Debunking the “Teachers Who Look Like Them” Myth

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | July 11, 2025 | Adam Ellwanger

[karpov]

A mysterious fever gripped the nation in 2020. Some called it mass formation psychosis. Others called it hysteria. It was a result of three distinct events, as well as institutional responses designed to exploit existing societal tensions. Those three events were the Covid-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the impending re-election of Donald Trump. So much of what we were told by the authorities and the experts at that time has now been debunked.

But those who work in academia know that, as crazy as life was out in the “real world,” it was even crazier in the realm of higher education. Universities have long advanced and promoted left-wing ideas and intellectuals, and this has ensured that devout, doctrinaire leftists make up a large segment of professors and administrators. With so many campus radicals agitating for fundamental alterations, university life changed very quickly in 2020 and 2021.

The recent return to sane governance has already rolled back many of the most extreme policies imposed by campus activists during that time. But, to date, one particularly dangerous idea has not been decisively rejected. Specifically, that is the backwards belief that “students need teachers who look like them.”

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.

[SaxxonWoods]

The nuns didn’t look much like me.

[Tell It Right]

From the article, a reminder how the "look like them" narrative is a double standard.

If students need teachers who look like them, then it follows that white students need white professors. Strangely, though, the people who advocate for segregation in education believe precisely the opposite. White students, it seems, do not need teachers who look like them.

[null and void]

The nuns didn’t look much like me.

Proving you're not penguin...

[No name given]

Unlike Jerry Nadler.

[FamiliarFace]

Same here.

[Greg123456]

I dont want a teacher with a rainbow mohawk and a nose ring.