Students’ Discomfort Triggers Increased Awareness of Systemic Racism in a Forensic Science Class

The foundational argument for requiring diversity or race and racism courses in higher education is that they increase student awareness and empathy for people of other races. Researchers have examined this primarily through surveys of student attitudes. To understand the impacts of courses addressing racism—particularly whether they improve students’ understanding of systemic racism and empathy for people from other races—we need to examine students’ thinking as reflected in their work during the class. This has been done in low-enrolment courses, but the impacts of high-enrolment courses are less understood. Using a theoretical framing based on Boler’s Pedagogy of Discomfort and Dewsbury and colleagues' description of the cyclical journey of growing development of faculty racial awareness, we analyzed students’ written reflections to evaluate their personal responses to a high-enrolment course exploring the impact of systemic racism on the criminal legal system. Our findings support the hypothesis that self-awareness rising through discomfort can lead to desire for personal change in attitudes towards race and racism.