"You said, I heard": Speaking the subtext in interracial conversations

Abstract

Medical trainees who come from racial and ethnic minority communities and/or from economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds face unique external and internalized challenges that may lead to academic difficulties. Given there are still few faculty members from racial and ethnic minority communities, supervision is likely to be cross-racial. Using illustrative cases and their own personal experience as supervisor and student, the authors, the director of the Social Stress and Health Research Unit in the Department of Psychology of St. John's University and a PhD candidate in this program, review what is known about the dynamics of racism, its effects on mood, the pathways through which racism may affect academic performance. In particular, they discuss what is known about interracial communication styles, race-based stereotypes, and formation of schemas about self and others. They suggest strategies to combat the formation of judgments of which we are not even aware, to recognize stereotype threat and confirmation bias, and to address these issues within student and teacher relationships.