Dear Academia, You Don’t (fully) Understand Racism
An introductory guide to improving Diversity Training
For years, I’ve been attending “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” sessions from university. These typically consist of personality tests, seminars where we define “bias” and “privilege”, and, most recently, medical case discussions of events where things just went wrong. This is done in an effort to create culturally competent students who have a better appreciation for the vast diversity of experiences and cultures in the world; a sort of public health approach to prevent future incidences of wrong-doing and eliminate discrimination and microaggression in academia.
Despite these good-faithed intentions, these sessions fall so extremely short of the mark that it is almost laughable.
Here are some of the problems that haunt these sessions and suggestions for future change. If you are in charge of hosting these types of sessions and you’re not an expert in this field, this article is for you.
Minority students are sidelined
Not all students show interest in these topics, therefore the discussion is typically led by people that identify with a minority group. Whether that be based on race, gender, sex, country of origin, skin tone, age, income level, etc., those who hold strong connections to particular groups are usually the ones who champion the discussions.
This environment can lead to what we will call the “representative minority.” This is where the opinions of someone gets associated with an entire group that they identify with. For example, if a student of Arab-American decent becomes passionate and expressive about minority health and the inadequacies of the system, their thoughts will be chalked as the opinions of all Arabs, when in reality their ideas stem from rigorous, individual study and first hand experiences. A similar mechanism can be seen in part when a women is considered hysterical when they come passionate about a topic, a bias placed onto an entire sex rather than a well-founded and informed opinion of an individual who is knowledgeable about a topic.
When hosting these diversity sessions, know that minority students are ready to give quality information about their lived experiences and, oftentimes, solutions to the issues at hand. The inadequacy is that they are not being heard. Your discussion questions are too vague and don’t invite people to share their knowledge, rather, they play to a tunnel-visioned idea of what diversity means. In this scenario, the blind attempt to direct the wise.
Your goal as facilitators should be to give students a platform to share their voice. A TedTalk from someone far removed from the community might be able to explain micoaggressions better than you, but students in your school have the power to identify shortcomings in your own backyard. Give them a platform and hear their voices.
Everything is better on paper
The common way of teaching discrimination is through case discussion. For example, someone of foreign decent is asked by a superior to act as an interpreter, even though they are not comfortable or are being stereotyped in their abilities. These cases are typically brought up in reflective, narrative format, where the author of the encounter points to the gross racism presented. This is followed by attendees of the seminar pointing to the clear and obvious wrongs.
This is an inherently flawed way of teaching discrimination.
A friend once told me that “standardized patients makes standardized doctors”, and the same holds true for standardized racism. If we are only presented with cases where the morals are clearly aligned one way and the plans of action are obvious, we never learn how to deal with this in the real world.
Clear-cut examples present the idea that these issues have “answers” and that these encounters don’t occur anymore because of how clearly wrong they. This is a falsehood we must stop perpetrated. Describing a scenario where an attending physician makes a racially driven comment, such as an African American patient presenting with a gun shot wound being associated with gang violence, doesn’t get to the root of the problem: few have problems saying a wrong situation is wrong in hindsight, but many don’t have the skills to identify wrong situations and what do to next.
Furthermore, what few, if any, discrimination seminars get right are the action steps needed to correct the behaviors when identified. If you ask any academic what do to if you notice a colleague say or do something discriminatory towards another coworker, they would likely tell you to pull that person aside and gently tell them how they made you feel and suggestion they discontinue the behavior for the future.
Students, and many professionals, have problems raising their hand and asking questions in a lecture, where do we believe this unlimited confidence to address a complex social problem comes from? The short answer is that it’s non-existent, and that is not the fault of the witness, but the academic system’s disregard to put systems in place to help with the training, reporting, and follow through to address these issues. Worse still, if the racial slur or microaggression comes from a superior such as faculty or attendings who writes your evaluations and holds so many pieces of your career in their hands, you can forget about the student addressing it.
These power struggles make the culture that much harder to change, but require immediate attention.
My suggestion is to not do away with the case discussions. Rather, present a scenario, dive deep into identifying our own biases, and teach us how these initial thoughts can be wrong and even harmful. This way, the discussion remains close to home and not artificially presented, and we are allowed the space to consider our own thoughts, and even change them to reflect the real world.
A young, African-American male presents to the emergency department with multiple gun-shot wounds. How do you suspect he got them? What if the patient was older? What if they were White? Hispanic? Women? Do your suspicions of how they got the injury change? How do TV shows and movies change your thoughts? Here are some statistics on demographics of gun-shot victims in the US and how they may differ from your initial thoughts…
In summary, these case examples don’t paint a full picture. When we present scenarios where someone is clearly in the wrong, rather than the real life gray-nature of these problems in terms of recognition and action steps, we perpetuate the culture that these problems no longer effect us. On top of this, we are ill-trained as students and a society to deal with these scenarios if, and when, we encounter them in the real world. Focus rather on teaching about the stereotypes that exists about racial, gender, and other identity groups. For universities and organizations, work to create systems that students and other vulnerable groups can report incidences and come up with action steps for addressing them, that includes if you yourself are involved.
Teach history and current events
Racism is a big word, yet we talk about it in small terms.
After the videotaped murder of George Floyd went viral in the summer of 2020, outrage exploded in all regions of the country. Protests filled nearly every major city and capital, demanding justice for this clearly racist act. At the university level, several schools showed intense support for ending racism, implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion training, gaining the quick support of national organizations such as the American Medical Association and many Americans. This was a huge step in addressing racism in the United States, so what is the problem?
Racism existed well before 2020, and it doesn’t just effect African Americans.
Nearly a year after these protests, three salons in the metro-Atlanta area were attacked in a shooting, killing 8 people, 6 of which were Asian women. This follows months of Asian hate attacks, perpetuated by the false and racially driven ideal that blame for COVID-19 pandemic fell on the shoulders Asians around the world. Similar protests for justice and a call to end Asian-hate sprung up. Do we truly believe we have prevented the next attack?
These incidences are not isolated and certainly don’t account for all racism. Asians in the United States and across the world were victim to a massive increase in hate crimes after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; Arab-Americans experienced mass hate crimes following 9/11; Hispanic immigrants being told to “go home” and claimed to bring drugs and crime; the list goes on.
If academia wants to teach its students about discrimination and its effects on society, we need to learn about how racism currently plaques our society. As shown above, you need not look far to find a group that is actively under siege.
A history lesson is needed, not another personality test. We need to be aware of how systemic and institutional racism plays a role in our systems today. Racially discriminatory housing practices where minority groups are blocked from receiving loans for homes; cycles of underfunded public schools in minority neighborhoods and lack of state and government funding; risk for various chronic and infectious diseases among minority groups due to disproportionate hazardous environmental exposures and lack of medical resources; the list goes on and on.
These teachings and more should be included in the seminars. History tells a better story for how we got to where we are and what we need to address moving forward. Current events tells of the struggles we continue to face, and how these solutions are developing, not solved.
I urge universities and organizations to focus on these teachings for their students, and for their own staff. You are required this training just as much, if not more, than your students. Find experts, bring them in, learn, and include your students. The more we learn together, the more problems we can solve, together.
Conclusions
There is so much more to say than can be described in one blog post. The purpose of this, I hope, is to serves as a wake up call for universities and academia that their current methods are not good enough. Use this as a starting point to improving your “required” sessions towards more efficacy and utility.
Intentionality is important, you must be willing to change before a change can happen. I applaud organizations who have made the decision to include this type of training into their curriculum. It is extremely important. However, I implore you take a deep look at your current practices and ask “what are we missing?”
Diversity training challenges the status quo. It requires you to look critically at the systems and practices of people and organizations, striving for the ultimate goal of “better.” This is not an easy road, but seeking the right information and eliminating insufficiencies will be key to yours, and our, success.
