Resource for teaching human genetics at the college level to combat harmful misconceptions

How we teach human genetics matters for social equity. The biology curriculum appears to be a crucial locus of intervention for either reinforcing or undermining students’ racial essentialist views. The Mendelian genetic models dominating textbooks, particularly in combination with racially inflected language sometimes used when teaching about monogenic disorders, can increase middle and high school students’ racial essentialism and opposition to policies to increase equity. These findings are of particular concern given the increasing spread of racist misinformation online and misappropriation of human genomics research by white supremacists, who take advantage of low levels of genetics literacy in the general public. Encouragingly, however, teaching updated information about the geographic distribution of human genetic variation and the complex, multifactorial basis of most human traits, reduces students’ endorsement of racial essentialism. The genetics curriculum is therefore a key t...