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Anti-racism resources                                                                         June 3, 2020

These resources will always be relevant, but their importance is heightened right now.

Anti-racism resources for white people

Mental health resources supporting black people

Designing genetics curricula to suppress racialism              June 1, 2020

As biologists, we know that genetic evidence does not support claims about differences among races, though students can misinterpret course content to support that misconception. If presented improperly, some aspects of introductory genetics curricula have the potential to bolster students’ preconceived notions about race. A survey by Donovan et al 2019 found that one in five students from majority-white high schools agreed with statements like “Members of one racial group are more ambitious than members of another racial group because of genetics.” Students may continue to use information learned in introductory biology courses to support preexisting racialist ideals. Racialism is the position that there are inherent genetic differences among human races that often coopts theories from genetics to support racist agendas. Biology course designers therefore have the responsibility to show students that the science of genetics actually rejects racist claims rather than supports them. Below are some peer-reviewed resources that can help biology and genetics instructors ensure that their course content will not inadvertently support unfounded racist viewpoints:

“Toward a more humane genetics education…” by Donovan et al. 2019 in Science Education.

Human races are not like dog breeds: refuting a racist analogy” by Heather Norton et al. 2019 in Evolution: Education and Outreach.

“Signaling Inclusivity in Undergraduate Biology Courses through Deliberate Framing of Genetics Topics…” By Karen Hales 2020 in CBE—Life Sciences Education.

Course evaluations and discrimination                          December 6, 2019

It’s Course Evaluations time again! Empirical evidence suggests that students give negatively biased evaluations of instructors who are women and people of color.

How do we know? Replicated manipulative experiments. See the following research:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/exploring-bias-in-student-evaluations-gender-race-and-ethnicity/91670F6003965C5646680D314CF02FA4

What can we do about this? Simply mentioning the bias in class before presenting evaluation forms can mitigate some of the bias. Check these data out here:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216241

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/20/students-rate-male-instructors-more-highly-than-female-instructors-we-tried-counter-that-hidden-bias/