Becoming anti-racist: Learning about race in CS Education

I don’t usually invite external review on my blog posts for CACM, but I did this month because it’s such an important topic and I know too little about it — “CS Teachers, It’s (Past) Time To Learn About Race” (see link here). Many thanks to Melissa Perez, Carl Haynes, Leigh Ann DeLyser, Betsy DiSalvo, Leo Porter, Chad Jenkins, Wes Weimer, Barbara Ericson, Matthew Guzdial, Katie Guzdial, and Manuel Perez Quinones.

We have to change CS Education. We do not talk enough about BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students and faculty in CS education. We have to reflect that Black Lives Matter in our teaching practice. We have to become explicitly anti-racist (a term I just learned this last week, see the book link here) — actively seeking to address historic and systemic inequities (see piece at CNN too).

One of the reviewer’s comments was that, by offering some small suggestions (like changing how we grade), I might dissuade people from bigger changes. It’s a valid concern. I’m hoping that people will take me at my word: I’m just learning here, and I hope that you will educate me (and each other) by sharing other ideas and resources. Please do share more ideas in the comments to this post.

Here are a few more that have come my way since that post that I wanted to share:

• Ron Eglash has written up a terrific list of strategies for address issues of racism in technology — see link here.
• Melissa Perez, a PhD student working with Barb Ericson, pointed out that it’s not enough to bring more people into CS education if we don’t change what we’re doing in CS. For example, we have to consider the problem of using biased training data for machine learning training. She recommends this article for considering the ethics of what we do in CS, besides how we teach CS. We need to integrate ethics across CS education.
• Carl Haynes, also a PhD student working with Barb, recommends this book on intersectionality (see link here).
• Manuel Perez Quinones recommends this Best Paper awardee from CHI 2020 on “Critical Race Theory for HCI” (see link here).
• Kamau Bobb gave a talk at CornellTech in January “Unpacking Equity: To Code + Beyond” which is available on YouTube here. (Thanks to Leigh Ann DeLyser and Dianne Levitt for this.)
• Patricia Garcia, who does terrific work on helping underserved students author their computational identities, recommends this video on Black Lives Matter myths debunked.
• The University of Michigan’s School of Information has been having an amazing online discussion about how to make their education anti-racist. A book that stood out on the resources shared there was Stamped from the Beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America by Ibram Kendi (Amazon link here).
• I had my children read the CACM blog post, and they gave me valuable comments on it. My daughter, Katie, a science teacher in Detroit Public Schools suggested these three books: The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America by Richard Rothstein (link), We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love (Amazon link), and Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum (Target link).

The issues of race, culture, and members of underserved groups are particularly critical for us to consider as we move into the 2020-2021 academic year during a worldwide pandemic. As we move classes on-line, we are putting at a greater disadvantage underserved populations. We have to be sensitive and thoughtful that our response to pandemic doesn’t exacerbate our existing structural inequities. Let’s worry less about cheating, and more about

• how to help students taking our classes remotely who don’t have laptops, or who have to share a single laptop with a family, or who don’t have broadband Internet access;
• how to help students who can’t come to class because they would be put at risk;
• how to help students who have hearing disabilities and won’t be able to read lips if a teacher is wearing a mask (thanks to Bonnie MacKellar for pointing out that concern).

We have privilege and resources, and we should use them to address inequities.

TL;DR: I know too little about race, and I have not considered the historic and systemic inequities in CS education when I make my daily teaching decisions. I haven’t read all of the above, but I’m working on it daily. Please do share valuable resources you have found in the comments. Let’s learn about race in CS education and make change to improve learning for everyone.