Nearly a quarter of the 182 Bromfield students who responded to a survey on their experiences in the Harvard public schools said they had been the victims of “aggression and/or insensitivity,” based on “race, culture, ability, identity, or beliefs.” Many more—about 40%—said they had witnessed this type of behavior.
Only about 30% of Bromfield’s 593 students chose to participate in the survey, which was optional and distributed by email in October to current middle and high school students. Those who did respond shared examples of subtle bias, stereotyping, and discrimination from both peers and teachers, as well as incidents of more blatant racism such as use of the N-word and anti-Semitic graffiti.
Many also said they did not feel confident in the school’s system for reporting these offenses.
While the school’s policy for resolving bias incidents involves communicating with the complainant about the actions that were taken to address it, Bromfield Principal Scott Hoffman said in a recent interview with the Press that privacy issues sometimes get in the way. He often hears from students who say they don’t feel their complaint was taken seriously because they don’t get to see the corrective action that is taken. He said checking back in with those who make reports after the incident has been addressed is something the school has been trying to do more of recently.
Use of the N-word was one of the few findings that surprised Superintendent Linda Dwight when she reviewed results. “That’s shocking. You’d think people would not be doing that,” she said.
According to Dwight, Asian students, who make up 12% of Bromfield’s student body and are the largest non-white racial demographic, reported experiencing the most discrimination at school. On the survey, Asian students reported having their appearances, accents, and cultures mocked.
In discussions with the Press, Asian students also reported being made to feel uncomfortable eating ethnic food in the cafeteria. They noticed that teachers often mistakenly called them by the names of their Asian classmates, making them wonder if staff could discern their individuality in the same way they do among white students.
Dwight noted that the survey went out while there was a strong national focus on China’s connection to the coronavirus and that the anti-Chinese sentiments that were circulating more widely also showed up in the survey results.
Additionally, she said the small number of Black students at Bromfield—only 2% of the student body—may have played a role in the relatively low number of reported incidents of racial discrimination. “I’m sure if we had more Black students, race would have shown up more, but it didn’t,” Dwight said.
Hoffman said anti-Semitism shows up most often in incidents of graffiti. The most blatant example occured in 2016 when swastikas and other racist symbols were painted on the Bromfield rock that typically displays the message of each year’s senior class.
Dwight said the majority of incidents reported on the survey were subtle and none of the responses spoke of physical violence. She said stereotyping was a major driver of the incidents reported, and she attributes that to a lack of awareness.
She said it is the job of teachers and administrators to educate students on how to recognize bias and avoid insensitive speech and actions. “The students in our system don’t tend to be cruel to each other as a general rule. They’re more likely to be cruel in their ignorance and … [in failing to] understand the impact of what they do or say.”
Much of what was shown by the survey resembles what Dwight remembers learning from a similar one students filled out in class a few years ago. In each, there was reference to racial and ethnic discrimination, but also political marginalization. Both times, students reported feeling that their conservative viewpoints were not heard or respected.
Hoffman pointed to humor as both instrumenting and undermining the impact of bias. When a student or teacher says something offensive as a joke, both the perpetrator and victim often rationalize it later as being well-meaning. “In reality, the one that’s making the comment doesn’t know how the target feels,” Hoffman said. “It may be that [the target is] laughing … because they don’t know what else to do.”
He too sees education as the solution. “It’s just a matter of teaching and … continuing to create a culture, where people are really sensitive to … their words, what they write, what they draw, what … all those things can mean to any variety of people.”
In recent years, Dwight said the school has not had to involve the police in any incidents of racism or bias.
Dwight’s and Hoffman’s assessment of the problem within the schools reflects what the Press found when speaking with students and recent alumni in the fall. While students asked for specific incidents they experienced to be kept off the record, their stories were similar to what the two administrators referenced. Both current and former students recalled incidents that today are called “microaggressions” by educators but few examples of blatant racism or physical violence. (See sidebar at below left: “Microaggressions: A subtle form of racism.”)
The survey was a collaborative effort between students and staff. Respondents were invited to share specific incidents without naming those involved.
While many incidents from the survey occurred out of earshot of adults, students also reported times when teachers ignored inappropriate comments. The survey is one step that is being taken to combat this issue.
The full results of the survey were not made public but were reviewed by Dwight, Hoffman, the associate principals from Bromfield and Hildreth Elementary, and a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant. They were then used in professional development training with the aim of helping staff recognize when they should step in, and how to address a bias incident.
Dwight said students told her that examples used in earlier professional development training to illustrate what a bias incident might look like weren’t realistic. Using anonymous scenarios shared by real students, she hopes, will change that.
Through professional development Dwight wants to give teachers a space to discuss how they have responded to various incidents of bias in their classrooms. She said that failing to address an incident is never the right call. “We’re going against inaction. Even if [a response] is incorrect, it is better to take an action and learn from it than to simply ignore that it is happening.”
She added that staff are responsible for stepping in when bias incidents occur, but that listening to students is the best way to learn how to do so. “We need to take action as adults, but we need to listen to the students about what that action should be because they’re the ones living it, they’re the ones experiencing it. … We’ve learned to be better listeners to them and to open dialogue with them,” said Dwight.
Marty Green, John Osborn, and Bromfield student Olivia Ren contributed to this story.
Microaggressions: A subtle but pernicious form of racism
“Microaggression” is a term that can be used to describe the type of incidents Dwight and Hoffman said they saw repeatedly in the survey results.
Often described as a subtle form of racism, microaggressions are defined by the American Psychological Association as “brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or situational indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights or insults, especially toward members of minority or oppressed groups.”
The term is broken into three categories by researchers from the Teachers College at Columbia University: microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations.
Microassaults closely resemble traditional racism. They are blatant attempts to harm someone based on their race, such as the use of a racial slur.
Microinsults are inferences of inferiority. They often occur in the context of affirmative action, when a white person poses a question about a BIPOC—Black, Indigenous, and people of color—person’s education or employment status with the undertone that the BIPOC person could not have achieved what they did without having received preferential treatment. In classrooms, they may also appear in nonverbal form when a teacher doesn’t call on BIPOC students or treats them differently from white students.
Microinvalidations, considered by psychologist and Columbia University professor Derald Wing Sue—who studies and has written extensively on the topic—to be the most damaging type of microaggression, undermine the experiences of ethnic minorities. The assumption that a BIPOC person is not originally from America is a common example of a microinvalidation.
