Teachers, look at how your prejudices affect your teaching

The study on ethnic stereotypes and the underachievement of medical students from ethnic minorities saddens but does not surprise me.1 I am a female doctor with one Asian and one white parent. I am a Londoner, born and bred, but I am quiet. I have discovered over the years that many people don’t like small, quiet, brown women, and I am definitely treated differently from my white peers.

I have met many fantastic and encouraging doctors, but as a student and a doctor, I have been passively unnoticed, actively ignored, treated with aggression or outright rudeness for no apparent reason, and politely tolerated. This has usually been by white men, but also by women and non-white people.

My sister (a consultant) recalls a student tutorial with a senior white male doctor. He looked around the 10 students throughout the tutorial but never made eye contact or spoke to the three non-white students. Perhaps he did not even realise this and would be shocked to be called racist, but I think people’s prejudices run deep.

Being treated unfairly is disheartening and undoubtedly affects our learning, making already quiet and unconfident students even more so. We all become more enthusiastic, confident, and motivated if we feel we are doing well and being taken seriously, and we all look to others (whether consciously or not) to provide this validation. Everyone has prejudices, but I urge teachers to look closely at how their prejudices affect their teaching—maybe then they’ll see their quiet Asian students blossom.