Title: Meritocracy and Colorblindness: The Perpetuation of Whiteness in Engineering Education Through False Narratives
Historically, research in engineering education has taken a deficit-oriented perspective by focusing on the dearth of People of Color (POC) in engineering as a supply issue while ignoring the false narratives and discourses that dominate engineering education and research which exclude POC from the start. Recently, asset-based approaches have gained more traction in the field but too often miss a critical consideration: the hegemony of Whiteness in engineering. This theoretical paper is a deeper exploration of two crucial concepts that underpin the hegemonic discourse of Whiteness: meritocracy and colorblindness. We begin with a brief review of Whiteness studies which views Whiteness as the symbolic and structural white dominance and perceived superiority that marginalizes and oppresses POC and elevates white people to the top of the racial hierarchy (Matias & Newlove, 2017; McIntyre, 2002); a false ideal, guided by a historical mechanism of power, and the product of privileged social positions that benefits white people (DuBois, 1999). The purpose of this paper provides a critical perspective on how Whiteness tends to be at the foundations of these problematic narratives and discourses. The concept of meritocracy asserts that individuals are rewarded based solely on their individual effort, implying that people attain what they deserve in life through their hard work and determination. Conversely, those that are not successful are responsible for their lot in life. However, this belief in meritocracy overlooks the complex web of institutional and systemic variables that play a pivotal role in shaping life outcomes. A colorblind ideology fortifies the myth of meritocracy because it shifts the focus away from understanding how institutions perpetuate the normalized standard of white supremacy and racism, and instead places the responsibility for combating racism and white supremacy on individuals. This perspective bestows privileges upon white individuals as acts of merit if these privileges were earned solely through merit, rather than acknowledging that they are a product of a system that perpetuates advantages like a well-oiled assembly line. Meritocracy and colorblindness form a self-reinforcing cycle—a colorblind discourse in engineering education dominated by Whiteness willfully ignores the hierarchical positioning of racialized groups, fostering the misguided belief that success is determined by inherent merits. In reality, these merits are not objective or universal, but rather intangible attributes granted primarily to those who occupy the upper rungs of the hierarchical ladder within a colorblind society dominated by Whiteness and those who align with such an ideology. This theoretical paper begins to question the ways pedagogy and research are conducted in engineering education that traditionally exclude POC identities under the veil of equality, not equity. This ontological and epistemological shift is possible by questioning the very foundation that colorblindness and merit are built upon. The foundation of this work stems from an NSF grant to uncover the scripts of Whiteness in engineering education while devising a structured environment to help build individual and institutional racial literacy. more »« less
Carlsruh, R.
(, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Mathematics Education and Society Conference)
null
(Ed.)
The demographic disconnect in the U.S. between the majority white, female teacher workforce and the diverse students they serve perpetuates white supremacy in various ways. These relationships can be especially problematic in mathematics settings, where race issues are often disguised behind discourses of neutrality, intelligence, and meritocracy. To further understand how white supremacy is enacted in educational spaces, we applied Leonardo’s theory of “white intellectual alibis” to critically analyze interview data involving a pair of white-identifying preservice teachers engaging with novel hypothetical scenarios. Findings show that participants utilized various alibis that reinforced racist narratives and silenced possible antiracist conversations. Implications for teacher education are discussed.
McNeill, R. T.; Leyva, Luis A.; Marshall, B. L.
(, Journal of the Learning Sciences)
BACKGROUND. Calculus instruction is underexamined as a source of racialized and gendered inequity in higher education, despite research that documents minoritized students’ marginalizing experiences in undergraduate mathematics classes. This study fills this research gap by investigating mathematics faculty’s perceptions of the significance of race and gender to calculus instruction at a large, public, historically white research university. METHODS. Theories of colorblind racism and dysconsciousness guided a critical discourse analysis of seven undergraduate calculus faculty’s perceptions of instructional events. FINDINGS. Our analysis revealed two dominant discourses: (i) Race and gender are insignificant social markers in undergraduate calculus; and (ii) Instructional events can be objectively deemed race- and gender-neutral. We illustrate how calculus faculty varyingly engaged these colorblind discourses as well as discourses that challenged such conceptions of instruction. We also highlight how faculty dysconsciousness in reports of instructional practices reflect potential operationalization of dominant discourses that reinforce colorblind racism. CONTRIBUTION. With limited research on faculty perspectives on racial equity in mathematics, our study documents how color-evasive, gender-neutral discourses among mathematics faculty shape orientations to instruction that reinforce the gatekeeping role of calculus in STEM higher education. Implications are provided for race- and gender-conscious undergraduate mathematics instruction and faculty development.
Previous research in engineering education has identified the characteristics and behaviors associated with being an engineer, including aspects such as dress norms, professionalism, and standards. These studies have also explored the reasons why historically marginalized students may experience a sense of alienation from the engineering field. In the realm of engineering, learning how to become an engineer is shaped through the hidden curriculum, everyday interactions and the cognitive dynamics that are involved in those interactions. These cognitive dynamics are called “scripts” and they involve the schemas and frames of reference that build one’s engineering identity. As individuals engage with the field, they develop scripts by adopting the behaviors and traits that are recognized as traditional characteristics of engineers by their mentors, professors, peers, industry leaders, and others within the engineering community. Young engineers learn to employ the language, phrases, practices, skills, values, and beliefs that signify their acquisition of the social constructs associated with the engineering world while allowing them to acculturate within their respected field . Moreover, engineering scripts often center around whiteness – a socially constructed formation that functions as a system of social control. Some examples of whiteness include the racialization of students of color and their portrayal as incapable of performing in engineering (i.e., deficit ideologies), the idea that engineering knowledge is only constructed in English (i.e., language subtraction), or the perception that people are selected to engineering spaces just based on ability (i.e., meritocracy). In this paper, we analyze current literature in engineering education research to argue that scripts of whiteness in engineering are detrimental for women and people of color because they keep racialization in engineering spaces in perpetual motion. We posit that individuals in engineering spaces are not only conditioned to scripts of whiteness but also become the bearers of racialized hierarchical classifications to maintain power and sustain systemic barriers in engineering education. Guided by the questions: (1) how is whiteness interpreted and manifested in engineering and (2) what common scripts of whiteness are prevalent in engineering spaces, a systemic review of the literature was performed. Given that the research on whiteness in engineering is not very extensive, the literature review was not limited to journals in engineering education research but also those published in journals such as in higher education, science education, and counseling psychology. We argue that the lack of diversity in engineering is a direct outcome of a system that perpetuates white supremacy to actively keep students of color away, and we suggest that engineering education research cannot move forward toward racial equity unless these scripts are identified and challenged rather than being considered part of the “engineering culture.” Future work will explore how these scripts are developed, maintained, and promoted in engineering.
Wolfgram, Matthew; Lee, Stacey J; Her, Chundou; Pha, Kong_Pheng; Smolarek, Bailey; Xiong, Choua
(, Wisconsin Center for Education Research)
This article clarifies historical and sociocultural factors that impact the role of STEM in the racialization of Asian Americans. Drawing on critical race and other theories of Asian American racialization, and a review of empirical research on the experiences of Asian American college students in STEM, we develop a conceptual framework called STEM Asianization that highlights the role of STEM ideology in the model minority racialization of Asian Americans. Consequences for Asian American students include (1) erasure of the intersectional experiences of minoritized Asian American students; (2) dehumanization of Asian Americans and establishment of a bamboo ceiling; (3) representation of Asian Americans as a perpetual foreigner/Yellow Peril during times of cultural and political crisis; and (4) representation of Asian Americans who cannot or do not conform to the STEM achievement narrative as a failed minority. We argue that STEM Asianization reproduces White supremacy by ideologically reinforcing the colorblind meritocracy of STEM institutions in the United States.
Turpen, Chandra; Radoff, Jennifer; Gupta, Ayush; Sabo, Hannah; Elby, Andrew
(, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences)
Gresalfi, M.; Horn, I. S.
(Ed.)
Sociologists and historians of science have documented the salience of meritocracy and technocracy in engineering (Cech, 2014; Slaton, 2015; Riley, 2008). Meritocracy is often paired with a technocratic ideology, which distinguishes technical and “soft” skills and assigns more worth to the technical. Scholars have shown how technocracy and meritocracy contribute to marginalization within engineering education (Slaton, 2015; Foor et al., 2007; Secules et al., 2018). Our team has been iteratively redesigning a pedagogy seminar for engineering peer educators to disrupt such forces of marginalization. We study peer educators because they can do harm if these ideologies aren't challenged, and they have the potential to disrupt these ideologies. Using tools from discourse analysis and the ideology-in-pieces framework (Philip, 2011), we analyze how technocratic stances are reproduced or challenged in engineering peer educators’ talk. Such analyses can help others to recognize technocratic reasoning and see some of its negative consequences.
Downey, Robert J, Mejia, Joel Alejandro, Chen, Diana A, and Hoople, Gordon D. Meritocracy and Colorblindness: The Perpetuation of Whiteness in Engineering Education Through False Narratives. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10523605.
Downey, Robert J, Mejia, Joel Alejandro, Chen, Diana A, & Hoople, Gordon D. Meritocracy and Colorblindness: The Perpetuation of Whiteness in Engineering Education Through False Narratives. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10523605.
Downey, Robert J, Mejia, Joel Alejandro, Chen, Diana A, and Hoople, Gordon D.
"Meritocracy and Colorblindness: The Perpetuation of Whiteness in Engineering Education Through False Narratives". Country unknown/Code not available: ASEE Conferences. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10523605.
@article{osti_10523605,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Meritocracy and Colorblindness: The Perpetuation of Whiteness in Engineering Education Through False Narratives},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10523605},
abstractNote = {Historically, research in engineering education has taken a deficit-oriented perspective by focusing on the dearth of People of Color (POC) in engineering as a supply issue while ignoring the false narratives and discourses that dominate engineering education and research which exclude POC from the start. Recently, asset-based approaches have gained more traction in the field but too often miss a critical consideration: the hegemony of Whiteness in engineering. This theoretical paper is a deeper exploration of two crucial concepts that underpin the hegemonic discourse of Whiteness: meritocracy and colorblindness. We begin with a brief review of Whiteness studies which views Whiteness as the symbolic and structural white dominance and perceived superiority that marginalizes and oppresses POC and elevates white people to the top of the racial hierarchy (Matias & Newlove, 2017; McIntyre, 2002); a false ideal, guided by a historical mechanism of power, and the product of privileged social positions that benefits white people (DuBois, 1999). The purpose of this paper provides a critical perspective on how Whiteness tends to be at the foundations of these problematic narratives and discourses. The concept of meritocracy asserts that individuals are rewarded based solely on their individual effort, implying that people attain what they deserve in life through their hard work and determination. Conversely, those that are not successful are responsible for their lot in life. However, this belief in meritocracy overlooks the complex web of institutional and systemic variables that play a pivotal role in shaping life outcomes. A colorblind ideology fortifies the myth of meritocracy because it shifts the focus away from understanding how institutions perpetuate the normalized standard of white supremacy and racism, and instead places the responsibility for combating racism and white supremacy on individuals. This perspective bestows privileges upon white individuals as acts of merit if these privileges were earned solely through merit, rather than acknowledging that they are a product of a system that perpetuates advantages like a well-oiled assembly line. Meritocracy and colorblindness form a self-reinforcing cycle—a colorblind discourse in engineering education dominated by Whiteness willfully ignores the hierarchical positioning of racialized groups, fostering the misguided belief that success is determined by inherent merits. In reality, these merits are not objective or universal, but rather intangible attributes granted primarily to those who occupy the upper rungs of the hierarchical ladder within a colorblind society dominated by Whiteness and those who align with such an ideology. This theoretical paper begins to question the ways pedagogy and research are conducted in engineering education that traditionally exclude POC identities under the veil of equality, not equity. This ontological and epistemological shift is possible by questioning the very foundation that colorblindness and merit are built upon. The foundation of this work stems from an NSF grant to uncover the scripts of Whiteness in engineering education while devising a structured environment to help build individual and institutional racial literacy.},
journal = {},
publisher = {ASEE Conferences},
author = {Downey, Robert J and Mejia, Joel Alejandro and Chen, Diana A and Hoople, Gordon D},
}
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