Eurocentrism and Racism in Education Education is said to be the great equalizer, a golden ticket out of any situation, no matter how terrible. For as long as Americans have been born, there has been a common narrative reminding students that if they work hard enough they will have a chance of going to college. This narrative continually says that if one goes to college, earns a degree, then they can follow their passion and live happily afterward. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that not everyone will acquire the aforementioned golden ticket hidden in the candy bar packaging. This is because the game is rigged by a system of inequality that uses access to equitable, quality education as a bargaining chip in a power game. In America, in a study on the effects of teachers' racial identity on a class of mostly black students, researchers found that white teachers often soften lesson plans for their African American students because of their belief in the stereotypical narrative that African Americans cannot keep up academically (Douglas, Douglas, Lewis, Garrison-Wade, and Scott 47). The authors of “The Effect of White Teachers on the Academic Achievement of Black Students,” state that “this approach does not assume the potential of black students, but aims to compensate for what is assumed to be missing in the students' backgrounds” (Douglas, Douglas, Lewis, Garrison-Wade and Scott 48). This means that teachers are intentionally watering down their courses to fit the assumption that African American students are not as equipped as other students to succeed in the classroom, like their fellow white students. These teachers do not recognize the potential or gifts of their minority students, so they are unable to help cultivate these natural abilities. In the article “The Alarming Effect of Racial Misalignment on Teacher Expectations,” the author, Seth Gershenson, summarizes the findings of his research by saying, “…non-Black teachers have significantly lower educational expectations for Black students than to Sarah Sparks, a journalist, found that “If you are a black boy in elementary school, your likelihood of being suspended or missing class increases significantly if you are assigned to a teacher of another race” (Sparks). 1).This means that Sarah Sparks found that when minority students are placed in a class with an instructor of a different race, they are more likely to be absent, suspended, or expelled than students in other situations indicative of how much tension exists in the learning environment, where white teachers are literally removing more minority students through suspension and minority children are removing themselves from the environment through absence. This is extremely detrimental to students' academic success because students are unable to be in class actively learning and often fall so far behind in their school work that it seems impossible to catch up. In the article “The Impact of Teacher Demographic Representation on Student Attendance and Suspensions,” the authors, Stephan Holt and Seth Gershenson, state that “Students who are suspended from school early in their academic lives, especially through out-of-school suspensions, show similar patterns of increased truancy and lower academic achievement (Holt, Gershenson 3).