown to promote proportional representation of BIPOC without causing underrepresentation of white students [7]. Even the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which has an explicit goal of increasing diversity in STEM, still awards 80% of its fellowships to white applicants [8].
Finally, an important part of what makes discrimination harmful is an associated power dynamic that allows the discriminator to stifle the victim. Considering that white students and faculty have maintained an exclusive community within higher education for centuries (the legacy of which still negatively impacts BIPOC), it is impossible for actions taken by and for BIPOC to amount to “reverse racism” within academia – they do not have the same powers of oppression [9], [10], [11].
[1] White Republicans think whites, blacks, and Hispanics face about the same amount of discrimination (The Washinton Post, 2019)
[2] Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2011)
[3] The victim ideology of white supremacists and white separatists in the United States (Sociological Focus, 2000)
[4] How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi (NYT Bestseller)
[5] The Distribution of Grants and Scholarships by Race
[6] Merit aid for undergraduates: Trends from 1995-96 to 2007-08 (U.S. Department of Education, 2011)
[7] Here’s what happens when you ban affirmative action in college admissions (FiveThirtyEight, 2015)
[8] Evaluation of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NORC at the University of Chicago, 2014)
[9] “Reverse racism” (Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre)
[10] “The c-word” meets “the n-word”: The slur-once-removed and the discursive construction of “reverse racism” (Linguistic Anthropology, 2018)
[11] Being White: Stories of Race and Racism, by Karyn D. McKinney
7. “Education is the great equalizer.”
This phrase was coined by Horace Mann, a pioneer of the U.S. public school system during the 1800s, and remains popular today [1]. It suggests that access to education is sufficient to remove the effects of inequities between groups of people, such as barriers due to race or socioeconomic status. In other words, oppressed groups need only prioritize their education in order to pull themselves onto equal footing with more privileged demographics. Thus with the existence of free K-12 education and need-based college loans and scholarships in the U.S., any remaining inequities must be due to those individuals’ failure to take advantage of the available educational resources [1].
First, it’s important to recognize that access to STEM education is not equal. For example, 81% of Asian American students and 71% of white students have access to a full range of math and science courses during high school [2]. In contrast, less than half of American Indian/Native American or Native-Alaskan students have the same access, along with 57% of Black students and 67% of Latinx students [2]. This discrepancy is due in large part to “redlining,” a practice of discriminatory mortgage lending that has led to continued segregation between majority-white and majority-Black neighborhoods [3]. Since public schools are funded by local property taxes and Black households have one-tenth the median net worth of white households, school districts that primarily serve Black students are greatly under-funded [4], [5], [6].
The racial wealth gap (discussed in response #4) also contributes to unequal educational access at the college level. On average, Black students take out the largest loans to complete a bachelor’s degree compared with any other racial group, putting them at a financial disadvantage after graduation [7]. Black graduates are also more likely than any other demographic to be unemployed one year after the completion of their bachelor’s degree [7]. This is due in part to hiring discrimination; one widely cited study found that resumes with “white-sounding” names received 50% more callbacks than identical resumes with “Black-sounding” names [8]. Another study found that companies were twice as likely to call back minority applicants who had “whitened” their resumes by concealing or downplaying any indicators of their race, as opposed to those who disclosed their race [9].
Among the employed, Black people have the lowest median annual earnings of any racial group across all education levels (from Associate’s degree to PhD), even when controlling for differences in field, experience, and degree-granting institution [7], [10]. Continued disparities in income mean that education cannot act as a remedy for the wage gap experienced by Black Americans. The existence of systemic racism means that no level of education or income can truly equalize experiences and opportunities for people of color; BIPOC cannot escape pervasive discrimination by holding advanced degrees.
Rather than relying on education to be an automatic equalizer, we must examine and combat the structures that perpetuate racial inequity. In order for education to equalize, access to education, opportunities, and outcomes must first be equalized. Explicit changes must be made to address systemic racism at every level, including equitable access to K-12 education and employer-supported initiatives that increase career prospects and promote fair compensation of BIPOC in STEM.
[1] The decline of the ‘great equalizer’ (The Atlantic, 2012)
[2] Expansive survey of America’s public schools reveals troubling racia disparities (U.S. Department of Education, 2014)
[3] A ‘forgotten history’ of how the U.S. government segregated America (NPR, 2017)
[4] Nonwhite school districts get $23 billion less than white districts despite serving the same number of students (EdBuild interactive resource)
[5] How wealth inequality has changed in the U.S. since the Great Recession, by race, ethnicity, and income (Pew Research Center, 2017)
[6] Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s schools (1991)
[7] Baccalaureate and beyond: A look at the employment and educational experiences of college graduates, 1 year later (U.S. Department of Education, 2019)
[8] Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (American Economic Review, 2004)
[9] Whitened Résumés: Race and Self-Presentation in the Labor Market (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2016)
[10] Science and engineering indicators 2018 (NSF National Science Board, 2018)
Image source: Nappy
