Melanin changes education
Hello Everybody, Welcome to the Yo this is a racism podcast. My name is Yadnya Sonawane and today I want to talk about the importance of melanin and how education has changed because of it. I enjoy school and have always enjoyed learning about new things from identifying cells under a microscope to solving a simple algebra problem. Unfortunately, as a student of color, I quickly figured out that I had different standards that I had to live up to and I was excluded from a lot of activities. Of Course, every child studied hard and continued to be an upstanding student. However, some clubs definitely included kids with only specific races. Every student that was asked could name the clubs which had higher set standards for specific races. And when asked about the smartest kids, Asian Americans were always named first. “They’re like, ‘Oh, you’re Chinese and you’re good at math,’” the book quotes a girl called Angela as saying. “It’s advantageous when they think that.”(Kristof). This just came up in the new york times. Now while I’m not saying whether they are or aren’t smarter than other races, one should not simply judge or expect a certain result based on skin color.
Systemic racism persists throughout history and is overlooked by thousands of people today. It has no place in such a progressive world however, we’ve become blind to see that it constantly influences the people around us. While racism has changed over the years, it continues to be the existing reason why people feel neglected when trying to pursue the educational opportunities they desire. In this podcast, I want to discuss a few recent stories dealing with hateful commentary and stereotypical push that our society has turned a blind eye to.
A slight change in melanin from student to student continues to cause a divide in the educational system. Educational injustice is a concept we’ve overlooked in the past because we’ve grown accustomed to the “normal” stereotypes. People around the world immigrate to the United States to better their education and earn a living of which they couldn’t in their own country. However, what we have not been aware of is the limited job interviews specific races encounter as well as the standard each race is held to with their high school and college education. Starting young, a recent story, a young Latino girl, Alejandra was discouraged from taking higher-level courses and pushed towards pursuing a degree at a community college with her fellow Latinos.
Is this racism?
To me, I would have simply overlooked this on a normal day-to-day circumstance however the subtle cues of discrimination incite racism that goes unnoticed. Alejandra was discriminated against when trying to pursue her dreams. Being an intelligent individual she was undermined for her skills in math and English by being discouraged from taking challenging courses. Because of the color or her skin, she is seen as different from the other students at the school. This small advice from the counselor could be seen as segregation and the dominant reason why racism still exists in the public education system. Minorities are unknowingly excluded from clubs, classes, and friend groups at school.
Are there instances where students are held to a higher standard than they might be able to take in?
Unfortunately, the flip side of this scenario also exists. Harvard University has been known to discriminate during the admission process. In the past year, “the Boston campus accepted 5 percent less applicants than previous years’ ‘ This is due to the fact that Harvard holds Asian Americans to higher standards than other applicants. This process significantly puts these applications at a disadvantage. While Alejandra was discriminated against and told to follow her fellow latinos, the asian americans are all seen as the exact same and have raised the bar for their application.
How is this affecting students now and the future generation?
As a Asian American student wanting to go to graduate school, the racial stereotype has always been persistent from students and teachers expecting higher and better-educated material. While I don’t know much about the insides of the public education system here, it continues to be a major source of the persisting racism that holds every race to a different standard. Although I think that individuals should have their own standards of success and dreams to pursue, restricting them to specific standards based on skin color or accent is perpetuating the inequality between races.
How it relates to Spiewak and the othering
Like a lot of our previous material covered, systemic injustice persists in many forms. In this case, we can relate it to the idea of subaltern from Spivak. As she questions, if the subaltern can speak, we soon realize that they don’t have a voice. With the educational system, the subalterns are the minority that gets treated differently and isn’t allowed to have an opinion against the school board. Thinking about the othering, the students that don’t fit the educational expectations in a good or bad way of their race are seen as the “other” and their racial group is seen as self.
What other biases could this affect later?
In a society where money changes lifestyle, having a lower educational background with restrictive job opportunities can limit an individual’s ability to pursue their career dreams. While this simple bias at a young age may seem like a small dial to us then, the subtle cues of racism later can affect mental health, job segregation, and residential segregation. If future generations are treated the same way and never learn from our past, we may never push away from incorrect stereotypes and hear more than just a single story.
Can there ever be an equal education in the United States?
As I think about equality in public education, there are several factors to consider. To me, equal education doesn’t mean every student is treated equally but rather an equity. Each student should have the same chance to achieve their dreams. To eliminate the systemic racism that continues to persist, we need to realize the unintentional hints towards racism as well as how to educate the younger generation on the difference between a joke and segregation by teachers and other students. Like with any other bias, change comes with time. However, since we live in an opinionated society, there is no way to completely remove racism and learn everything from science to math on the same playing field.
From this podcast, I hope you guys can learn to actively listen for subtle cues of racism even in places where stereotyping should be removed. It’s important to look at these situations under a microscope to understand how people feel. Thinking about it, more than 50 percent of the school is a minority and with such low education equity, it’s important for our youth especially our privileged youth to change education for the better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-asian-advantage.html
https://psmag.com/education/racism-in-schools-unintentional-3821