Using Terms that Are Accurate and Inclusive

When discussing the common plights of African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and other groups it is common to use shorthand labels. These labels include “Underrepresented Minorities” (URMs), “People of color” (POC), “Black, Indigenous, People of African Americans Color” (BIPOC), “Persons excluded because of ethnicity and race” (PEERs), Minoritized Groups in STEM (MGSs), and Historically Underrepresented Groups (HUGs). These terms are overlapping but are not synonymous as they often refer to somewhat different populations. The term ‘URM’ is among the most commonly used, and it is derived from the fact that although Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans represent ~34% of the US population, they are underrepresented among science and engineering bachelor’s degree recipients (~24%) and the science and engineering workforce (~23%) (NSF, 2017, 2019). The term ‘URM’ is among the most commonly used, and it is derived from the fact that although Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans represent ~34% of the US population, they are underrepresented among science and engineering bachelor’s degree recipients (~24%) and the science and engineering workforce (~23%).The URM term is used by the National Science Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and it is still the most common term seen in the pedagogical literature. Despite the frequent usage of URM, it has been suggested that this term is problematic because 1) it was not created or supported by the groups it includes, 2) the word ‘underrepresented’ means ‘not enough’, ‘not done well’, or ‘below’ which can understandably be offensive to people labeled with this term, and 3) it clusters together many diverse groups of people in ways that can hides their different circumstances and makes it more difficult to disambiguate the data about each group (Williams, 2020). BIPOC has been adopted by several racial justice groups and it is sometimes considered to be more inclusive than URM. While BIPOC emphasizes Black and Indigenous populations, it does not emphasize Hispanic/Latinx Americans, and it includes Asians who are comparatively high-performing in terms of academic achievement. One suggested alternative to URM and BIPOC is to use AHN, which makes use of the first letters present in African Americans/Blacks, Hispanic/Latino(a), and Native Americans/Alaskan Natives groups. The AHN term solves many of the problems with the URM acronym while also preserving the same meaning (Williams, 2020). For this reason, this review will use AHN instead of URM.

It should be noted that Asian students often perform better than all other students (including White students) and they have thus often been referred to as a ‘model minority’. This sobriquet is harmful however as it 1) masks important differences within the Asian student population and 2) implies other minority groups are held back simply by ability and effort and not by systemic or generational racism and lack of resources (Kao & Thompson, 2003). It also puts additional pressure on Asian students which can lead to increased anxiety and distress (Le, 2019). Consequently, the ‘model minority’ term should be avoided.

Lastly, discussions about race and equity often involve the term ‘socioeconomic status (SES)’, which refers to the amount of generational wealth and household income a person possesses. Because the word ‘status’ can refer to a person’s position, standing, or rank, saying that someone has ‘low status’ could be considered offensive. For this reason, this review will henceforth use ‘generational wealth and household income (GWI)’ in place of SES.