Statistics, anti-racism, norms, and ideologies

EDIT: This is a re-posted entry from my previous blog.

I teach quantitative methods to education policy students, and probably the most groan-inspiring response that I give to questions is simply, “It depends.”

Many of the students with whom I work, at least before meeting me, have little to no interest in quantitative research, nor do they know much about it. Many have already deemed themselves “not math people,” and quite often, people are already scared. Especially within education, I find that many people thought they would never need to take a “math” class ever again, yet here they are, experiencing some form of resurfaced trauma as I try to explain what exactly a logarithm is.

As such, a fairly common pattern among students just beginning their quantitative journeys is that they want very clear directions. They want to know what to do, exactly. They like bright lines that determine when one thing is 100% the right thing to do and when something else is 100% the right thing to do. They get frustrated when I say, “It depends,” because they want to have very clear directives for future situations. What do I do when I’m comparing two continuous variables? Well, it depends on what they are. It depends on what you want to learn. It depends on a kind of intuitive understanding of what statistics and quantitative methods are trying to accomplish. However, I know this is a deeply unsatisfying answer to many people who just want me to tell them what is the right thing to do, right now. Often times, I know, learning statistics for these students can feel like a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation if they feel they are always being corrected or their answers are always being tweaked. In the worst situations, students decide to reject quantitative methods entirely.

To be clear, I am not a learning psychologist, and I would indeed love to know what someone in that field thinks. But one thing I think about a lot is how the kinds of reactions I get in statistics, for newcomers, is not dissimilar to the kinds of reactions I see for people who are beginning to engage with anti-racism. What am I supposed to do, exactly, to not be racist?

Coupled with the deep challenges to personal identity that accompany the work, I think anti-racism is often fairly difficult for people that truly want to learn how to change, but are approaching anti-racism as a set of rules they have to learn. What can I do to learn about people’s identities without offending them? When is it okay to ask a Asian woman about her ethnicity? Is it “black,” or is it “African American,” and did I do something wrong by putting them in quotes? Similar to what I have seen in my methods classes, people often seem to want very clear, bright line answers that give them universal guidelines for how to behave in such a way that does not perpetuate racism and, as much as possible, moves the world forward. And when I complicate my responses to the questions above by giving realistic, “It depends” types of answers, it can often frustrate people.

Going back to the statistics side of this thought, I generally shy away from modes of teaching that emphasize differences between methods. For example, I try very hard to not present z-tests, t-tests, and correlations as separated ideas, but rather try to present them all as different variations on the underlying philosophy of frequentist hypothesis testing. Not only that, but I consistently try to tie the discussions on methods to the broader purpose they serve. (I’m not saying I do this particularly well, but I at least try.) However, in my very humble opinion, I think it just might take some long-term immersion in the work for students to fully internalize the thought patterns that make one a flexible and thoughtful quantitative researcher. (Let me also be clear, in defense of my teaching, that I think the majority of students end up doing just fine.) People, I think, can learn best by doing, and doing again, and doing some more until the underlying logics of statistics become patterns of thought and shape a way of seeing the world, rather than dictating simply behavior.

In the same vein, I worry sometimes about approaches to anti-racism that focus primarily on social norms and behaviors. I think it is important, of course, that people understand that the use of the n-word (in most contexts) is not acceptable. However, I wonder about the kinds of things we can do to foster the development of ideologies that would lead someone to know, intuitively, that the use of the n-word (again, in most contexts) is wrong.

More than that, I think that people who are newly engaging with anti-racism should allow some space for complexity. I don’t mean the kind of complexity where we hand-wave something as “complicated” as a means to not engage with it, but rather the kind of complexity that says that understanding the “right” thing to do in any situation requires not only knowing social norms, but also having the skills to critically understand the particular situation and match that understanding with ideologies that define anti-racism. In other words, I think consistently looking for people to define clear guidelines for what is or isn’t racist misses the point of anti-racism. In addition, understanding that censure and/or correction of behavior is not always a rejection of one’s entire worldview but rather a call for reflection and possible adjustment is critical, I believe, for both engaging in anti-racism and learning applied statistics.

I think people need to give themselves a break in their search, sometimes, for the most absolutely right decisions in every situation. In particular, for both statistics and anti-racism, the overriding desire to be “correct” over the desire to understand, intuit, and think critically may hinder the learning process. Yes, it’s disappointing when you don’t feel like you are able to follow the rules even when you are trying, and it’s frustrating when you feel like you are hearing rules that conflict with one another. When learning, I think it is perfectly fine for people to express and notice an instinct to seek out concrete rules. However, I think that sometimes taking a step beyond the rules to truly understand the underlying values and ideologies that inform the rules is the more important marker of growth.