Racial and ethnic representation in educational environments

Race at Springfield

How are the people of your race/ethnicity treated...by the faculty, administrators, and students

I don't really see students treated differentially by faculty, administrators and generally other students, although this very well may be because of my perspective as a white male. I do notice that particularly Asian women are less likely to volunteer to speak in my classes but I don't really find that that is treatment by the faculty, as for example if all students engaged at the same level and one particular group was called on less. But that is probably the only generalization I am able to make given the way the question is asked. There are relatively few black students at Springfield compared to whites as well but the African-American students I have worked with have engaged on varying levels, too specific to individuals to make a comprehensive statement. Some of my peer black students were vocal in classes, and some have been equally reserved, to my observation. This assumes that classroom interaction is the conduit through which faculty treatment plays out, but this is the only visible measure of treatment I personally have access to. I have not heard any specific complaints of differential grading on part of faculty based on race from anyone I know personally, and since I have no sample of overall grades, I could not speak to any other measure of treatment by faculty based on race either preferentially or discriminatorily.

The result is that to my observation, faculty has treated students relatively equally but how much treatment the students receive is a personal choice made for reasons which may be driven significantly by race and ethnicity, but since I am not party to those intrapersonal decisions, they may be driven by other preferences, although the possibility that this is inaccurate may very likely be the actual cause. Without specifically asking, I cannot know. Likewise since treatment by the department or by administrators involves confidential interaction in private meetings, nor can I compare what I have not heard, and thus the only measurement I have is that no one I know has complained of discrimination by the department or administration other than one high-profile grievance I heard about when I first started here, but which was before my time and the specifics of which I don't actually remember. I think it had to do with student government elections but again that was several years ago and I didn't pay much attention to it then. This awareness or lack of probably arises from my sample size, considering I really only converse regularly with probably ten black friends and can only think of perhaps five friends with apparent Asian heritage but all of those people were raised in the U.S. all their lives and seem fairly embedded in the culture here at Springfield, such that none of them have mentioned discrimination to me, and while the topic of race in social relationships does come up often with my black friends, this ongoing commentary relates more to the media and society at large, particularly institutions like government and the police, rather than student life at Springfield. Therefore I reasoned until now and still do, that were discrimination as restricted by question 1 between students, faculty, staff and administrators a problem, it would come up, because other topics of racial inequality do freely come up in discussion.

Are people of your race and ethnicity proportionately represented...

Getting back to sample size, if I know say ten candidates for differential treatment based on race, and they are only a few of say several hundred at Springfield, then the fact that race has not come up in casual discussion with these few students of color, does not represent a random or large enough sample to represent the population. What I can see is that Springfield outside the college windows is disproportionately black, while the population in the classroom is overwhelmingly white, as are students and faculty in all the pictures on the splash pages that loaded when I opened up the College home page, although there may be some pages I didn't see that show racial minorities in student-centric activities. Likewise in the classroom the faculty is overwhelmingly white with a few professors I know of with apparent Hispanic, Black and Asian traits, although again this is hardly a representative sample, based on superficial observation. I would say that the faculty and student ethnicity probably fairly closely matches the overall national U.S. census ethnicity results from a nonscientific, casual observation, but this demographic is highly and noticeably at odds with the population surrounding the school. Likewise the textbooks and classroom learning materials seem to represent U.S. diversity fairly appropriately based on general census results from casual observation, although the content of the material presented by the institution at large, i.e. The academy, higher education in general, represents the white point-of-view where such a view can meaningfully skew the perspective of the materials. Routledge, Doubleday and Wiley et al. are apparently conscientious about including pictures of scientists with apparent minority characteristics in the textbook although there is not much racial bias to the Kreb's Cycle or differential equations. Where the difference arises is in the empirical events the humanities textbooks choose to consider important, rather than which corporate model they select to represent a police officer or not. No matter how many inserts promote George Washington Carver's contributions to the peanut industry, the fact is that the perspectives and contributions of minorities relative to the sweeping majority of content which describes history, politics, economics, and what does or does not constitute literature, remain bolt-on footnotes to a main story that is invariably white. These observations are all based on my perceptions in the classes I have attended, and I suspect that if I went and specifically asked my friends of color, they might have specific examples to change my mind, although the questions here were restricted to my perceptions and not anecdotal investigation.