Racial Equity and Racism in Black STEM Higher Education

Abstract

This critical systematic review explored 64 peer-reviewed, academic articles, published between 2000 and 2024, inquiring how educational researchers’ conceptualize racism and racial equity in post-secondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, this review centres Black experiences while illuminating how overt and covert racism manifests throughout educational contexts. Specifically, literature highlighting the multidimensional nature of racism embedded across institutional policies, norms, and cultures in STEM is reviewed, as well as how meritocratic and colour-blind ideologies materialize as structural barriers to efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Racism, conceptualized as a social construct used historically to oppress people of African descent, differentially impacts Black experiences across structural, institutional, and interpersonal contexts. Overt racial injustices continue to plague the everyday experiences of Black Americans, as observed in the community-wide advocacy movements such as the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement which started in 2013, and re-emerged amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, a notable shift in the manifestation of covert racism within educational spaces persists as a method for exclusion. Findings demonstrate the importance of explicitly defining the constructs of racism and racial equity, while presenting implications for academics and scholar-activists aiming to advance justice-centred, intersectional, and decolonial approaches that reimagine science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education through ideological and structural transformation.

Citation: Isaiah M. Stewart, William Graham, and Terrell R. Morton, ‘Racial Equity and Racism in Black STEM Higher Education: A Critical Review’ (October, 2026), in Evelynn Hammonds, Ebony McGee, and Thema Monroe-White (Eds.), The Sciences, Medicine, and Technology in Meena Dhanda (Ed.), Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context (Oxford, online edn., Oxford Academic, 20 Mar. 2025 -), DOI, accessed date.