Race in the Classroom

Ebony Evans, PharmD

PGY2 Ambulatory Care Resident 

University of Maryland

For a large proportion of American history, the majority of students present in public schools were white, however, that is no longer the case. That being said, while the number of minority students in the public school system is increasing, to now being the majority, the diversity of the teaching force has not kept up, and has remained majority white1, despite research indicating that a diverse teaching staff benefits students of all races, and that Black students specifically see benefits from having even just one Black teacher2. There are several reasons for the disparity in diversity of students as compared to teachers, such as hiring bias and lower retention rates of teachers of color1, however, that is not the focus of this article. The discussion here today is on how to maneuver within these constraints to assure that not only are minority students not being negatively impacted by the lack of diversity in educators, but also to ensure that the health care professionals being prepared to enter into the workforce are able to adequately care for their increasingly diverse patient populations.

It is important for teachers to go out of their way to understand and use cultural differences to benefit their students3, as opposed to ignoring or trying to diminish them. It is imperative that educators encourage students of different backgrounds to embrace and positively identify with their backgrounds and identity by learning to teach to them, instead of forcing all students in a classroom to be cookie cutter learners and simply teaching at them. By ignoring race or pretending not to see color as an educator, you’re failing your students and potentially preventing them from reaching their truest potential. To clarify, this is not implying that minority students need to be coddled, or that they should have lower expectations help for them, but simply that they do often experience the world different, and thus learn and understand things differently.

Being a minority in a classroom isn’t only evident to students when looking at their peers, or even their teachers, but also when looking at what and how they’re being taught. You might think this is most prevalent in younger grades or humanistic classes, but it’s also very prevalent in graduate level health science courses. Although specifically referencing medical students, the article “Teaching medical students to challenge ‘unscientific’ racial categories” does a great job of shining a light not only on how racial stereotypes can be reinforced in the classroom, but how those can then in turn affect patients4. In terms of healthcare, it’s important for race to be taught as a social stratification, not a biological category. There are two good examples in this article of when the ideal method of teaching race in healthcare was not exemplified, and that’s in professors teaching sickle cell as a “Black disease”, and even using different formulas to measure lung and kidney function for different races; or even something from my personal experience as simple as not using pictures of a single person of color in a PowerPoint lecture on dermatology that was completely full of pictures. Health care professionals have a very powerful role in society, so it’s important that their educators don’t dance around the subject of race when teaching, but they discuss it directly. Many healthcare professionals go to school because they want to make a difference, to help people, and many often cite their desire to specifically help undeserved or minority populations… it’s important for students to be taught how to do that.

References

1. Laura Fay. The State of America’s Student-Teacher Racial Gap: Our Public School System Has Been Majority-Minority for Years, but 80 Percent of Teachers Are Still White. The 74 Million. https://www.the74million.org/article/the-state-of-americas-student-teacher-racial-gap-our-public-school-system-has-been-majority-minority-for-years-but-80-percent-of-teachers-are-still-white/. Published August 2018. Accessed October 2020.

2. Matt Barnum. The Power of One: New Research Shows Black Students See Big Benefits From a Single Black Teacher. The 74 Million. https://www.the74million.org/article/the-power-of-one-new-research-shows-black-students-see-big-benefits-from-a-single-black-teacher/. Published April 2017. Accessed October 2020.

3. Larry Stauss. I'm a white teacher with a classroom of minority students. Here's how I teach across race. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/01/16/teaching-shortage-education-race-minority-column/4419331002/. Published January 2020. Accessed October 2020.

4. Ike Swetlitz. Teaching medical students to challenge ‘unscientific’ racial categories. Stat News. https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/10/medical-schools-teaching-race/. Published March 2016. Accessed October 2020.