How do I effectively challenge the teacher's bias without coming off as a jerk to the rest of the class?

Question

In my situation, our school had us talk about racial justice and the teacher asked everybody to be respectful and have an open mind. He then presented a slideshow (Fairly sure it wasn’t made by him), which he explained in a very biased way (not biased as in false information, but biased as in explaining information in a way that is meant to lead people to draw the wrong conclusions). Most students seem to agree with the teacher, and share his bias. How do I effectively challenge the teacher's bias without coming off as a jerk to the rest of my classmates?

Some information that might be relevant:

• I live in Minnesota, in the United States
• I am in 8th grade, which is middle school in my school district
• It was a science teacher teaching this lesson

Answer 1

Although this concept was a bit foreign to me when I was your age I came later adult to adopt a stance where I consider people may believe what they want to believe as long as they mean no harm to me. I previously thought but no longer think people are "wrong" or "biased", they just believe what their experience taught them. Life taught me if someone has views about how things should or should not be that I disagree with, their view is as valid as mine, meaning by this my entitlement to be adamantly stubborn (that I use without restriction) is simply equal to theirs.

So, first and foremost, I would question the idea that there is something worth efforts of this challenge, when even the coldest truth and the most brilliant demonstrations can just be dismissed by the back of his hand saying "Well, I believe otherwise".

You also mention your goal in the comments as follow:

I would like the teacher to stop saying false information to reduce the amount of conformation bias going on in my class.

(Even though you mentioned in the OP the information to be factually correct - but that's not the point)

It's not clear whether the end goal is to convince your classmates; or to convince the teacher; or to simply be heard and understood in your anger and your disagreement, but it's fairly clear to me you can't stop a teacher to say what he'd like to say unless you involve some academic instance to complain about the fact he's been out of the line, which he didn't seem to be.

If you would like to sway people your side however, would that be the teacher or the classmates, you can do that through argumentation and there are some techniques to learn to be effective. I bolded my favorites, which are in my experience counter-intuitively effective to influence people:

1. Stay calm.
2. Use facts as evidence for your position.
3. Ask questions.
4. Use logic. Show how one idea follows another.
5. Appeal to higher values.
6. Listen carefully.
7. Be prepared to concede a good point.
8. Study your opponent. Know their strengths, weaknesses, beliefs and values.
9. Look for a win-win.

If you argue with your teacher, and because of the class imperatives on teaching, you probably need to request an appointment with your teacher as you will likely not be able to prove a point during normal class. It may also help not to worry about voicing an unpopular opinion in front of your other classmates.

Answer 2

In light of what you have added in the comments:

What my teacher did was assume that the reason that more African-Americans were in jail was because of a flaw in the justice system, not because of something else.

I would strongly disagree with the accepted answer and advise you to let it go. Given the current political climate in the United States, questioning whether the US judicial system systematically disadvantages African Americans is not a good idea and instead of changing your teacher's or your classmates minds you are more likely to get yourself reprimanded or (depending on what point exactly you're trying to argue) seriously damage relationships with your teachers or fellow students.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you'd prefer if your teacher had said something like:

"The main cause of higher incarceration rates of black Americans is poverty and marginalization due to centuries of systemic oppression".

I'm not going to go into whether or not that is true, i.e. to what extent this is a more important factor than judicial injustice (which definitely exists as well) because this is a complicated problem and research is not entirely conclusive.

In any case, because this is such a delicate issue, especially now, if you are not very careful with how you present your point you risk positioning yourself as someone who disagrees with the notion that certain ethnic groups are systemically and heavily disadvantaged (even if that is not your intention). I would argue that this risk is not worth the potential minor correction to your teachers arguments.

I can attest to this from personal experience since I grew up in Germany, where both history and politics classes are focused around the countries troubled past and its relationship with the present. Especially with the rise of far right political parties in recent years, more and more students might now question the status quo with respect to e.g. the treatment of minorities within Germany because radical viewpoints are becoming more normalized. As one can guess, these sort of discussions never end well, in the best case the students in question change their minds, in the worst they alienate themselves from their communities.

So in light of this, I think at most you should ask your teacher to privately clarify what he meant when he held his presentation and maybe ask him to add a bit more nuance to some points. I would very much advise you to not outright debate him or involve the rest of the class.