Keeping It 100: Speaking Black Truth to White Power

• In Event: The Hate U Give "F" Us All: "Race" and Racism in Student Evaluation of Teaching

Abstract

This presentation exposes the illegitimate use of student evaluation of teaching instruments by institutions that rely on them to make important personnel decisions like tenure and promotion. Thoughtfully prepared teaching portfolios are offered as viable alternatives to reliance on SETs. Black, female, indigenous, immigrant and other faculty of color who fail to align well with the Eurocentric values and standards of scholarship, teaching and service are often challenged in their pursuit of professional success and job security in the academy. My perspective is grounded in critical theory in that it offers a reflective assessment and critique of culture and society in order to expose and challenge structures of power, particularly the way they currently operate in higher education. My framework builds on the tradition of critical theory to factor in the ways in which racial identity politics works to the detriment of BIPOC (Grady, 2020) faculty in the academy. Thus, critical race theory opens the door to allow further assessment and critique of culture and society at the intersections of “race,” class, sex, immigration status, sexual orientation, religion and all the ways institutional structures marginalize and oppress “other” people.
Critical race theory (Crenshaw, et.al, 1995) informs researcher methods, techniques and modes of inquiry via the tenets that undergird its framework. Three tenets of CRT inform this presentation: 1. racism is pervasive and woven in the historical fabric of American society and culture. 2. American capitalist society is highly stratified and polarized such that groups are made to compete for resources, which then promotes interest convergence or quid quo pro relationships among groups. Lastly, CRT informs modes of inquiry in that it places great value on storytelling as a way for the marginalized oppressed to reclaim the narrative and counter the conventional narrative. Through personal testimony, for example, a Black female academic who was denied tenure and promotion at a predominantly white androcentric institution is allowed to describe her experience to counter the institutional narrative that says she was denied tenure and promotion because of poor teaching based on negative student evaluations of her teaching. Inadequate SETs become the pretext for systemic racism and sexism.
This presentation illuminates the personal testimony of faculty who have experienced racism, sexism and other “isms” with students who have been empowered to use SETs to express their dissatisfaction with BIPOC faculty based on identity factors. Author draws from empirical and anecdotal evidence from scholarly journal articles, opinion editorials and research based texts. The scholarly significance of this work is that it adds to the knowledge base of research and study of how SETs privilege white male faculty at the expense of BIPOC and female faculty. The inherent bias in traditional student evaluation of teaching instruments operates to maintain the status quo of a predominantly white male academy. It is up to marginalized faculty who have been hurt by the practice of over reliance on fraudulent manipulation of simplified metrics to challenge this system of how competence and effectiveness in teaching and learning is determined.

Author

• Jonathan Lightfoot, Hofstra University