Student walking on the Pace University, Pleasantville campus

Anti-Racism Education (ARE)

What is the Anti-Racism Education Core Attribute?

What Does Anti-Racism Mean?

As defined by a group of faculty on the subcommittee, anti-racism is:

The ongoing process of naming, analyzing, evaluating, and imagining ways to change systems of racism. This includes colorism, colonialism, casteism, and other mechanisms that discriminate against people on the basis of racial/ethnic identities whose meanings are constructed and assigned by society. The defining characteristic of course experiences that will fulfill the ARE core requirement is the presence of sustained civil dialogue about race/ethnicity, systemic racism, and antiracist ideas and actions.

What is Pace’s Unique Approach to Anti-Racism Education?

Grassroots Movement
The development of this requirement occurred through consultation with multiple student groups and faculty, rather than being imposed from the top-down. In the summer of 2020 and in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the Black Student Union at Pace publicized a list of demands, including a desire to have two required classes to address racism. A subcommittee of the Dyson Curriculum Committee, comprised of faculty who have worked on topics of race, racism, and various types of disparities, created a proposal to require two anti-racism education courses as “floating” attributes, meaning that they could be “attached” to courses in one’s majors, minors, or Core requirements. In May 2021, the faculty voted to approve in a landslide victory.

Flexible and Distinctive Approach
Courses on anti-racism education must meet at least one of these five learning objectives. Not all of these are required so there is not one prescribed right way to teach anti-racism. This allows for professors to approach anti-racism in different ways appropriate to their classes, subjects, and schools.

Option 1 Inequalities: You will learn about how to analyze race/ethnicity as a category and to use empirical evidence to assess policies, outcomes, or decisions that are shaped by or that shape race/ethnic group
Option 2 Knowledge-Making: You will learn how race/ethnicity shapes a discipline/field of study
Option 3 Intersectionality: You will learn how race/ethnicity intersects with other social identities and experiences
Option 4 Change-making: You will learn about anti-racism as a set of skills/competencies that one can use as tools in the workplace or for a social justice cause, such as a normative commitment to eliminate racism
Option 5 Black, Indigenous, People of Color Contributions: You will receive exposure to a variety of perspectives, such as with guest speakers, or discuss text, knowledge, and culture produced by those most impacted by inequalities.

Multiple Possibilities
At Pace, anti-racism education links understandings/analysis of race with multiple other constructs, systems, and contexts to better understand various events and structures as well as to better understand the experiences of members of our communities. When you hear the words “anti-racism education,” you may say: “but what about x group,” or “I care about inequalities and injustice, but I don’t understand or do anti-racism.” At Pace, we have an invitational, holistic approach! Please take a look at the topics that anti-racism education curricula can include.

Casteism
Colorism
Anti-Asian racism
Anti-Black racism
Anti-immigrantism
Colonialism and settler colonialism
Orientalism
Xenophobia
Any systems of racial/ethnic segregation and hierarchy or processes of “racialization” (using racist tactics/ideas/ideologies to construct differences even if groups are not necessarily parts of different races or ethnicities)
- Apartheid
- White supremacy
- Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious and/or group-based discrimination
- Overlapping inequities in various contexts
- Disability and race
- Gender/sexuality and race
- Class, poverty, economic development, and race
- Religious discrimination and race
- Language, ethnicity, and race
- Constructions of race, ethnicity, and “purity” and “superiority”  in different geopolitical contexts (studies in Eurasia, Latin America, East Asia, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, central African region, Israel and Palestine, etc.) and different historical periods as well as transnational spaces

What are the Benefits for Students?

Student Success: Anti-racism education curricula prompt instructors to design classes in ways that focus on student success for all. Studies show:
- Increased attention to the value of the diversity (of all types) of student populations increases the positive outcomes and experiences of all students.
- Elements of anti-racism education curricula create space and opportunity for instructors to innovatively and intentionally explore the differential impacts of different types of course structures. For example, more active learning (preparatory assignments; in-class engagement to talk about the material; review assignments) is helpful for first generation students but also sets up all students to succeed and take ownership of their educational journeys.
Career Readiness: Integrating anti-racism education curricula helps students prepare for and influence the future world of work. More universities are framing DEI/anti-racism as a “competency” necessary for career readiness.

What will happen in ARE courses?

You might learn about how to analyze race as a category and to use empirical evidence to assess policies, outcomes, or decisions that are shaped by or that shape race
You might learn about anti-racism as a normative commitment to eliminate racism
You might receive exposure to a variety of perspectives, such as with guest speakers
You might learn about anti-racism is about a set of skills/competencies that one can use as tools in the workplace or for a social justice cause