IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 22

carefully selected stories drawn from
our experience as scholars working
in higher education.

Example Cases
Abstract Liberalism
Bonilla-Silva defines the color-blind
frame of " abstract liberalism " as
involving " using the ideas associated
with political liberalism (e.g., " equal
opportunity, " the idea that force
should not be used to create social
policy) and economic liberalism (e.g.,
choice, individualism) in an abstract
manner to explain racial matters "
[31, p. 76]. He lists this frame as the
most important for understanding
how colorblind racism works. How
does abstract liberalism function to
maintain engineering education as a
predominantly white space? We have
many examples, but describe just
one here, focusing on what Bonilla-
Silva explicitly incorporates into
this frame: the belief that education
operates as a meritocracy.
The idea of meritocracy is that
people receive reward based on
merit - that they earned reward
through their actions. The corollary
of this claim is that people without
reward earned their lack of reward, or
otherwise did something to deserve
that reward. Applied to higher educa-
tion, students deserve to be admit-
ted to universities through their hard
work and accomplishments, and
people should not be admitted to
university if they have not worked
hard and earned the admission.
Considerable research debunks
this belief from reality, offering
empirical and theoretical evidence
as to how hard-working people of
color and white women throughout
education and employment do not
receive the same rewards as white
men, demonstrating how the major-
ity of people do not operate in a
meritocracy [32]-[33]. Seymour and
Hewitt's Talking about Leaving [34]

22

may be one of the most well-respect-
ed studies debunking this myth,
demonstrating that a large majority
of students who left STEM under-
graduate majors left not because
their grades were poor (as would
be suggested from the meritocracy
myth) but because there are other
factors that push them out, like poor
teaching, " weed-out " traditions, neg-
ative stereotypes, and prejudice.
We note here that we are making
a descriptive claim, not a normal-
ized one. We are not questioning
whether, in the context of engineer-
ing education, we should strive for
a meritocracy, simply that we have
much evidence to illustrate how we
do not currently have one.
We regularly hear fears from
racial majority students about how
a meritocracy may be working
against them. For example, one
of us offered the example that our
white students feel like they are
being marginalized because they do
not receive academic scholarships,
and theorize that this is because
" most scholarships are for students
of color. " The implication is that the
white student personally is worthy
of a scholarship, but that a student
of color only received it because of
their race, not their worth. Another
example is from engineering graduate
students, particularly white men, who
express concern that they will not get
a job because all the desirable jobs
will go to women and people of color.
By observing how industries use the
pipeline metaphor to explain why
they hire even smaller proportions
of people of color than are available
from undergraduate programs, we
can see these fears are not borne out
by reality. However, the fear persists,
bolstered by a belief that a functioning
meritocracy should reward predomi-
nantly white people for their accom-
plishments, but if it rewards people
of color, then the meritocracy must
not be operating correctly. One of us
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

felt this emphasized recently when he
was told directly by a colleague that
he received a prestigious CAREER
award because he is Mexican, and not
because he is worthy of its receipt.
One of the consequences of engi-
neering education maintaining the
myth that it operates a meritocracy
is that it (and the actors who work
within it) remains absolved of any
responsibility to rehabilitate how
race is built into earlier stages of
the educational system. The merito-
cratic myth applied to race in engi-
neering education implies that white
people have secured their position
as the dominant race in engineer-
ing and engineering education in
particular through their own merit,
not because of a history of affirma-
tive action operating on their behalf.
However, historians have unearthed
educational policies that have an
explicitly racist history, such as how
the GI Bill benefits after World War
II were inequitably applied by race,
and because of a racially segregated
higher education system, Black veter-
ans had fewer options to apply what
meager benefits they were awarded
[35]-[36]. Such policies functioned
to keep higher education, including
engineering, predominantly white,
and the maintenance of the meri-
tocratic myth helps to continuously
erase how those policies provided
unequal advantages based on race
to white people [35], [37]-[38].

Naturalization
Bonilla-Silva describes the natu-
ralization frame as " a frame that
allows whites to explain away racial
phenomena by suggesting they are
natural occurrences. [...] By suggest-
ing these preferences are almost
biologically driven and typical of all
groups in society, preferences for pri-
mary associations with members of
one's race are rationalized as nonra-
cial because 'they (racial minorities)
do it too' " [31, p. 76].
∕

DECEMBER 2020
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