2

The Historical and Contemporary Context for Structural, Systemic, and Institutional Racism in the United States

To best understand “the conditions that create systemic barriers,” as described in the Statement of Task, the committee examined evidence on the historical context of the United States. The current chapter begins with definitions of structural, systemic, and institutional bias, and describes how they collectively function at a macro level to perpetuate widespread disparities on the basis of race. The chapter then examines how the origins of race and racism came to be established at the inception of the United States. These racist belief systems created a false racial hierarchy under which non-Hispanic White people are believed to be superior, and Black people, Indigenous people, and systematically minoritized racial and ethnic people are considered inferior.

This chapter then reviews the evidence on the codification of racism through national laws, policies, and numerous other mechanisms. Further, the codification of racism is examined across multiple sectors in society, including education, housing, employment, criminal justice, and health, all of which, as the chapter demonstrates, underlie entry into science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM).¹

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¹ This chapter will use both STEM (to refer to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and STEMM (to refer to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). In many references to undergraduate education, STEM will be used rather than STEMM, to indicate the lack of professional medical degrees in the data sets most often provided by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Many references used in this chapter refer to STEM or medicine, and the separation of STEM vs. STEMM should be seen as intentional to reflect the studies that researchers have conducted.

For instance, the committee finds these laws, policies, and practices have created unfair barriers to home ownership, lost opportunities for building generational wealth, and lost educational opportunities for minoritized people. These data together point to a major key finding: the codification of racism strengthened and continually reinforced the false racial hierarchy by systematically advantaging non-Hispanic White people and systematically disadvantaging Black, Indigenous, and other minoritized people. This review of structural, systemic, and institutional racism will serve as a frame for understanding how history has shaped STEMM institutions in the United States.

The chapter also reviews the literature on how minority serving institutions (MSIs) emerged as a critical higher educational resource when higher educational opportunities were severely limited for minoritized people. The committee found that even though MSIs on average have continually faced significant underfunding, they have advanced representation by helping many minoritized students obtain STEMM degrees. This chapter ends by setting the stage for the remainder of this report. It discusses how the structural, systemic, and institutional racism in the broader United States is reflected in STEMM, but also reproduced in STEMM. The chapter ends with conclusions focused on dismantling the false racial hierarchy, and implementing the strengths of MSIs.

DEFINING STRUCTURAL, SYSTEMIC, AND INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

First, some definitions that will be particularly pertinent for subsequent chapters in this report. Systemic and structural racism are forms of racism that are pervasively and deeply embedded in and throughout systems, laws, written or unwritten policies, entrenched practices, and established beliefs and attitudes that produce, condone, and perpetuate widespread unfair treatment of minoritized people (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). Though they are often used interchangeably along with institutional racism, they each refer to distinct concepts. Systemic racism is perpetuated discrimination within a system that has been based on racist principles, practices, and focuses on the involvement of whole systems (Feagin, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2021), and it focuses on the involvement of whole systems, and often all systems—for example, political, legal, economic, health care, school, and criminal legal systems—including the structures that uphold those systems (Feagin and Ducey, 2018).

Structural racism describes “cultural values in a society that are so ingrained in daily life that they are seen simply as the way things are” (Fitzgerald, 2021; Lucas, 2008), and it refers to wider political and social disadvantages within society, such as higher rates of poverty for Black and

Indigenous communities or high rates of death from COVID-19 among minoritized people (Bailey et al., 2021; Bleich and Ard, 2021). Structural racism shows up as inherited disadvantage and its reciprocal inherited advantage, and is evident in the differential distribution of both material conditions and access to power by “race” (Jones, 2000). Institutional racism denotes policies and practices within and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor White people and put individuals from other racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage (Roundtable on Community Change, 2017).

The current chapter focuses on each of these macro-level forms of racism together and how they impede STEMM careers for minoritized racial and ethnic people. First, the committee reviews the origins of race and racism in the United States.

THE ORIGINS OF RACE AND RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The written concept of race as it is commonly used today did not exist until the 17th century, when it was used to codify slavery (Rugemer, 2013). Leading philosophers and scientists of the time argued that race was a biological construct and wrongly claimed that there are genetically distinct human races; they further argued that White people were the biologically superior race who had the right to enslave biologically inferior non-White people. This biological construct of race provided the scientific rationale for racial hierarchies of humans in terms of intelligence, industriousness, ingenuity, sexuality, and criminal behavior. Scientific proof of such hierarchies was based on various “scientific” studies, such as measuring pain tolerance, pseudoscientific intelligence testing, or measuring brain sizes—measurements that were later shown to be fraudulent (e.g., Gould, 1978). It was not until the mid-20th century that polygenesis and biology-based racism were widely disproven and race became a subject for anthropologists and sociologists (Gannon, 2016; Yudell et al., 2016).

It is important to recognize that racial categories are often huge groupings based on the social interpretation of how one looks in a race-conscious society such as the United States. They are the substrate on which racism has operated historically and continues to operate day to day. However, every racial category comprises people with different ethnicities, countries of origin, histories, languages, and cultures (Smedley and Smedley, 2005). In addition to the history covered in this section, there are substantial literatures and research on the meaning of race in the United States. Social scientists and novelists such as E. Franklin Frazier, W.E.B. Du Bois, Toni Morrison, and James Jackson have contributed to the psychological and social understanding of race. These ideas and debates can deepen and broaden the understanding and related conclusions among social scientists.

While this report does not include a specific analysis of this body of work, the committee respects how this research has shaped the meaning of race in the United States over time.

Slavery was not the only overt expression of the racism that was foundational in the history of what would become the United States (Banaji et al., 2021; Harvey, 2016). The colonization of the Western Hemisphere saw extreme expressions of racism in the way European settlers stole the land of, pushed aside, marginalized, mistreated, and committed genocide against the Indigenous peoples of North America. As with slavery, colonizers justified their theft of land, natural resources, culture, and identity with the view that White people were superior to all other peoples (Harvey, 2016). It was not until 1924 that the U.S. government recognized Indigenous Americans born in the United States as citizens. The right to vote took more time. In fact, there were some states that prevented Native Americans from voting up until 1957 (Library of Congress, n.d).

Racism directed at minoritized people, including Latine individuals, also dates back to the founding of the United States (Carrigan and Webb, 2003; Jung et al., 2011). Lynchings and mob brutality against Mexican Americans were common in the 19th century and into the early 20th century (Carrigan and Webb, 2013). People of Latine heritage were also pushed into segregated communities, forbidden from serving on juries, and made to attend designated “Mexican” schools throughout the Southwest (Antman and Cortes, 2013; Denis, 2015; Donato and Hanson, 2019; Powers, 2008; Villalobos, 1972; Wollenberg, 1976). In the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the federal government was responsible for violence against Puerto Ricans as well as birth control experimentation and sterilization promotion (Gibson-Rosado, 1993; Junod and Marks, 2002).

Racism toward Asian Americans became prominent in the 19th century when many Asian individuals, in particular Chinese individuals, served as indentured laborers in major national projects and events, including during the California gold rush and the construction of the transcontinental railroad (Gandhi, 2013; Kanazawa, 2005; Ngai, 2021). In the 19th and 20th centuries, “yellow peril” scares led to anti-Asian immigration and naturalization laws (Congress of the United States, 1882). The 20th century saw a major violation of American civil rights with the forced removal of approximately over 100,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes, including those whom were U.S. citizens by birth, and their incarceration in internment camps (National Archives, n.d.; Shoag and Carollo, 2016). Laws restricting immigration and naturalization of Asian individuals persisted until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (U.S. House of Representatives, 1965).

Taken together, the original definitions of race and racism, as established at the inception of the United States, created a false racial hierarchy

under which non-Hispanic White people are believed to be superior and Black people, Indigenous people, and systematically minoritized racial and ethnic people are believed to be inferior.

THE CODIFICATION OF RACISM: AN EXAMINATION OF MULTIPLE SECTORS IN U.S. SOCIETY

The present section examines what happened after this false racial hierarchy was conceptualized in the United States, namely the codification of racism in national laws, policies, practices, formal and informal rules and regulations, in addition to other mechanisms. This section begins by examining some of the earliest examples occurring at the inception of the country, and moves through U.S. history. In addition to spanning time, this section examines multiple sectors of society in which racism was codified, including education, housing, employment, criminal justice, and health. Across these sectors, the committee finds that the codification of racism restricted how Black people, Indigenous people, and other minoritized people were allowed to live, whether and where they were allowed to go to school, other educational opportunities they had access to, the careers they could pursue, the wealth they could accumulate and pass on to their children, and other aspects of everyday life that underlie entry and accessibility into STEMM educational and professional spaces.

Therefore, this section demonstrates the codification of racism strengthened and continually reinforced the false racial hierarchy through the systematic advantage of non-Hispanic White people and the systematic disadvantage of Black people, Indigenous people, and other minoritized people. Though the majority of formal practices and policies have long since been revoked, the history demonstrates that this legacy has had a lasting effect on the ability of minoritized people to have a career in STEMM (Clotfelter et al., 2015).

Separate and Unequal

In response to the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, southern state legislatures passed what were known as “Black Codes” that limited the rights of formerly enslaved people, exploited them as a labor source, and took advantage of the crime exception in the 13th Amendment to criminalize activities and force newly freed enslaved people into servitude again (Hinton and Cook, 2021). These laws also denied Black Americans the opportunity to rent or buy land, forced them to sign annual employment contracts that paid the lowest wages possible, prohibited them from voting, included measures to

prevent prospective employers from paying Black workers higher wages, and often excluded Black children from attending newly created free public schools.²

In the 1870s, many southern states and localities also adopted laws that codified the social interaction between Black and White individuals. These so-called “Jim Crow” laws varied across jurisdictions, but overall, they enforced segregation of Black individuals in the realms of schooling, transportation, public accommodations, and in access to public facilities such as pools and drinking fountains. Over time, many states and localities beyond the South also adopted Jim Crow-inspired restrictions on the social interaction of Black and White individuals.

Jim Crow laws seemingly violated the Civil Rights Act of 1875, but in 1896, in Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled they did not (Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 [1896]). Instead, the majority opinion articulated a doctrine of “separate but equal” that justified segregation, and thus Jim Crow relations, while formally requiring that facilities for Black and White individuals be equal. Between the inception of Jim Crow laws, through the waning of Jim Crow in the 1960s, and even after, researchers painstakingly documented inequality in the facilities for Black and White individuals. In education, they found racial inequality in the number of school days (for example, Norton, 1926), teacher qualifications (Norton, 1926), per-pupil expenditure (Phillips, 1932), teacher-student ratio (Moses, 1941), facilities (Moses, 1941; Strayer, 1949), and curriculum (Strayer, 1949; Wallace, 1951). In the context of health, they found Black individuals had less access to hospital beds and being accepted into a hospital in general (Beardsley, 1986; Cornely, 1946), less access to beds for treatment of specific illnesses such as tuberculosis (Cornely, 1946), and less access to treatment for disabilities (Cornely, 1946).

Jim Crow laws reinforced enslavement-era norms with the backing of the State, potentially endowing any violation with criminal implications. Moreover, beyond legal ramifications, the Jim Crow era was replete with extralegal enforcement. The Tuskegee University Archive documents that between 1882 and 1968 a total of 3,446 African Americans were lynched in the United States. In addition, some 1,297 Whites were also lynched, often for violating Jim Crow social barriers (Tuskegee University Archives Repository, 2010). Many victims were falsely accused of rape, murder, robbery, or other serious crimes, while others were lynched for perceived disrespect of White individuals.

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² For more on Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, refer to Du Bois (1935), Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880; Foner (1988), Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; or Oshinsky (1996), Worse than Slavery.

While lynchings were focused on one to three targets owing to some episodic perceived violation, oftentimes Black progress in general was the reason for a false accusation that was used to justify more widespread destruction within a community. For example, in many locales, when Black individuals started to gain ownership of small businesses and began to accrue wealth, White individuals would often respond by forming mobs, burning down the business district, raping and/or murdering Black people, and running all surviving Black individuals out of town. Bustling Black communities in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921; Parrish, 1922), Rosewood, Florida (1923; Dye, 1996), and Wilmington, North Carolina (1898; Tyson, 1998) fell victim to such violence, as did other communities. While these attacks are rarely called lynchings, they share with lynchings the defining features of extralegal pursuit and violent brutality toward Black individuals.

Because lynching and other extralegal violence was woven deeply into the experience and psyche of White and Black America, it is impossible to convey the historic and present implications of the Jim Crow era without also conveying the reality of lynching and violence targeted against Black individuals and Black communities. Jim Crow, and its violent enforcement, were designed and deployed to enforce Black subservience and White supremacy. The visibility and brutality of the violence served as a warning to any who might dare challenge Jim Crow relations specifically or White supremacy in general.

Jim Crow laws lasted well into the 1960s and were only dismantled as a result of the civil rights movement. But the effort to dismantle Jim Crow was widely resisted, and the legacy of that resistance remains impactful even now. For example, pools were often segregated in the Jim Crow era, both in the South and elsewhere. In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, which effectively ruled separate but equal unconstitutional, many communities closed and even filled-in their public pools when pressed to desegregate them (e.g., Smith, 2012, p. 40). Now, decades later, many U.S. communities still lack public pools, a lingering and consequential legacy of the resistance to treating everyone with fairness and equality (Gershon, 2019). Additional evidence emerged demonstrating that many Black families in the rural South were denied Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) loans when a natural disaster damaged their homes because they did not have a deed to their home, which was required to obtain a FEMA loan. Black persons during the Jim Crow era were excluded from the legal system, and as a result, as many as one-third of Black-owned land in the South was passed from generation to generation as “heir’s property” without a deed (Dreier and Ba Tran, 2021). It was only in 2021 that FEMA announced that it would no longer require people living on inherited land to prove they own their

home in order to be eligible for disaster relief (Dreier, 2021). Therefore, Jim Crow was a social arrangement that attended to matters great (e.g., housing, schooling) and small (e.g., swimming). It was ensconced in law and backed-up by legal and extralegal violence. The Jim Crow era was finally ended through civil rights struggle, but many of its damaging consequences remain.

UNEQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

Jim Crow laws also created segregated education and educational opportunities on the basis of race. The Supreme Court may have decided that “separate but equal” was the law of the land in its Plessy v. Ferguson decision, but “equal” was not put into practice when it came to education (Anderson, 1988; Walker and Archung, 2003). School segregation persisted into the 1960s, not only for Black children, but also Latine students and Indigenous students (Darling-Hammond, 1998; Orfield et al., 1997), and it was not limited to primary and secondary education. It also had profound effects on postsecondary education.

Though there were exceptions, Black students did not begin to enter predominantly White colleges and universities until the 1960s. In fact, before the end of the Civil War, only 40 Black students had graduated from colleges and universities, all in Northern states (Titcomb, 2022). Even the first university dedicated to the education of Black Americans, Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, founded in 1837, focused its curriculum on trades and agriculture (Allen, 1988; Cheyney University, n.d.).

In the decades after the Civil War, Black students were prohibited from attending Southern colleges because of Jim Crow laws and legal segregation, and they had limited access to Northern schools because of quota systems. In response, religious denominations began establishing institutions of higher education specifically to educate the children of formerly enslaved people and to train them to teach other Black Americans (Haynes, 2006). By 1880, there were over 40 Black colleges and universities in the United States, and from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) provided undergraduate training for many Black Americans across various sectors (Jackson and Nunn, 2003) including U.S. armed forces, and 80 percent of all Black federal judges (Thurgood Marshall College Fund, n.d.). (See section below for a greater discussion on MSIs.)

In 1890, Congress passed the Second Morrill Act that required states to establish land-grant institutions for Black students, or the states would have to demonstrate that admission to the 1862 land grant institution was not restricted on the basis of racial identity. This has resulted in the creation of 19 historically Black land-grant institutions, also known as

the 1890 land-grant universities (Lawrence, 2022).³ While the Second Morrill Act was intended to create an educational system that provided opportunity for all Americans, a study by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities found that these 1890 land-grant institutions were being short-changed by their home states, which were supposed to match federal funding to all land-grant universities established by the First and Second Morrill Acts on a one-to-one basis. Even today, while all states are meeting the one-to-one matching requirement for their original Morrill Act institutions, 61 percent of 1890 land-grant institutions did not receive 100 percent of the one-to-one matching funds from their respective states between 2010–2012 for extension or research funding, depriving those institutions of $57 million (Lee and Keys, 2013).

In the decades before the civil rights era, constrained educational opportunities were not limited solely by Jim Crow laws to Southern schools and were not imposed only on Black students. Northern colleges and universities, for example, had quotas limiting the number of Black individuals, as well as non-Protestant Christians and Jews, among other groups. It was not until the 1970s that institutions of higher education throughout the United States abolished segregation for non-White students and quotas for non-Christian students (Byrd-Chichester, 2000; Halperin, 2019). However, even today, many institutions of higher education continue to reflect anti-Asian biases, in part by excluding Asian and Asian American students from programs designed to help students from historically racialized and marginalized populations on the premise that they are “model minorities.” This view overlooks the fact that Asian and Asian American people are a highly diverse group in terms of ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and cultural practices (Gutierrez et al., 2021). While it is true that Asian American and Pacific Islander students as a group account for approximately 18 percent of the students admitted at 91 of the nation’s most selective colleges and universities (Carnevale and Quinn, 2021)—triple their representation in the college-going population—Asian Americans from specific nations or cultures are underrepresented among those attending colleges (e.g., Her, 2019).

Racially-based educational policies were not restricted to colleges and universities or to Black students. Indigenous children were forced to attend segregated boarding schools, where they were punished for speaking their tribal languages in an effort to force assimilation into White culture (Loring, 2009). The well-known phrase “kill the Indian in him and save the man” captured the assimilation era sentiment. In the 1800s,

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³ Title III of the Higher Education Act of 1965 defined an HBCU as a school of higher learning that was accredited and established before 1964, and whose principal mission was the education of African Americans.

California schools routinely denied access to Chinese American students based on their ancestry, and even after the California Supreme Court ruled this practice unlawful, the California state legislature passed a law allowing school districts to establish segregated schools under the separate but equal doctrine (Equal Justice Initiative, n.d; Urban and Jorae, 2011; Wollenberg, 1976). During the 1920s, the segregation of Mexican American children became widespread in California and Texas. Latine students routinely attended segregated schools until 1931, when a judge in San Diego prohibited a school board from turning away Mexican American students—a ruling based on the judge’s opinion that Mexican American children were White (Carter, 1970; Noltemeyer et al., 2012). With the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court finally outlawed all state laws establishing racial segregation in schools, but the California Supreme Court’s Roberto Alvarez v. The Lemon Grove School Board ruling in 1931 was the first successful local school desegregation court decision (Alvarez, 1986; Hudson and Holmes, 1994).

Even legislation that its sponsors intended to be race-neutral, such as the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, otherwise known as the GI Bill, was turned into a mechanism for discriminating against Black Americans. Of the approximately 16 million World War II veterans eligible for the GI Bill, approximately 1.2 million were Black veterans. While President Franklin Roosevelt intentionally created the GI Bill to avoid discrimination on the basis of race, Veterans Administration counselors, particularly those in Southern states, pushed Black veterans into vocational and trade schools rather than academic institutions (Turner and Bound, 2002). Researchers estimate that the segregated system of higher education turned away 55 percent of Black veterans seeking the educational benefits of the GI Bill (Perea, 2015).

The impact of these racist tactics was compounded by the fact that serious underfunding of HBCUs limited opportunities for the large number of Black veterans who did want to pursue higher education (Turner and Bound, 2002). With limited government investment in their infrastructure, HBCUs could not accommodate the influx of so many students, compared to well-funded White institutions. A survey of historically Black colleges in 1945 found that 45 percent of institutions enrolled fewer than 250 students, and 92 percent of the institutions had enrollment of less than 1,000 students (Jenkins, 1946). Moreover, of the approximately 100 public and private institutions of higher education listed as “Colleges for Negroes” by the Office of Education, 28 were classified as sub-baccalaureate teachers’ colleges or junior colleges (Office of Education and U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1960), and none of the HBCUs offered accredited engineering or doctoral programs (Geiger, 2021; Turner and Bound, 2002).

The lack of formal secondary education for many Black soldiers prior to their wartime service also impeded their access to higher education

(Turner and Bound, 2002). The end result of lack of preparation and overt discrimination was that 28 percent of White veterans went to college on the GI Bill while only 12 percent of Black veterans did (Turner and Bound, 2002). In addition, 86 percent of the skilled, professional, and semiskilled jobs went to White veterans, while 92 percent of the nonskilled and service positions went to Black veterans with the same training (Humes, 2006).

Progress has been uneven. A 2018 study found that the college enrollment gap between Black and Hispanic students and White students narrowed between 1986 and 2014, in large part a result of increasing high school graduation rates of Black and Hispanic students (Baker et al., 2018). Black and Hispanic students, however, are more likely than White students to enroll at colleges and universities that are less selective, categorized by admissions competitiveness as defined by the Barron’s Profile of American Colleges, and these institutions may have less money to spend on the enrichment programs that are a crucial part of STEMM education in particular (Barron’s College Division Staff, 2019). Research has shown that students who attend a more selective college receive larger tuition subsidies, more generous college resources, and more attention from faculty (Hoxby, 2009; Hoxby and Avery, 2012). In addition, graduating from a selective college leads to higher average earnings, which is particularly true for minoritized students (Dale and Krueger, 2011).

Finally, while getting into college is an important milestone, graduating with a degree is the real goal. Studies have shown that Black students and Latine students are less likely to graduate from college than White students (Shapiro et al., 2017). One analysis found that Black students graduate from four-year institutions at a 40 percent completion rate, as compared to White students (65%; NCES, 2019).

HOUSING: THE LEGACY OF REDLINING

Where people live can have an effect on where they go to school, the colleges they attend, and ultimately, the careers they pursue (Emery, 2016). Indeed, housing segregation determines access to quality health, education, housing, food, and other factors which subsequently contribute to successful outcomes (Quick and Kalhenberg, 2019; Rothstein, 2018). The racist practice of redlining, a legacy of policies enacted during the Great Depression and in the aftermath of World War II, codified racial and ethnic segregation in ways that that still affect racially and ethnically minoritized communities today. The term redlining refers to the red marks that were made on maps to indicate neighborhoods that were comprised of predominately or a significant proportion of African American individuals. This demarcation resulted in discriminatory practices in which housing resources would be restricted to African American neighborhoods (Swope et al., 2022).

In the winter of 1916, a small group of Black families left the repressive conditions in Selma, Alabama, for what they hoped would be a better life in Chicago. Historians consider this the start of what is known as the Great Migration—one of the largest movements of people in U.S. history (Tolnay, 2003). Over the next six decades, some six million Black Americans left the repressive conditions in the South for employment opportunities in northern and western cities. By the time the Great Migration ended in the 1970s, millions of Black Americans lived outside of the South (Tolnay, 2003; Wilkerson, 2020), and of those living outside of the South, 90 percent lived in urban areas (Farley and Allen, 1987).

The influx of Black laborers and sharecroppers into urban centers led to a variety of formal and informal rules and regulations that confined Black residents to specific neighborhoods. Though the Supreme Court struck down these ordinances in 1917, Black migrants continued to live primarily in these crowded, disadvantaged neighborhoods. Racial segregation was exacerbated by policies enacted during the Great Depression to help homeowners who were in danger of defaulting on their mortgages (Banaji et al., 2021) or those looking to purchase a home (Jackson, 2012). Under the terms of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), lenders had to consider the riskiness of the neighborhoods in which properties were located based on color-coded “Residential Security Maps” that HOLC officials and local Realtors created. With few exceptions, Black neighborhoods, along with adjacent neighborhoods that were candidates for settlement by Black families, were colored red, designating that they were excessively risky and therefore ineligible for HOLC-backed loans (Rothstein, 2018).

Black families were disadvantaged further by the provisions of the newly created Federal Housing Authority (FHA) loan program, which relied on the color-coded Residential Security Maps, encouraged the use of racial covenants to protect FHA-insured homes, and included other provisions, such as guides for appraisers and loan officers, that favored home buyers purchasing single-family homes in nascent suburban areas and disincentivized investment in Black neighborhoods. The Veterans Administration adopted the same racialized practices when the GI Bill created a similar loan program (Katznelson, 2006). These two programs formally institutionalized redlining in real estate and banking, which had the effect of relegating Black Americans, as well as other systematically minoritized racial and ethnic people, to disadvantaged neighborhoods, which had the further effect of preventing them from owning homes and building generational wealth (Rothstein, 2018). As a result, by 1940, nearly 90 percent of Black Americans lived in redlined neighborhoods (Krimmel, 2018), and of the $120 billion in FHA loans issued between 1934 and 1962, only two percent went to non-White families (Solomon et al., 2019). By 1970,

61 percent of Black Americans living in U.S. metropolitan areas resided in hyper-segregated neighborhoods (Massey and Tannen, 2018).

REDLINING AND UNEQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

The negative effects of redlining went beyond denying minoritized families the opportunity to live in neighborhoods that were not overcrowded and beset with poverty. One of most significant adverse consequence of redlining was on the education that students living in redlined neighborhoods received and continue to receive today. Though Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation of public schools, it did not redress the underinvestment that had the de facto effect of creating a separate but unequal educational system, given that schools in neighborhoods with a predominantly non-White population still had fewer resources, fewer counselors, few experienced educators, and fewer educational opportunities than those found in predominantly White neighborhoods.

The main reason for this disparity was a lower level of funding for schools in non-White neighborhoods resulting from the fact that public school funding relied heavily—and still relies heavily—on local property taxes that are based largely on property values. As a result of these disparities, only 7.7 percent of Black students graduated from high school in 1940 compared to 26.1 percent of White students. Twenty years later, the percentage of Black students graduating from high school had reached 21.7 percent, while the percentage of White students graduating from high school has increased to 43.2 percent (NCES, 2020).

With parents who themselves had restricted educational opportunities and who might have had literacy challenges, disadvantaged students were likely read to less frequently and be exposed to less complex language at home (Ayoub et al., 2009; Brooks-Gunn, 2005; Hart and Risley, 2005). The effects of the laws creating and perpetuating residential segregation by race were to facilitate the active disinvestment of minoritized communities.

Today, more than 50 years after passage of the Fair Housing Act, neighborhood segregation persists for Black people, Indigenous people, Latine people, and Asian American people and imposes unfair burdens on people from those communities even when they have the same income or education levels as people from predominantly White neighborhoods (Frey, 2021).

Even now, housing and schooling continue to be linked intrinsically in the United States, both in terms of educational opportunity and property values. A 2021 study from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found that districts and schools currently located in formerly redlined neighborhoods, regardless of where they are located in the nation, receive almost $2,500 less per pupil in combined federal, state, and local funding, and report lower average math and reading test scores compared

with districts and schools located in neighborhoods that were not redlined (Lukes and Cleveland, 2021). Further, there is some evidence demonstrating that there are fewer courses related to STEM offered in schools with higher minoritized student enrollment (Office for Civil Rights, 2018). In addition, studies have found that schools with high percentages of Black students and Latine students are more likely than their peers to have teachers with one year or less experience, uncertified teachers, or higher annual teacher turnover, with the disparities largest for schools with high percentages of Black students (Mehrotra et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2021). Several studies have shown that high teacher turnover harms student achievement in both English language arts and math and makes it hard to establish coherent instruction and implement new initiatives (Balu et al., 2009; Ronfeldt et al., 2013).

The authors of the Annenberg report noted that while they documented positive trends for finance and diversity outcomes for both redlined and non-redlined neighborhoods, there were persistent and widening gaps between schools in historically redlined neighborhoods and those in non-redlined neighborhoods. At the same time, they found no statistically significant differences for average student learning and average student test score changes between redlined and non-redlined neighborhoods. “These results,” the authors concluded, “tell us that while learning rates and changes in educational opportunity are on average the same [between redlined and non-redlined neighborhoods], educational opportunity is not” (Lukes and Cleveland, 2021).

The inequities in educational opportunities resulting from redlining do not end when students graduate from high school. One housing-related reason for those inequities is the limited ability of those who live in historically redlined areas to accrue generational wealth because of lower property values and lower levels of homeownership. This racial wealth gap is reflected in the substantial disparity in net worth between White households and those of systematically minoritized racial and ethnic groups (Bhutta et al., 2020), which affects the ability of families to fund their students’ postsecondary education. According to a 2019 study, Black families rely more heavily on student debt, and on riskier forms of student debt, than do White families to gain postsecondary education (Kahn et al., 2019; Lucas, 2013). As the authors of this study conclude, “With lower family wealth and racial discrimination in the job market, Black students are far more likely than White students to experience negative financial events after graduating—including loan default, higher interest rate payments, and higher graduate school debt balances.”

According to an analysis by the Education Data Initiative, Black college graduates owe an average of $25,000 more in student load debt than White college graduates (Hanson, 2022). Moreover, 48 percent of Black

students owe an average of 12.5 percent more than they borrowed four years after graduation, while White students owe 12 percent less than they borrowed (Hanson, 2022). In addition, 29 percent of Black student borrowers make monthly payments of $350 or more, and over 50 percent of Black borrowers report that their net worth is less than they owe in student loan debt. The same analysis found that American Indian and Alaska Native student borrowers have the highest monthly payments after graduation (Hanson, 2022).

A 2013 analysis conducted by the Center for STEM Education and Innovation found that White, Asian, and multi-racial graduate students had less debt than Hispanic graduate students, who in turn had less debt than Black students (Zeiser et al., 2013). In fact, 73 percent of White, Asian, and multi-racial STEM Ph.D. recipients reported having no graduate school debt at all, compared to 51 percent of Black and Latine students. Among STEM Ph.D. recipients, Black graduates were more than twice as likely as White, Asian, and multi-racial graduates to have debt exceeding $30,000 (Zeiser et al., 2013).

RACISM AND EMPLOYMENT

As a 2019 report from the Center for American Progress noted, “Occupational segregation and the persistent devaluation of workers of color are a direct result of intentional government policy” (Solomon et al., 2019). The policies enacted as part of the New Deal, for example, reserved most of these benefits for White workers while restricting and excluding minoritized people by exempting many domestic, agricultural, and service occupations from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, actions that helped institutionalize and validate racial disparities in economic wellbeing (The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 2011; Linder, 1986). The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 gave states permission to enact so-called right-to-work laws that have the effect of hampering the ability of unions to help employees bargain with their employers (National Labor Relations Board, n.d.). Today, eight of the 10 states with the highest percentage of Black residents have right-to-work laws, and not coincidentally, workers in right-to-work states earn 3.2 percent less on average and are less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance and pension coverage than workers in non-right-to-work states (Gould and Kimball, 2015; Gould and Shierholz, 2011).

Even now, minoritized people remain overrepresented in the lowest-paid agricultural, domestic, and service vocations. Black or African American individuals, Asian individuals, and Latine individuals account for approximately 36 percent of the overall U.S. workforce. When examining representation by occupation, these groups of individuals are highly represented

within these lower-paid positions. For instance, collectively Latine individuals represent approximately 48 percent of maids and housekeeping cleaners; 20 percent of bellhops, concierges, and baggage porters; and about 46 percent of miscellaneous agricultural workers (USBLS, 2022a). Though Congress has modified the Fair Labor Standards Act to include some of these occupations, agricultural and domestic workers, many of whom are Latine or Asian American, remain some of the least protected employees in the nation (Lin, 2013). Live-in domestic service workers, babysitters, and companions for older persons—all occupations in which minoritized people are disproportionately represented—also remain excluded from many Fair Labor Standards Act protections (U.S. Department of Labor, 2022). Given that more Black and Latine women work in service industries than White women (Tucker and Lowell, 2016), this might be one reason why Black and Latine women earn less than both White women and Black men and Latine men (BLS, 2022b).

Employment and Systemic Racism in the Criminal Legal System

Approximately 77 million Americans have a criminal record, making it difficult, or even impossible, for an individual to work in a given field, particularly the one in four jobs that require a government-issued occupational license (CSG Justice Center, 2022; National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction, 2022). Research by the Department of Justice shows that minoritized individuals may face higher rates of incarceration (Carson, 2021). For instance, statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice found that as compared to White men, Black men were 5.7 times as likely to be imprisoned in 2020. When examining men within the ages of 18–19, Black men were 12.5 times as likely to be imprisoned, as compared to White men (Carson, 2021). While more than 25 percent of people arrested for drug law violations—the most frequent reason for incarceration—were Black people, drug use rates to not differ substantially by race and ethnicity (Edwards et al., 2020).

Criminal histories may disadvantage individuals when seeking future employment. Research has shown that job candidates with a criminal record are at best half as likely to get a call back than applicants who do not have one, with even fairly minor felony records having a largely negative effect on employer callbacks (Agan and Starr, 2017). One study of the intersectionality between race and gender, former incarceration, and unemployment found that the unemployment rates for formerly incarcerated Black men and Black women were 35 percent and 43 percent, respectively, compared to 18 percent and 23 percent for White men and White women, respectively (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, 2008).

Employment and Health Disparities

The relationship between health and work is bidirectional. Health is a critical labor market determinant, given that healthy people are more likely to be employed, while people experiencing health issues are more likely to see their employment opportunities limited (Dooley et al., 1996; Olesen et al., 2013; van Rijn et al., 2014). Work, however, can also affect health. Unemployment or a bad job can harm one’s health (Hergenrather et al., 2015), while moving from unemployment to a good job may improve health (Antonisse and Garfield, 2018).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have determined that an abundance of literature demonstrates a clear pattern of racial disparities in health outcomes. Namely, individuals from racial and ethnic minoritized groups, as compared to White individuals, are significantly more likely to face higher rates of illness, and death related to a number of chronic health conditions, such as obesity, asthma, and hypertension (CDC, n.d.a). Research has shown that the social determinants of health play a major role in explaining health disparities. Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and they include a range of factors. These may include socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood and physical environment, employment, and social support networks, as well as access to health care (CDC, n.d.b).

As with the inequities in education discussed above, this too can be seen as a consequence of historic redlining, with those living in majority White neighborhoods experiencing fewer of these factors. Historically redlined neighborhoods, for example, generally have poorer air quality than White neighborhoods (Woo et al., 2019). A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that minoritized people generally fare worse compared to White people across most examined measures of social determinants of health (Jack et al., 2012). In fact, residential racial segregation is a potent predictor of Black people’s experience of health disparities, including increased rates of preterm and low-birth-rate births, asthma, cancer, tuberculosis, and material depression and other mental health issues (Bailey et al., 2017; Williams and Collins, 2001; Williams et al., 2019).

CONCLUSION 2-1: The history of systemic racism in the United States, including both written laws and policies and a culture of practices and beliefs, has harmed Black people, Indigenous people, Latine, Asian American, and other people from minoritized racial and ethnic groups that continue to this day. This history provides critical context for understanding the unequal representation of minoritized populations in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine higher education and workplaces.

MINORITY SERVING INSTITUTIONS

As mentioned above, in response to laws and practices that limited the opportunities for Black students to attend college, Black ministers and White philanthropists established institutions that came to be known as HBCUs. Over the years, institutions of higher education designed to honor and reflect Native Americans and Latine culture have also been established. The sections below find that even in the face of historical and current underfunding, these MSIs today are important venues for students from marginalized ethnic and racial communities to not only pursue a postsecondary education in a culturally supportive environment but go on to graduate school in STEMM fields.

The committee notes that a 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Minority Serving Institutions: America’s Underutilized Resource for Strengthening the STEM Workforce, presents a far more detailed examination of MSIs and the important role they play in bolstering the STEM workforce, as MSIs were central to the report’s statement of task (the National Academies, 2019). The 2019 report presents findings, conclusions, and recommendations that “aim to support the expansion of effective practices, and the study of promising ones, such that both can be scaled and thus reach more institutions and their students.” It also concludes that there is “very limited, rigorous research available on MSIs generally, but especially knowledge that sheds light on how these institutions organize, deliver, and support learning opportunities for students of color in STEM” (see Appendix A for further discussion of Minority Serving Institutions and other earlier related reports). Given some areas of content overlap in regard to MSIs, the committee of the current report decided to underscore the existence of the 2019 recommendations, as these are expansive and valuable extant resources. When forming recommendations, the committee was mindful to not recreate the same set of recommendations, but rather develop novel recommendations pertaining to MSIs.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The statistics reviewed in the upcoming section draw heavily from data within the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). These data show that in the year 2020, there were a total of 101 HBCUs, located in 19 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, representing 2.5 percent of all public, private nonprofit, and for-profit colleges (NCES, n.d.a,b) Most of these institutions (59%) only offer undergraduate degrees, while 41 percent offer graduate degrees, including 28 percent that award doctoral degrees (NCES, 2022). Between the years 1976 and 2010, the number of students attending HBCUs increased 47 percent from 223,000

to 327,000 students, and decreased by 15 percent to 279,000 between 2010 and 2020 (Thurgood Marshall College Fund, n.d.). Between the years 1976 and 2010, the number of students in all degree-granting institutions increased 91 percent (from 11 to 21 million), and then between the years 2010 to 2020, it decreased 10 percent (NCES, 2021). Scholars note that HBCUs represent a small percentage (approximately 3%) of all four-year colleges. Even though they represent a small numeric minority, data have demonstrated that they are outperforming in regard to conferring bachelor’s degrees (approximately 18%). Further, among African American individuals that earn STEM degrees, 25 percent received their degrees from HBCUs (Williams et al., 2019b).

As noted above, HBCUs have been chronically underfunded by both federal and state governments, despite the pivotal role they play in advancing representation of historically racialized and minoritized people in STEMM. A 2019 report from the American Council on Education (ACE) found the following. Private HBCUs usually depend more on tuition than their non-HBCU counterparts. Compared to their non-HBCU counterparts, public HBCUs rely on sources of local, state, and federal funding more heavily. In addition, the ACE report notes specifically that between the years 2003–2015, both public and private HBCUs experienced the steepest declines in federal funding per full-time student. Private HBCUs in particular experienced a 42 percent reduction. At the same time, grants, contracts, and private gifts represent a smaller percentage of overall revenue for private HBCUs relative to non-HBCUs (American Council on Education, 2019).

There are also disparities between historically White land-grant institutions (HWLGUs) and historically Black land-grant institutions (HBLGUs) in endowments and campus resources (Allen and Esters, 2018). As of 2013, per full time student equivalent, public HBCUs had approximately 20 percent of the endowment funds as other public institutions (Lee and Keys, 2013). These disparities are a legacy of the two Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 that created HWLGUs and HBLGUs; such disparities dispel the notion that the 1890 Morrill Act created equal opportunities in higher education for Black Americans (Allen and Esters, 2018; Lee and Keys, 2013).

The authors of the 2019 ACE report noted that the huge gap in endowments jeopardizes an HBCU’s ability to buffer ongoing decreases in state and federal funding and to continue offering high-quality education for a predominantly non-White student body. They also stated that “despite efforts to counter a historical legacy of inequitable funding and notable investments by the federal government and many state governments, resource inequities continue to plague HBCUs” (American Council on Education, 2019). In fact, federal funding per full-time student at non-HBCUs is greater than at HBCUs, particularly for private HBCUs compared to private

non-HBCUs; in this area, the gap has grown from less than $400 per full-time student in 2003 to $1,600 in 2015. Given the general divestment in higher education by the states over the past four decades, HBCUs are particularly vulnerable to underfunding. The authors of this study concluded that “because HBCUs are mission-driven to broaden college opportunities for Black students, many of whom have limited financial resources, these colleges and universities cannot increase costs to offset public divestments in higher education. Furthermore, they cannot grow their endowments overnight. As a result, federal, state, and local funding continue to play a critical role for HBCUs in their mission to support students that the country needs to earn college degrees” (American Council on Education, 2019).

In spite of these challenges, HBCUs continue to prepare high percentages of their graduates who go on to attain advanced degrees in STEMM. Approximately 20 percent of Black college graduates with a STEM degree earned it at an HBCU, as did one-third of the Black individuals with a STEM Ph.D. (Gewin and Payne, 2021). Given the projected shortfall of STEMM jobs that will need people to fill them, and increased interests in promoting diversity in STEMM, investing in HBCUs would be an important means of closing that gap while diversifying the STEMM workforce (Duker, 2021; Shuler et al., 2022).

Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs)

Currently, there are 32 Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), each established and chartered by its own tribal government or the federal government, and they aim to “maintain, preserve, and restore Native languages and cultural traditions; offer high-quality college equation; provide career and technical education, job training, and other career building programs; and often serve as anchors in some of the country’s poorest and most remote areas” (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.a). As of 2010, 8.7 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native students were enrolled at a TCU. Currently, TCUs serve approximately 30,000 students, including full- and part-time students. In addition, 23 TCUs offer several types of degrees, including associate’s, bachelor’s, and graduate degrees (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.a). Nelson and Frye noted that “despite the need and growing population, American Indians and Alaska Natives do not access higher education at the same rate as their non-Native peers” (Nelson and Frye, 2016).

The 2016 ACE report found that federal funding accounts for 71–74 percent of TCU revenues, compared to less than 25 percent for public non-TCUs. In contrast, state and local funding of public non-TCUs is higher than for TCUs, with state and local funding accounting for approximately 40 percent of public non-TCU revenues compared to approximately seven to 10 percent of TCU revenues. Similarly, tuition and fees account for between 27

and 38 percent of public non-TCU revenues compared to approximately nine percent for TCUs. The authors note that “the majority of states do not provide any financial support to TCUs, even as these institutions enroll significant numbers of non-Native state residents.”

The largest source of STEM-related funding for TCUs comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and specifically NSF’s Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP). TCUP was created after President Bill Clinton signed an executive order in 1996 directing all federal agencies to increase support to the tribal colleges. The NSF states TCUP “supports tribal colleges and universities, Alaska Native-serving institutions, and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions to promote STEM research and education to increase the number of Native Americans in STEM careers” (NSF, n.d.a). According to the Native Science Report, TCUP has “fundamentally transformed STEM education within [TCUs]” and enabled many TCUs to establish STEM programs and facilities comparable to public two- and four-year colleges (Native Science Report, 2022).

Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs)

The federal definition of a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) is a nonprofit, degree-granting institution with a full-time equivalent undergraduate Hispanic student enrollment of at least 25 percent (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.b). As of 2021, there were 559 HSIs in 29 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico achieving this designation (HACU, 2022b). In addition, there were 393 emerging HSIs. Emerging HSIs are defined as “non-profit, degree-granting institutions with a full-time equivalent undergraduate Hispanic student enrollment of at least 15 percent, but less than 25%” (HACU, 2022b). In 2020, over two million Hispanic students were enrolled at HSIs out of a total of 4.2 million students enrolled at HSIs (U.S. Department of Education, 2022). According to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, “HSIs comprise 17 percent of colleges and universities nationally yet educate more than two-thirds of the estimated 3.8 million Hispanic college students and 33 percent of all Pell recipients in the country. HSIs also enroll 41.3 percent of Asian, 35.6 percent of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 26.2 percent of multi-racial, 24.2 percent of Black, and 15 percent of White students” (HACU, 2022a).

Two federal programs provide the bulk of support for STEM programs at HSIs. The Department of Education’s Hispanic-Serving Institutions STEM and Articulation Program (HSI STEM) aims to increase the number of Hispanic students who graduate with STEM degrees and to develop model articulation agreements that would enable students to more easily transfer from a two-year college to a four-year college or university (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.c). This program provided an estimated

$94.1 million to support STEM programs at HSIs in fiscal year 2021 (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). The NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program awarded 48 grants to HSIs in fiscal year 2022 totaling approximately $27 million (NSF, n.d.b). The goals of this program are to “enhance the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and to increase the recruitment, retention and graduation rates of students pursuing an associate’s or baccalaureate degrees in STEM” (NSF, n.d.b).

Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions

Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) are defined under the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 as colleges or universities with an undergraduate enrollment that is at least 10 percent Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander and with at least 50 percent of the institution’s degree-seeking students receiving federal financial aid (U.S. Department of Education, 2020a). The number of institutions eligible to receive AANAPISI grants has increased significantly between 2018–2022 from 110 to 199. Behind HSIs, they are the second largest number of MSIs in the United States (Herder, 2022). The committee identified that funding opportunities for AANAPISI programs exist to help improve and expand institutions of higher education’s ability to serve students (U.S. Department of Education, 2020b).

CONCLUSION 2-2: The policies, programs, and practices of historically Black colleges and universities and TCUs are examples of providing intentional and culturally responsive student and faculty support. Predominantly White institutions of higher education and other science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine organizations can look to these institutions as guides and adopt these systems to increase support for people from minoritized racial and ethnic groups.

RECOMMENDATION 2-1: Federal funding agencies, private philanthropies, and other grantmaking organizations should provide increased opportunities for grants, awards, and other forms of support to increase understanding of how the policies, programs, and practices of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) support students and faculty. Notably, one issue for further investigation is understanding the core principles of historically-based minority serving institution (MSI)-based programs and how to translate them to predominantly White institutions of higher education and other science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine organizations. In addition, predominately White institutions should seek sustainable partnerships with all MSIs (HBCUs, TCUs, Hispanic serving institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions).

STEMM: A REFLECTION AND REPRODUCTION OF BROADER BIASED STRUCTURES

The current chapter has reviewed the evidence demonstrating that structural, institutional, and systemic racism exists and has existed across multiple sectors of society, including education opportunities and housing, and that it continually reinforces a false hierarchy on the basis of race and ethnicity. Minoritized people face numerous systematic disadvantages across these sectors, with these disadvantages each acting as a barrier to entry and accessibility into the STEMM educational and workforce settings. STEMM organizations, and the educational and professional environments they provide, cannot be divorced from the larger history and contemporary sociopolitical contexts of the country.

The impacts of these disadvantages and barriers are wide-reaching, and the remainder of the report will articulate evidence demonstrating that these broader biased structures occurring in U.S. society can inform racial bias occurring within STEMM contexts. For instance, as a result of the educational disparities discussed above, people from marginalized racial and ethnic groups have had limited access to STEMM education, training, and career opportunities (see Chapter 3 for demographic disparities). With fewer Black people, Indigenous people, and other systematically minoritized racial and ethnic people able to enter STEMM in years past, there are fewer role models and smaller communities of support for entrants (see Chapters 4 and 5 for more about the experiences of minoritized people). Further, as the remainder of the report will demonstrate, racism is reproduced within STEMM settings. In fact, while traditionally marketed as a competitive and meritocratic field, research has shown that there is more bias in STEMM professions than their non-STEM counterparts (Borum and Walker, 2012; Leath and Chavous, 2018).

In general, while there are no legal or policy barriers explicitly preventing people from marginalized racial and ethnic groups from pursuing degrees and careers in STEMM today, the committee notes that there are parallels in STEMM to the ways that Black people, Indigenous people, and other systematically minoritized racial and ethnic people have faced discrimination in a broader national setting. For instance, gatekeepers of STEMM, who are often non-Hispanic White males, define the skills, identities, and values necessary for minoritized people to persist in STEMM (see Chapter 6 for further discussion of gatekeepers). They often exhibit bias on the basis of race and ethnicity, and cannot monitor their own bias and so, unwittingly perpetuate it. Individual and interpersonal racism as experienced by minoritized people yield adverse health outcomes, and racism informs working conditions in many STEMM contexts (see Chapter 7 on STEMM teams), all of which inform STEMM career outcomes. Across many STEMM disciplines, there is often a notion of the “survival of

the fittest” culture; this culture implies that student’s success arises exclusively from an individual’s intelligence, and also takes some of the emphasis off the role of structural racism and the importance of student’s multiple identities (McGee, 2020). White-centered culture in STEMM prizes meritocracy and establishes the criteria that perpetuate success based on similarity or likeness to the ingroup (see Chapter 8).

REFERENCES