Walking into a classroom, we see a space dedicated to growth and possibility. We trust the educator to be a guide, a nurturer of potential. Yet, within this sacred dynamic, a quieter, more insidious lesson is often being taught, one that reinforces the very racial hierarchies we hope education might dismantle. The perpetuation of racism by teachers is rarely a matter of explicit slurs or malicious intent. Instead, it lives in the subtle, daily currents of assumption, expectation, and unconscious bias that shape a child’s world.
It begins with the gaze—who is seen and how they are seen. Studies and countless lived experiences reveal a pattern: students of color, particularly Black and Brown children, are often perceived as less capable or more disruptive from the very first day. A teacher’s unconscious bias translates a child’s enthusiasm into defiance, their curiosity into challenge. This skewed perception dictates who gets called on for the complex answer, who is placed in the advanced reading group, and who is recommended for gifted programs. The gatekeeping of opportunity starts here, in these quiet moments of categorization, creating a stratified classroom that mirrors societal inequities.
The curriculum itself becomes a tool of erasure when it is treated as immutable. A history syllabus that centers a singular, whitewashed narrative, a literature list that relegates authors of color to a single “diversity” unit, a perspective on art or science that ignores foundational contributions from non-Western cultures—all of these choices send a powerful message. They tell students of color that their histories, their stories, and their ancestral knowledge are footnotes, not central to the human story. For white students, it reinforces a false sense of centrality and ownership over knowledge, fostering a distorted view of the world.
Discipline is perhaps the most glaring arena where bias becomes policy. The same behavior exhibited by two students of different races is frequently met with divergent consequences. A Black boy’s assertiveness is read as aggression, warranting detention or suspension, while a white peer’s same action is framed as “leadership” or “high spirits.” This discriminatory application of rules funnels students of color into the school-to-prison pipeline, teaching all students a brutal lesson about whose body is considered a threat and whose is afforded grace.
Beyond these actions lies the profound power of expectation. When a teacher expects less—consciously or not—they often invest less. They might not offer the extra challenging problem, the encouragement to apply for the prestigious program, or the rigorous feedback that pushes a student to excel. This soft bigotry of low expectations is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It starves a student’s academic identity, leading to disengagement and, tragically, appearing to validate the initial biased assumption. The student learns, not from a lecture, but from this embodied experience, that their intellect is not believed in.The final, perhaps most paralyzing, factor is the culture of silence. Many educators, operating with good intentions, recoil at the idea that they might be complicit. This defensiveness prevents the necessary, uncomfortable work of self-examination and systemic change. When schools avoid courageous conversations about race, bias, and power, they allow these patterns to continue unchallenged. The teacher who declares, “I don’t see color,” unknowingly perpetuates harm by refusing to see the differential experiences and rich identities of their students.
Confronting this reality is not an accusation of evil; it is a call to accountability. It requires acknowledging that teaching is a profession practiced within a racist society, and therefore no educator is immune to its conditioning. The remedy lies in relentless self-interrogation, in decolonizing curricula, in implementing restorative justice practices, and in committing to ongoing anti-racist professional development. The classroom will never be a neutral space. It either reinforces the inequalities of the status quo or actively works to interrupt them. The choice, for every educator, is in which lesson they will truly teach, minute by minute, gaze by gaze, expectation by expectation. The unseen curriculum is always being written. The question is who it is designed to honor.