One of the “progressive” educational beliefs is that students need teachers “who look like them.” Supposedly, minority students do better academically when their teachers are also minorities, so we must do all we can to get more minority faculty members in schools and colleges.

But is this belief true? That’s the question Professor Adam Ellwanger asks in today’s Martin Center article.

He writes:

To be fair, this idea isn’t new. It dates back at least 50 years. But, during the panic of that awful year 2020, this belief began to circulate in a new way, as an unquestionable, unassailable truth. By “unquestionable,” I don’t mean to suggest that there were no meaningful questions that needed to be addressed. There were many. Rather, I mean that you weren’t allowed to ask those questions. To do so was to announce yourself as a bigot. After all, everyone knows that students need teachers who look like them.

Why is this a sacred cow for the left? Ellwanger explains that it protects the left’s social-justice agenda:

Still, the matter of faculty hiring and recruitment provides a big clue as to why the “teachers who look like them” axiom continues to circulate, largely uninterrogated. The goal was never to ensure that every student sees someone of his or her own race or ethnicity at the front of the class. Instead, the rule was mostly used as a justification for ignoring equal-opportunity standards and laws against discrimination in hiring.

Almost no one in academia will put his career in jeopardy by seriously evaluating the truth of the belief.

Read the whole thing.