Monthly Archives: November 2015

On the Nature of an English Private School

Black Community, Schooling and Education Week 11

Having mistakenly saved Integration Interrupted for this week (!), I was forced to reflect on what I had learned about race in the American education system both from the book and from our class, and how it compares to my personal secondary school observations at an English private school. Having grown up in a predominantly white neighborhood east of London, it seemed thus no surprise to me that Brentwood School’s demographic comprised 95% whites – of my class of 150, only 3 students were black.

The notion of “acting white” was thrown around by kids in my school to describe one of our mixed-race friends, though not for his academic achievements; rather, for his appearance and comportment. Already a light-skinned guy, his wishes to conform to his predominantly white friend group through his dress and his tastes and interests were met with amusement. People would claim that he was the “whitest black kid they knew”, which was rather ironic since for many, he was the only black kid they knew. Conversations I have had with him since leaving school have raised a lot of the same concerns that participants raised in Tyson’s interviews. He explains to me that he felt isolated, forced to adjust, scared to admit interests in stereotypically black interests, lest friends chastise.

He had no black role models to whom he could turn and embrace his blackness. He agrees now that media played the most significant role in shaping his understanding of what it means to be black. In whitewashed communities, both micro- and macro-, it is important to recognize the role of television, music, film, fashion, and other entertainment media in representing the black community. Unfortunately for my friend, Brentwood School’s white populace also used the same media as a lens through which to scrutinize his every action. He was made to feel foreign, whether he either chose to “act white” or to own his blackness. He felt compelled to choose the former, corroborating Tyson’s findings that fitting in is imperative for black students. The difference for my friend was that he attended a school in which he had no choice but to fit in with the almost entirely white student body.

I imagine that Tyson would find similar conversations in racially integrated British schools, which can be found in major metro areas such as London, as she did in Integration Interrupted. An interesting extension would be to understand further what it is like to be the only black student in a mass of white, both in the classroom and in the playground.

The Myth of “Good Schools”

Wealth Week 12

One aspect of Tom Shapiro’s The Hidden Cost of Being African American that I found particularly interesting and brought up in last week’s discussion was his analysis of why white parents avoid schools that are predominantly black. Shapiro demonstrates that in their quest for “good schools”, white parents are actually seeking schools where the majority of students look like their children. As Shapiro writes, “Many white parents, as well as some black ones, determine school quality not by academic excellence, teacher skills, or classroom curriculum but by who sits next to and who will associate with their child.” (172) Many white parents assume that schools whose student bodies are mostly students of color are bad schools without actually visiting them or talking to their teachers and administrators. This made me think about my own community, and the Huffington Post article that I brought up in class, which was written by Abby Norman, a white Atlanta parent who decided to send her daughter to her local neighborhood school, despite the fact that she was one of the only white students.

One of the most important consequences of wealth, as Shapiro describes, is the ability to move to an area whose local schools are considered “good”. Schools play such a big role in where people decide to live that, as Norman writes, real estate agents will advise potential buyers against certain areas solely because of the perceived quality of the schools. But for the white families who do decide to live in relatively integrated neighborhoods with significant black populations—which is increasingly happening in many neighborhoods in Atlanta—they refuse to send their children to the local neighborhood schools almost as a rule. Many white parents in my neighborhood sent their children to the local elementary school, which was almost all white, and many sent their children to the middle school, which was about half white and half black. But by the time their children got to high school, many parents removed them from the public school system or moved away to avoid sending them to my high school, which was two-thirds black. Going to a school where I was in the minority by no means hurt my education—in fact, as I wrote last week, I think it helped—but some white parents’ perceptions of my high school’s quality, which I can only assume was based on its demographics, convinced them that it was not good enough (read: white enough) for their children. Until we can rid ourselves of the notion that black students hurt the quality of a school, school integration will be impossible.

On Wealth Management, Roboplanning, and the Black Community

Wealth Week 12

Reflecting on Tuesday’s discussion on race-based wealth inequalities, I’m thinking about how automated financial guidance may help to reduce the black-white wealth gap. We learned that centuries of government policy have undermined blacks’ ability to accumulate assets. Most shocking to me was Ira Katznelson’s point that, “Between 1945 and 1955, the federal government transferred more than $100 billion to support retirement programs and fashion opportunities for job skills, education, homeownership and small-business formation” that primarily benefitted whites (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700484.html). Still, I wonder whether automated guidance has the potential to help blacks better manage the wealth they do accumulate.

I first learned about roboplanners while working at a consulting firm this summer studying the future of automation across six industrial applications ranging from emergency rooms to retail stores. An innovation of the last five years, these algorithm-based services often come at a fraction of the cost of human planners. Though existing technologies do not offer retirement or estate planning assistance, they still help consumers make decisions on how and where to invest their money.

Also, while roboplanning may make guidance more accessible to the black community, a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Daisy Maxey documents how some African-Americans feel that they don’t need financial advice at all (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324634304578539110358585512). I question the writer’s assumption that this is a pervasive attitude amongst middle-income blacks, and would like to more about structural barriers preventing blacks from accessing this guidance. Moreover, regardless of the distinction between structural and cultural arguments, 19% of black Americans have financial advisors, compared to 30% of the overall population. Perhaps culturally-targeted marketing of new automated tools could yield new black consumers and begin to close this gap, underscoring that even those earning “a good income” and “build[ing] wealth” should still seek advisory services to further their financial gains.

Chris Rock said it best

Black Community

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r3rjh

Our class discussion and reading The Hidden Cost of Being African American caused me to think of the Chris Rock video that I included above. In this video, he talks about the difference between rich and wealthy. Perhaps the most striking example that he gives is: “Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his check is wealthy”. While Chris Rock is joking since he says all of this in comedy show, it is funny because it is true. It is difficult for black people in this country to accrue wealth, stemming from when the black community had no wealth.

Chris Rock also speaks beyond the power structure of wealth by commenting on how it is enduring. He says “Wealth is passed down from generation to generation. You can’t get rid of wealth. Rich is some sh*t you can lose with a crazy summer and a drug habit”. Wealth is powerful because it is something that is long lasting. Also, wealth builds on itself and allows for future generations to amass more of it. There is a saying that “money is power”, but it may be more accurate to say that wealth is power.

Let’s Talk About Wealth

Black Community

I enjoyed watching the footage of Shapiro speaking at the symposium at Brown, and I think he brought up some interesting points that complemented his text we were assigned. One thing that stuck with me as I continued watching, were his opening words on how the issue of the wealth gap is really something that only recently has been on the minds of the general public. He speaks with optimism as he points out that he’s been working more and more with “not just researchers and academics” but “community organizers and advocates and locally based community organizations across the country” as well. He also mentions how even up to two years ago, no one was speaking about this issue at all and now there’s a whole symposium. He credits some of this general awareness of the problem to President Obama speaking at the the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and saying, “we’ve made great economic progress between the races but the racial wealth gap is still growing” because these words helped steer public conversation and give the movement legitimacy.

My concern however, is how are we going to address the general cultural view on wealth and this gap? Even now that there’s this symposium and a whole body of academic work on the wealth gap, wealth/income/money are all topics that tend to bring out the defensive worst in all of us. I fear that real change cannot be achieved unless there’s a fundamental shift towards transparency and openness in discussing wealth. With the fizzle out of the anti 1% protesters and the political determination to not alienate those with these campaign donation funds, I’m not very optimistic about the future of this conversation moving forward.

“A Question of Political Will”

Black Community

Thomas Shapiro’s The Hidden Cost of Being African American poses a persuasive and moving argument, using both qualitative and quantitative evidence to paint a vivid image of racial wealth inequality and its dire consequences for life outcomes of non-white individuals. He claims that asset policy would mitigate some of these negative consequences, insisting that the way policies treat the assets of white and non-white individuals must be addressed before true racial equality can be achieved. In the video Khytie posted, Shapiro acknowledges the slim chances of such policy reform being enacted, stating, “It’s a question of political will.” This statement reflected my exact thoughts as I was reading his book. Is there anyone in power who is willing to change the policies that, in very subtle and scary ways, benefit them and perpetuate their privilege? Beyond this, how likely is it that those who benefit from inheritance and current asset policies will be willing to take a critical eye to how their wealth-related privileges reflect others’ oppression? Will they accept Shapiro’s argument? Will they find ways to justify their behaviors and privileges? History and current thoughts about wealth indicate that the answer to this last question is “yes.”

In his conclusion, Shapiro notes that Americans tend to have entrenched thoughts that the ability to pass on privileges and opportunities onto one’s children is an inviolable right. I use my father as an example of this attitude – he believes that if one works hard and is successful, one should be able to use this success to benefit his or her children. This ties back to the American Dream ideology – where the idea that hard work pays off in the land of opportunity is a foundational belief for many people in power in America. Not only does this ideology make sense of people’s success in a validating way, but it also serves as a explanation and justification for why some people do not make it. While Shapiro’s book provides concrete and persuasive evidence that the American Dream is a falsehood, I think it is hard for people to translate an intellectual understanding that the American Dream is not real into practical action that reduces one’s own privilege. This is apparent in the article Quinn mentioned in class – people may recognize that the way society is set up is unfair, but they are unwilling to sacrifice the ways in which they benefit from this set-up (like private, high-quality education) in order to ameliorate social inequality. With this knowledge, how can we expect that people will be willing to level the wealth playing field? What kind of ideological and political change is necessary for an intellectual understanding of social inequality to become translated into practical action and policies that actually address it? Perhaps this is a pessimistic view of the future of racial inequality in America, and it certainly is derived from Marxist ways of thinking. But throughout my reading of The Hidden Cost I found myself wondering how our unequal society could possibly rearrange its policies and structures to get rid of this pervasive, subtle form of racial inequality that is grounded in American Dream ideology and provides concrete and lasting benefits to those in power and their families.

Wealth Inequality and Educational Opportunity

Wealth Week 12

As data has recently been collected about the quality of schools across the country, the stark difference between the educations that children receive has risen to the forefront of conversation. For some parents, the lack of quality public education in their communities is a pressing issue. The distinction that wealth creates occurs in whether or not these parents are able to offer other alternatives for their children. For financially secure, and often, white families, this may mean sending their children to private schools or to better school districts. For less well-off, and often black, families the presence of subpar education may create a problem without any tangible solutions. As a result, as white parents move their children out of poorer districts and abandon the issues of the public schools, these schools often fall farther behind in terms of educational achievement, furthering the effects of wealth on educational attainment. This wealth difference can impact more than just where a child attends primary or secondary school, as in this case. Centuries of disadvantage have left black families far behind their white counterparts, with various institutional and systematic factors hindering their progress.

Considering the importance of education in combating income inequality, I found this idea very interesting. This novel helped explain how the same families affected by lower incomes also were unable to build wealth and therefore unable to offer their children the same educational opportunities as other families, further widening the income gap. Shapiro, through this book, does a good job of explaining the perpetuity of the wealth gap, and how the presence of assets can alter the life course of families and subsequent generations.

Wealth and Inequality

Wealth Week 12

I really enjoyed this week’s readings and discussion. Perhaps more than any other unit from the semester, the findings of The Hidden Cost of Being African American articulated a very different, novel argument. Speaking about wealth inequality opens a powerful narrative about opportunity and access, and even beginning this discussion reveals privileges in experiences that might have been difficult to see otherwise.

Shapiro’s talk at Brown in how education reform, eliminating income disparities and enabling home ownership was compelling. It resonated with the discussion of the origins of the wealth gap in class, where Professor Bobo pointed out the racialization of state policy, economic discrimination and categorical exclusions that created inequalities in wealth. Shapiro’s talk very clearly attempts to suggest measures that would reverse the impact of these structural forces. Given the resistance in testimonies in Shapiro’s book, though, and the difficulties of recognizing privilege, it seems that even with quantifiable evidence, the narrative of wealth inequality still has yet to become comfortably accepted by mainstream perspectives. To make real impact on the policies that perpetuate wealth inequality, we need to push for more conversations and make the realities of wealth inequality widely-accepted.

Black Wealth/White Wealth: “The Continuity of Deep Structures”

Wealth Week 12

Tom Shapiro’s talk at the “Race Today: A Symposium on Race in America” at Brown university. The symposium “brought a group of the nation’s most respected intellectuals on race, racial theory and racial inequality together to consider the troubling state of black life in America today. What are the broader structural factors that shape race today? How do these factors work on the ground and institutionally and what are the consequences? What are the ideas about race, and racial identities that enable the normalcy of stark racial differences today? In particular, what role do key ideas such as “colorblindness” and “post race” play in shaping perception and outcomes? What can be done to challenge ideological and structural impediments to a racially egalitarian society?”

Also, the article Quinn raised in class:

Why White Parents Won’t Choose Black Schools

As is to be expected, parsing through the comments section (if you like to torture yourself) there is a lot of defensiveness and denial  about the author’s argument,  which reveals much of what Shapiro discusses in terms of the mechanisms of denial which insulate whites from their privilege.

The Intersection of Race and Gender and Its Affect on Black Students

Schooling and Education Week 11

Even though Karolyn Tyson didn’t discuss gender in her book, I was very intrigued to see how it affects Black boys and girls differently. There are all these statistics stating that Black women have the highest college enrollment rate of any race or gender, but not as much focus on how schooling can be different for Black girls and boy. I thought the article posted about how Black boys can essentially transition easier than Black girls can was very interesting. I had a feeling that this was the case given how we perform gender but it was nice to see that a study was actually performed to prove this. The double standards present for men and women is already seen in today’s society a lot. The way in which a woman who is assertive is seen as bossy whereas a man would be deemed a leader is one example of this. When adding race to the mix, it just complicates things even more. As mentioned in the article, the boys were able to use their Blackness to their advantage and were deemed as cool while the girls were not. There were certain things in the article that I could emphasized with and compare to my own life, which only made the article even more interesting. I definitely want to look at how gender and race play out a lot more within the Black community. It would be interesting to see how books we have read so far for class would incorporate gender into their argument, if they haven’t already, and what the results would be.

I think male privilege is something that is downplayed within the Black community and because of that issues are arising. Thinking about Black Lives Matter movement, which was started by queer Black women, has become something that focuses a lot more on the lives of Black men lost instead of the lives of others. Black trans-women have an average age of about 36, yet not many names of these Black trans-women became hashtags. It got to the point where the hashtag #SayHerName was trending on twitter to remind everyone of the Black trans women and Black women who have been lost. I remember reading an article on The Root which basically said why focusing exclusively on Black men is not a problem, which I had a big problem with. I’ve heard people say multiple times before that Black women will be there for their men but the same wouldn’t be done for the. Why don’t we talk about male privilege more? How do we have a constructive conversation where race and gender are both acknowledged without downplaying the experiences of anyone?  This issue of not discussing male privilege is definitely a problem within the Black community that needs to be addressed.

The Black School

Schooling and Education Week 11

In my reaction paper last week, I questioned whether it is better to force integration of schools (disregarding the effects of intra-school segregation) or simply to allow some schools to be mainly black so long as they are of equal caliber with integrated or mainly white schools. I think it’s interesting to consider what all-black or mostly black schools could mean for black students today. In today’s mixed schools, even black students who achieve similar testing scores are not placed in the same advanced classes are their white peers. This highly racialized – and racist – practice teaches school aged kids to associate the gifted track (and whiteness) with intelligence. Kids who are not placed on the advanced track, which is more of a status symbol than a real quantifiable measure or intelligence or ability, then are led to believe that they are not smart. Both Tyson and Du Bois presented black schools as spaces where all black students are able to succeed at levels denied to them in predominantly white institutions. Surrounded by their peers and not hindered by misleading beliefs that equate whiteness with intelligence, black students could in fact be encouraged to succeed. It is also important to consider the presence of black administrators and teachers. Black teachers, the adults in closest contact with students, can be highly underrepresented in mixed or mainly white schools. In my own high school experience, there was only one black teacher on my white, suburban campus. While it may not be necessary to have black teachers for black students to succeed, it is encouraging to see a person of your own color succeeding in a place of authority. Further, Du Bois says black teachers can relate better to students and their unique situations outside of school. Integrated schools do not make an effort to do this, either in a distinct attempt to be “colorblind” or simply out of neglect. That lack of understanding in and of itself can account for an achievement gap between black and white students in the same schools. In a black school no racialized tracking exists to equate success with whiteness and students have visible role models for what they can achieve after leaving school. The black school, then, may be the best way to stop the cycle of internalized inferiority and de facto segregation that prevents success in integrated schools. If integrated schools were better at catering to black students – not sticking them in average or below average classes with little regard for their academic potential – the entirely black school might not be a necessity. However, the inability of integrated institutions to properly educate and uplift black students today can prevent them from achieving at their highest level of potential and are the best indicator of why black schools might be needed. Though our society today would like to believe that we are colorblind and should no longer divide ourselves along race, racial divisions exist implicitly everyday and disadvantage nonwhite groups. The black school might be a way to negate this insidious and largely invisible inequality.

The insidious nature of elementary school racism

Black Community

Karoline Tyson noted that young children she interviewed rarely mentioned race, at least with adults in school settings. Conversations about race are seldom initiated in elementary school classrooms, and the researchers themselves avoided bringing up race with younger students unless the students they interviewed broached the subject. By and large, these students made no mention of race: one student described his classmates by “nearly every physical characteristic but race.” Until middle school or later, these students avoid discussing race.

I wondered what might result in this silence on the topic. Perhaps they are uncomfortable with the subject in general. Perhaps they view race as inappropriate for discussing with in-school authorities because they never see it discussed in this setting. Perhaps they lack the vocabulary to discuss it. Or perhaps, for some, neighborhoods and schools were so racially segregated that differences were rarely visible among students’ peers – as was the case at my elementary school.

Regardless of the cause, it seems that an unwillingness to even acknowledge racial differences (at least among teachers and school administrators, if they are fearful of starting conversations with young students) have prevented authorities from recognizing the biases inherent in the system and in their own judgments of students. Du Bois’s observations about the importance of recognizing unconscious prejudices are particularly salient here: the tacit perpetuation of racism in schools has serious consequences for students’ academic self-concepts and feelings of belonging or alienation in school, and ultimately contributes to racial achievement gaps.

How Racialized Tracking Affects Students’ View of Blackness

Schooling and Education Week 11

Early racialized tracking of minority students can have a long-term effect on the psychology and development of black adolescents – affecting how students define their own blackness. For black students in schools with this system in place, from an early age, they see academic achievement equated with whiteness. This connection does not begin inside the black community; rather, these students are faced with an environment in which everyday they are told by their administrators, by their teachers, by the racial makeup of their classes that academic success is meant for white students. From this message rises this concept of “acting white” when one succeeds in school. For many black students this results in a tension between doing well in school and fitting into their perceived image of blackness. For adolescents in the critical stage of self growth and development, this tension brings up many questions concerning their racial identity. For black students anywhere on the achievement hierarchy, decisions have to be made, whether consciously or subconsciously, on how to reconcile these differences in their personal connection between success and race.

I found this especially interesting because, for many students of color, school has just become a micro version of the adult world. Rather than providing a place for students to receive and equal and quality education, school has become a maze – a place where minority students have to, once again, establish and reestablish their identity. For these students, school is just another institutional structure used to reinforce stereotypes and societal norms. In presenting the case studies of various schools and students, Tyson, through this book, truly shows the issue with how society has consistently placed the onus on students to defy these norms, rather than on these school environments to dissolve the systems that lead to these norms and achievement gaps.

The Illusion of Integration

Schooling and Education Week 11

Reading Integration Interrupted was an eye-opening experience for me, because it very much resonated with my own school experience, and made me think about it in ways that I hadn’t before. My high school was roughly two-thirds black, yet most of the classes—mostly AP and honors-level classes—were overwhelmingly white. As a result, most of my friends and the people I sat with in the cafeteria were white. I thought that attending a school where I was in the minority would allow me to interact with and become friends with people who came from a different background than I did. But if you saw my friend group, you would’ve assumed that I had attended an overwhelmingly white suburban or private school.

A lot has been made of the value of inter-school integration. Yet perhaps we should be more focused on intra-school integration. During the Civil Rights era, there was a great deal of progress toward integrating schools through busing and other programs, although that progress has largely stagnated or reversed since the 1970s. But even if we accomplish racial integration in schools and ensure that there are adequate levels of diversity in every school, we must also ensure that that diversity is translated into meaningful interaction between white students and black students. I suspect that ability tracking, as Karolyn Tyson described it, has been used as a way to accomplish integration without forcing white parents to let their children take classes with “other people’s” children. At my high school, my and my white peers’ nominal justification for taking advanced and honors-level classes was for the “academic rigor” and “better teachers”. But I wonder if I would have gotten a better education had I been able to interact more with those who came from a different background than me. In order to truly accomplish integration, we need to understand that the goal of education shouldn’t just be getting the highest test scores or maintaining the highest GPA; it should be interacting with and learning from and with an accurate slice of your community, and not just people who look like you.

“Gifted” and Intersectionality

Schooling and Education Week 11

Like many others in class, some of my firsthand experiences strengthen the thesis put forth in Integration Interrupted. In first grade (incredibly early!), I took some version of an IQ test, and from then forth, I was labeled “gifted.” The circumstances in which I was chosen to take the test, the testing environment itself, and the evaluation of my performance: these are all points of entry that had the potential to be clouded by unconscious biases. My own upbringing and all the structural forces that created the environment from which I grew influenced my performance in the test. And yet, all that was erased by the simple binary labeling of myself and my classmates. Despite the early evaluation, the permanence and endurance of this label was total. For a few hours a week, the “gifted” students were separated from the class, and, given that we left together in the middle of class, in a very visible manner. Even after I moved and switched school districts, my parents made sure that I was placed in the analogous “gifted” program in the new school district. The segregation perhaps was greatest in high school, when all my classes involved the same small cohort of the grade. The number of entry points into the “higher” track, diminished with the passing of each grade.

I really enjoyed browsing the two articles that Khytie linked in the blog this week. Some of the works we’ve read this week have dealt with both race and gender, but not significantly. Intersectionality is unavoidable – all facets of a person’s identity influence her experience in society – and I enjoy when class material more directly addresses it.

Feelings of Belonging in School

Black Community

Integration Interrupted and Aboubacar Ndiaye’s article “Black Boys Have an Easier Time Fitting in at Suburban Schools than Black Girls” both highlight the importance of making school a place where black students feel like they belong. Tyson writes about how the institutional and social association of whiteness with academic achievement can contribute to negative academic and social outcomes for black students, and points out in Chapter Three that students who have a strong sense of self and who feel as though academic achievement is a part of their identity are better able to resist ‘oppositional culture’ and continue doing well in school. Ndiaye notes that white suburban students are more socially accepting of black boys than black girls, creating better social outcomes for black boys. In both these works, students’ identities are such that school validates who they are and tangibly rewards their identities (although it may not reward all parts of their individual identities). Du Bois also highlights this in his essay “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?”, pointing out that white schools will not accept and value black children or their culture.

This trend reminded me of Lisa Delpit’s book Other People’s Children, which advocates for a restructured and rethought approach to teaching non-white children (specifically, black children and Native Alaskan children). Part of her argument states that the cultural disconnect between white-led public schools and white teachers creates an unwelcoming and oppressive environment for black children. She talks about how good teaching means teachers create spaces and curricula that value AAVE and African-American history and culture just as it does so for white students and their culture. While Du Bois’s essay discusses the teacher’s role in reproducing demeaning spaces, the other works we read glossed over this point (though Integration Interrupted talks about racist interactions between teachers and black students, Tyson doesn’t explore the individual interactions and elements of teaching that produce racial inequality – though she could have if she had explored how students get placed in gifted programs). I think that studying the individual interactions between teachers, curriculum, and black students can give more insight into how black students are treated in a school setting. According to the above sources, the way that students feel and their sense of belonging have a huge impact on how they perform in school. It is important to study their experiences in school in a deep way – like Delpit did – to understand exactly where these feelings come from and how they are influenced by institutional actors like teachers.

Black Boys Have an Easier Time Fitting In at Suburban Schools Than Black Girls

Black Community, Schooling and Education Week 11

This article in The Atlantic by Aboubacar Ndiaye, Black Boys Have an Easier Time, touches upon some of the issues raised in Tyson’s work, and Prof. Bobo’s lecture,  in terms of integration, race, school structure and notions of oppositional culture. It especially addresses the lacunae in Tyson’s scholarship on the intersection of race and gender and its impact on education and integration.

 

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In an article published last year, Megan M. Holland, a professor at the University of Buffalo and a recent Harvard Ph.D., studied the social impact of a desegregation program on the minority students who were being bussed to a predominantly white high school in suburban Boston. She found that minority boys, because of stereotypes about their supposed athleticism and “coolness,” fit in better than minority girls because the school gave the boys better opportunities to interact with white students. Minority boys participated in sports and non-academic activities at much higher rates. Over the course of her study, she concluded that structural factors in the school as well as racial narratives about minority males resulted in increased social rewards for the boys, while those same factors contributed to the isolation of girls in the diversity program.

 

Minority young men are considered by their white peers to be cool and tough; minority young women, on the other hand, are stereotyped as “ghetto” and “loud.”

 

Structure vs. Culture

Black Community

Among people who are educated on the subject or simply can read statistics, there is little disagreement on how black students under-achieve in the classroom in comparison to their white counterparts, even when controlling for socio-economic circumstance. However, there is a debate about whether culture or structure has a larger effect on black success in schools. I think that culture has a way of informing the structure. Specifically, in this instance I think that the “acting white” slur contributes to causing structural inequities. It can also be said that the structure is informing the culture and is the reason some black students say others “act white”.

 

Black students who tell other black students that they are white because of their academic prowess affect the will of black students who want and capable of academic excellence. This can cause a systematic shift by encouraging black kids not to take the most difficult classes, and this would help create the structural inequity, among other causes. Also, it is possible that the fact that white students are much more prevalent in higher-level classes causes the “acting white” slur to exist. Black students mostly see white kids in those classes and therefore want associate academic success with whiteness. This leads them to call some fellow black students white and further perpetuates the system as the black students who are called white continued to be discouraged.

On Being Black in Private School

Schooling and Education Week 11

After this week’s session on education and the black community, I continue to reflect on radicalized achievement gaps in private schools. As I mentioned, I attended a prep school where the majority of black and Latino students were enrolled in non-honors/non-AP math and science courses.

Thinking about this experience indirectly made me remember the PBS documentary American Promise, which follows two African-American boys, Idris and Seun, through their years at Dalton, a private K-12 school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A school official interviewed in the film argued there is a cultural disconnect between independent schools and black boys which prevents them from serving this segment well. Indeed, for both boys, Dalton becomes increasingly difficult as they get older, as they must meet heightened academic demands while also grappling with racial and class-based differences as they recognize themselves as “others.”

Given these points, I question whether hiring more black teachers can change independent schools’ culture and make them a better “fit” for black pupils, helping us feel less isolated in majority white environments. As one of the Dalton teachers said at the beginning of the movie’s trailer, “What we teach then at Dalton is to teach them that they have a voice.” Perhaps changing the composition of independent school faculty will help black boys find a similar sense of empowerment instead of feeling alienated.

Still, I worry that focusing on fit and faculty diversification will distract from ensuring that black students who may move from public to private school are truly prepared to do the rigorous work required of them. Programs to help these students up a steep learning curve are a possible means of starting to address this issue. Also, to read more about American Promise or watch the film’s trailer, check out http://www.pbs.org/pov/americanpromise/.

DuBois, Mizzou, Yale, and the HBCU vs. PWI Debate

Black Community

A lot of the points that DuBois brought up in his essay are still very valid today, especially regarding the disparagement a lot of HBCUs receive in comparison to more elite (i.e. whiter, older, richer) institutions. Between Integration Interrupted and “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools” a lot of the arguments that are pro-HBCU are represented. Black students face a lot of obstacles while attending majority white schools; teacher bias, racial insensitivity, and a general lack of support, and these are all issues that would be lessened by attendance at an HBCU. When another incident makes headlines in a few months, this debate will come back to life again I’m sure. Every single year that I’ve been here, there has been a racial incident on campus. The Affirmative Action article by Sarah Siskand, Zimmerman’s Trial, and most recently the defacing of African American professor’s portraits at HLS. Student activism towards these events has been met with mixed reactions from a majority white student populace. Allies are vocal, but a lot of students feel discomfort and irritation over what they see as needless divisions on campus and aggressive flyers and posters. With the recent events at Yale, Mizzou, and predominantly white institutions nationwide, the classic HBCU vs. PWI is on the minds of a lot of students again. The readings from last week were an interesting supplement to real life happenings.