How To Solve the Problem of Racism in Schools
How To Solve the Problem of Racism in Schools
The New York Amsterdam News released an article discussing how a teacher was fired due to racist comments she made. The teacher stated that “African-Americans were lazy[and] Hispanics were working class[and] white people could no longer afford to live in New Jersey”. She also said that “Asians were smarter and economically savvier than anyone else”.
This article is from August of 2013. Teacher’s in today’s society know better than to say anything relating to this, but there are other ways to express racial biases toward students. Teachers and staff in schools have racial biases when it comes to students whether it is voluntary or involuntary.
It might be hard to fathom that teachers would express racial biases towards their students, but according to “Our most precise raw estimates showed that about 30% of respondents (including both teachers and non-teachers) expressed explicit pro-white/anti-Black bias and 77% expressed implicit pro-white/anti-Black bias”. It has also been proven that teachers' biases affect their decisions on discipline and class placement. It has been proven by research that “black students are less likely to be placed in gifted education classes and more likely to receive exclusionary discipline(such as detentions and suspension) when they have white teachers”.
Other forms of racism in the classroom could come across as microaggressions, stereotyping, and having lower or higher expectations of a student depending on their race. Some teachers “have far lower expectations for black students than they do for white students, which can contribute to high school graduation and college enrollment rates”. If a student of color believes that their teachers doesn't have faith in them, it could shatter their self-esteem so much, the completely stop trying in school, causing them to drop out of school as the most extreme scenario.
This can be hard to accept, but unfortunately it is true. The National Center for Education Statistics(NCES) “reported that students of color made up 45% of the public school population, yet only 17.5% of educators in the workforce were faculty of color”. It could simply be a matter of a lack of representation in the school system, so teachers don’t know how to relate to their students of color. This isn’t saying that all teachers are racist and need to be fired, but it does open the eyes to different forms of racism and injustices in the school system.
There are a plethora of steps that can be taken or have started to be taken to reduce the amount of racism or racial biases that teachers may have expressed. One of the first and easier steps to take is to have teachers become more educated about different cultural backgrounds. Some “districts have started to hold trainings that aim to make their teachers aware of their conscious biases and reflect on how to change their behaviors in the classroom”.
This is a significant step in the right direction when it comes to solving the problem of racial biases for teachers. Simply by becoming more educated about different races and cultures, teachers will develop a deeper understanding and knowledge of these races and will learn what is acceptable to say and openly express.
Becoming more educated about different cultural backgrounds is also a more cost efficient way to handle racial issues in schools. It would be cheaper to hold extra staff meetings or to have the teachers educate themselves about these different races and ethnicities than to have to handle a lawsuit for a teacher saying or doing the wrong thing. Instead of a school district fearing a lawsuit from a family, they should take precautionary measures to ensure it never happens in the first place. These measures again will not only increase the teacher’s knowledge and understanding about different races and cultural backgrounds, but also make them appear to be more understanding to their students as well.
Another way that teachers can target their racial biases is to increase family engagement and interactions. Teachers would be able to gather a better understanding of culture if it was coming straight from the families of their students. They could ask questions and gain knowledge about their culture straight from the source. Not only will this help to cure voluntary or involuntary racial biases, but it is also developing a real relationship with the parent’s of their students.
Recently, the Supreme Court has reversed their affirmative action policy when it comes to colleges and universities. Affirmative action was put in place to “eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future”. This may seem like an inadequate decision that the Supreme Court made, but it also can double as a positive. If colleges and universities are no longer asking the race of their potential students, it gives everyone an equal playing field. They will no longer be heavily looking at the race of their students, but looking at what they have accomplished already in their lives. They will focus more on a student's grades, extracurriculars, and/or why they want to attend that school rather than who came from where and why.
Student’s can still mention their race and its significance in their college essays and interviews, but it will no longer be a deciding factor for a college or university.
To have every student equal from the beginning is all that society has needed for a very long time.
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