College Chemistry Textbooks Aid and Abet Racial Disparity

Abstract

This study examines the representation of people of color in 10 US general chemistry textbooks published between 2016 and 2020. On average, people of color appear every 320 pages of text, while white figures are observed every 24 pages. The average percentage of people of color in the textbooks (12%) is well below the percentage in the US general population (40%), college population (46%), and science technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce (33%). Of the images that do include people of color, 26% portray explicitly negative stereotypes (e.g., unclean, poor, sick, primitive, unskilled) and only 31% depict STEM activities. Several textbooks in this study were reported in 2007 to contain racial bias, but no evidence of improvement was observed. To understand the persistence of racial bias, biographical information was used to illuminate the values held by the eight scientists that all 10 textbooks have in common. These eight universally prominent scientists include a lifelong supporter and profiteer of slavery, a trustee of the Human Betterment Foundation (an organization promoting mandatory sterilization for “race betterment”), an executive board member of the Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene, an anti-Semitic bigamist, and a modern advocate of eugenics. We posit that general chemistry textbooks reveal two mechanisms by which racial disparity in STEM is preserved and advanced: (1) through the invisibility and negative stereotyping of people of color and (2) via an oblivious idolatry of scientists who have promoted racist ideologies.