Racial Colorblindness in Speech-Language Pathology Students

Abstract

Purpose: Implicit racial biases have been documented across a variety of allied health professions and training programs. The purpose of this study was to examine implicit racial bias within speech-language pathology (SLP) students by evaluating their attitudes towards statements reflecting racial colorblindness. Method: Fifty-nine students currently enrolled in an SLP program completed the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS; Neville et al., 2000) via an online Qualtrics survey, comprised of three subscales: Racial Privilege, Institutional Discrimination, and Blatant Racial Issues. Results: Results suggested that although 67% do not endorse colorblind statements on the CoBRAS, 33% of the students either agreed with colorblind statements (18%) or indicated neither agreement nor disagreement with colorblind statements (15%). Colorblind statements related to Racial Privilege (e.g., Everyone who works hard, no matter what race they are, has an equal chance to become rich.) were rejected less frequently (55%) than statements related to Institutional Discrimination (68%; e.g., Racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. have certain advantages because of the color of their skin.) or Blatant Racial Issues (79%; e.g., Racial problems in the US are rare, isolated situations.). Conclusion: Voluntary self-examination of implicit racial bias within any pre-professional training program is a difficult, but important step towards addressing issues of systemic racism prior to entering the field. This study is the first to do so within speech-language pathology. Although data indicating relatively high rejection of colorblind statements found in this study are promising, students did not uniformly reject colorblind statements. Such response variation provides a foundation to further educate SLP students about implicit bias and its potential to impact one’s cultural responsivity.