Diversifying STEM

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Race and Gender

Ebony O. McGee, William H. Robinson

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781978805675, 9781978805682
• eBook ISBN: 9781978805699
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Research frequently neglects the important ways that race and gender intersect within the complex structural dynamics of STEM. Diversifying STEM fills this void, bringing together a wide array of perspectives and the voices of a number of multidisciplinary scholars. The essays cover three main areas: the widely-held ideology that science and mathematics are "value-free, " which promotes pedagogies of colorblindness in the classroom as well as an avoidance of discussions around using mathematics and science to promote social justice; how male and female students of color experience the intersection of racist and sexist structures that lead to general underrepresentation and marginalization; and recognizing that although there are no quick fixes, there exists evidence-based research suggesting concrete ways of doing a better job of including individuals of color in STEM. As a whole this volume will allow practitioners, teachers, students, faculty, and professionals to reimagine STEM across a variety of educational paradigms, perspectives, and disciplines, which is critical in finding solutions that broaden the participation of historically underrepresented groups within the STEM disciplines.

PART I

The Structural Dynamics of STEM

1

Color-Blind Liberalism in Postsecondary STEM Education

LORENZO DUBOIS BABER

In September 2016, a guest lecture on racial and gender microaggressions during an engineering course at Iowa State University prompted waves of criticism from conservative media outlets. The controversy began when a student sent a screenshot of a lecture slide to his parents, who promptly forwarded it to a blog reporter with the comment “I guess I’ve seen this stuff before online but never thought it was widespread enough to invade Iowa. I weep for our future and am glad I raised my son to see this for what it really is and not buy into it, but he still has three more years of brainwashing left. He’s not out of the woods yet.”

The attempt to reframe institutional recognition of cultural microaggressions as invasive brainwashing reflects a general desire to continue the normalization of dominant culture, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Indeed, there remains considerable debate over the philosophical ethos that supports STEM disciplines (Siegel, 2002; Stanley & Brickhouse, (2001). Meritocratic perspectives suggest that sociocultural norms in science education are rooted in the “impersonal characteristics of science” (Merton, 1996, p. 269) and produce objective sociocultural standards for communication of knowledge. Such perspectives align with positivist productions of scientific knowledge within value-neutral environments, positioning concepts of racialized or gendered microaggressions as subjective forms of preferential treatment. This value-neutral ideology protects inherited advantages, creates insider/outsider dynamics, and necessitates forms of cultural capital. Among students from traditionally marginalized populations, failure is viewed as an individual consequence rather than a reflection of systemic oppression.

Critical perspectives reframe meritocratic beliefs as enduring myths rooted in traditional White elite culture. In postsecondary STEM education, critical perspectives challenge persistent demographic homogeneity within the various fields of study. If the ethos of STEM disciplines is objectively impersonal, as traditional perspectives suggest, why do Whites dominate the field? Assuming we reject the notion that people of color are uniquely disinclined to participate in STEM education, we must consider the likelihood that postsecondary STEM education is not isolated from socially constructed ideologies, notably racism and sexism, that influence our society (Omi & Winant, 2014).

This chapter offers an analytical discussion of the structuration of systemic oppression in postsecondary STEM education with specific attention to race. Utilizing frames of critical race theory (CRT), I examine ways in which forms of universalism serve to reify systemic racism in postsecondary STEM education. Extending the rational characteristics of scientific inquiry to the social construction of a scientific community assumes that intellectual spaces are, by default, culturally neutral, with no group dominating in ways that serve to marginalize others. Conflating the element of objectivity with the action of objectivism, universalism masks the immutable role of institutional racism as a central feature of postsecondary STEM.¹

I describe universalism as the philosophical underpinning of postsecondary STEM and briefly summarize concepts supporting CRT. I then offer an examination of the role of systemic racism—specifically, color-blind liberalism—in centering White privilege as a normative characteristic of postsecondary STEM. I conclude the chapter with alternative strategies that may serve as points of departure from entrenched beliefs of universalism toward frames of inclusive diversity as an endemic feature of postsecondary STEM.

Conceptual Background

Noted sociologist Robert K. Merton identified universalism as part of the ethos of modern science (Merton, 1996). Borrowing from Speier’s (1938) assertion that formation of interest groups requires a structure of value preferences, Merton describes an ethos as a set of norms that bind a social structure through circular patterns of institutional legitimization, perceptual transmission, reinforcing sanctions, and individual internalization. Among the foundational norms of the scientific community, Merton argues, is the concept that “acceptance or rejection of claims entering the lists of science is not to depend on the personal or social attributes of their protagonists; their race, nationality, religion, class, and personal qualities are as such irrelevant. Objectivity precludes particularism” (Merton, 1996, p. 269). The concept of universalism offered by Merton argues for a process of scientific inquiry, including collaborations among individual scientists, that is unconstrained by subjective elements. With the assumption that scientific inquiry operates independently from sociocultural paradigms of society, universalism is attached to forms of scientific rationality that undergirds the concept of modern science (Cobern & Loving, 2001 Erduran & Dagher, 2014). Universalism supports rationality by establishing standards for the observation, accounting, and communicative discourse of natural phenomena. Universalism provides a coherent boundary for epistemology and socialization across various types of science, as well as distinctive marks in comparison to other forms of inquiry, specifically in humanities and the arts.

A range of views exist about the merit of Mertonian views on universalism as a norm of scientific inquiry and knowledge production (Kalleberg, 2007; Long & Fox, 1995; Pearson, 1985; Siegel, 2002). Kardash and Edwards (2012) argue that Merton presented his norms as an ideal of how science should operate, not as a reflection of how science does operate. Merton (1996) himself suggests that scientific universalism, similarly to democratic values, is subject to being “deviously affirmed in principle and suppressed in practice” (p. 271). Supporting a constructivist view of modern science, Stanley and Brickhouse (2001) state that forms of universalism underestimate the influence of sociocultural organization on the scientific community. They also question the degree to which universalism operates consistently across epistemic, cognitive, and social aspects of scientific inquiry. If universalism supports a self-correcting process that ultimately overcomes biases of individual scientists, how does one explain persistent demographic inequalities in postsecondary STEM education and practice? Perhaps a better question is this: to what extent are these observable inequalities attached to norms aligned with universalism? I turn to tenets of CRT as an analytical tool to consider these questions.

Critical Race Theory and Color-Blind Liberalism

CRT emanates from intellectual movements in legal studies during the 1970s (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995). CRT scholars seek to challenge prevailing beliefs that intellectual knowledge is objectively situated outside sociocultural constructions ingrained in American society, specifically race and racism. Rather than consider exercises of racial subordination as rare outliers in American society, CRT scholars recognize racism as an endemic feature that contributes to manifestations of advantage and disadvantage. As part of scholarly analysis, constructs of CRT are used to (a) center experiences of communities of color through counter-narratives; (b) challenge structural norms that refuse to acknowledge the permanent effects of racism; (c) deconstruct ideologies of whiteness, color blindness, and interest convergence that deliberately slow progress toward racial justice; (d) through interdisciplinary scholarship and practice, reconstitute social structures around principles of equality. In higher education, scholars use CRT constructs to challenge the persistence of meritocratic ideology and offer alternatives for radical transformation of colleges and universities (Baber, 2016; Harper, Patton, & Wooden, 2009; Ledesma & Calderon, 2015). However, as DeCuir and Dixson (2004) note, higher education researchers have primarily focused on counter-storytelling in CRT analysis. Less utilized are CRT tenants that critique forms of liberalism normative in postsecondary education.

Liberalism serves as a philosophical companion to universalism, positioning scientific inquiry within larger frameworks of egalitarianism and meritocracy. The pragmatic functions of liberalism are to support the gradual progress of ideas within complicated social environments, transmit and conserve the best features of society through a value-neutral process, and consider cultural pluralism as a self-regulatory antidote for social determinism (Dewey, 1996; Thayer-Bacon, 2006). Further, liberalism prefers progressive challenges to the status quo, seeks to standardize modes of knowledge and production, and assumes that all cultural groups have equal influence on social structures and practices.

While liberalism seeks to protect individual freedom and collective inquiry from threats of socially constructed hierarchies, CRT scholars suggest that it operates in the opposite direction (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Gotanda, 1995; Matsuda, 2013). The apolitical, value-neutral aspirations of liberalism contradict everyday realities of racial oppression in the United States. Most notably, through color-blind rhetoric, liberalism seeks to compartmentalize the historical and contemporary consequences of racial injustice from the principles of American egalitarianism. Such bifurcation allows for a collective path of least resistance, situating racial injustice as an aberrational feature of an American society that is generally meritocratic in the distribution of economic and sociocultural opportunity. Detachment serves to mediate racialized privileges of individuals not connected to realities of the racial oppression and masks structural forms of racial power through the idealistic language. Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2006) articulates such discourse through the frame of color-blind liberalism, suggesting that White privilege frames race-related issues around principles of equality while opposing practical approaches to addressing racial inequality as forms of preferential treatment: “This claim necessitates ignoring the fact that people of color are severely underrepresented in most good jobs, schools, and universities and, hence, is an abstract utilization of the idea of ‘equal opportunity’ ” (p. 28). With specific attention to postsecondary environments, I turn to the ways in which universalism works to support forms of color-blind liberalism in postsecondary STEM.

Color-Blind Liberalism in Postsecondary STEM Education

Racial inequality in postsecondary STEM is observable in the demographic homogeneity of degree recipients across various science and engineering fields (Tables 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3). Across multiple STEM subfields, degree attainment rates for African Americans and Latino populations are disproportionately low. Despite heavy federal investment in postsecondary STEM over the last sixty years, individuals from traditionally marginalized racial/ethnic identities, notably African Americans and Latinos, have not earned postsecondary STEM credentials at proportional rates. Inquiry into these patterns are decades old, and seminal scholars, notably Shirley Malcolm (1981), Willie Pearson (1985), and Freeman Hrabowski (1991), have questioned the persistent underrepresentation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: The Structural Dynamics of STEM
• Part II: The Impact of Race and Gender on Scholars of Color in STEM
• Part III: The Way Forward for Students, Faculty, and Institutions: Strategies for STEM Success
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Index