New research uncovers the 'racial anger bias' some educators have against their black students

Research is uncovering the implicit anger bias some educators have against the faces of their black students.

For many years now, researchers have attempted to identify the extent to which racial bias shows up in public education. Studies have spanned a range of topics—from examining school discipline practices to the development of culturally responsive curricula and the ways in which students of color are placed (or not) in advanced academic courses. Adding to the information we already know about educator bias is a new study which demonstrates that some teachers have an implicit bias against the faces of their black students. Think Progress notes that the study, published in the journal of Contemporary Education Psychology, describes this as racial anger bias. It means that “prospective teachers are more likely to perceive the faces of black adults as being angry compared to the faces of white adults, even in instances where neither group is emotionally expressive.” Connecting this facial bias to how teachers interpret classroom behaviors, it turns out that the research also showed that teachers-in-training often saw the behavior of black students as more hostile than that of white children.This isn’t entirely surprising. If anything, these views are reflective of persistent stereotypes and racial tropes that posit that black people are angrier and more aggressive than whites. Sadly, these perceptions are not limited to adults and mirrors studies which demonstrate that white educators think their black students are older and less innocent than their white peers. And if you combine all these biases with the ways that black students are disproportionately and more harshly disciplined in schools, it all adds up to the same thing: black students often face routine discrimination in the classroom—discrimination which “follows black children into adulthood, as their lives move from classrooms to workplaces and other realities of American society.”The researchers behind the study hoped it would shed light on how people going into teaching show signs of racial anger bias and perceive anger from black bodies where it doesn’t actually exist. To that end, the 40 undergraduate students, who were also prospective teachers, saw pictures of black and white men showing different emotions. Participants were then asked to identify the corresponding emotions shown in the photos. They also showed participants videos of both black and white boys engaged in disruptive classroom behavior and asked the teachers to describe the hostility of the students.

Participants were 1.5 times as likely to accurately identify the emotions shown on the faces of white men and women compared to black men and women. They also often misjudged non-angry black faces as angry compared to whites. With respect to the videos, participants thought black boys were more hostile than white boys. In fact, on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being not hostile at all and 5 being very hostile), black boys were given an average rating of 3.37 compared to 2.12 for white boys demonstrating similar behaviors. 

So where does this leave us? It is certainly maddening and a sad commentary on how racism occupies nearly every space in American society—including classrooms. But the study also keeps us aware, forces us to be vigilant and grounded in the reality that there is much work for be done when it comes to race and public education. Since so much of education today relies on evidence-based strategies, this is yet more evidence that teachers (white ones in particular) need greater training and awareness on how to teach in multicultural and multiethnic classrooms. This need will only increase as the country becomes increasingly diverse.

Currently, the majority of children under 5 are not white but instead are children of color.This doesn’t have to mean that we fail those kids and subject them to discrimination, bias and low-expectations. Instead, we can use what we know to do better by them, their white peers and ourselves as a nation. According to Amy Halberstadt, a professor at North Carolina State University and a lead author of the study, we can use this information for change. Halberstadt said: “If we don’t even know that we’re doing this, then we can’t change. … So the first step is to become aware and then we can work on our changes.”