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.
All posts by madisonwhitney
Outside Criticisms of the Black Family
The CBS Special News Report is an interesting addition to what we’ve read about the modern black neighborhood and black family. It is a critical look at the black community from the outside, without any of the knowledge we have gleaned throughout the course about why it is the way that it is. Deep-rooted and lasting poverty and over policing are not considered, though they cause much of what is discussed in the report. High poverty levels lead to higher rates of crime, teenage pregnancy, and “family deterioration” when parents and relatives are constantly away in jail or at work. High poverty among the black community has many causes, more than a few of which are connected to economic and residential discrimination that denies black Americans stable and well-paying employment. However, the CBS News Report does not go into this. That’s what I think highly sensational reports like this dangerous. While the “vanishing family” may well be a problem within Black America that should be addressed, news coverage of this nature is often more harmful than helpful. Because it lacks the societal context needed to explain the problems, it can give viewers detached from the situation an excuse to write off the black community and not help. After all, they are led to believe that the black community is causing the deterioration of the black family and all of the negative effects that go with that. While this sort of news coverage should theoretically give viewers a reason to sympathize with the black community and try to end the systemic oppression that it suffers under, it usually works the other way. I think this is also a factor in the Obama speech that we watched in class on Tuesday. Because Obama is a member of the black community and thus understands – at least better than most White Americans – the intricacies of black society, his comment on individual responsibility also takes into account the external pressures that make it difficult to keep the family together. However, when covered by major news outlets, these external factors are neither mentioned nor acknowledged to exist. Viewers do not know of them and news agencies do not make an effort to make viewers aware, so viewers only see a fraction of the information. They believe that if Obama can say these things about the community then they are true and anyone can say them. However, coming from people outside of the community, calls for individual action and responsibility are far more accusatory and less understanding.
Generational Poverty
I found the effects of generational poverty on development quite compelling in Stuck in Place. One figure we specifically mentioned in the class discussion was: being poor for two or more generations is the equivalent of missing two to four years of school. This was powerful for me because of the way in which is removes individual agency. I know that that was one of the potential criticisms made of the book – being too deterministic and ignoring human agency – but this fact shows how poor community themselves often constrain or erase individual ability. Because children are automatically disadvantaged by their parents’ and grandparents’ economic positions, their own possibilities for upward mobility are limited. This is true even when their families are middle-class when they are born. The effects of past generations, which children cannot control and might not even have any knowledge of, have a measurable impact on these children’s future prosperity.
Also significant is the use of years of schooling as a measure for the amount of disadvantage generation poverty can cause. School is often presented as the great equalizer, where even those who are deprived of economic resources can receive an education, “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” and become more successful than the life they were born into. This theory regarding schooling is already fallacious considering inequalities in the US education system, but Stuck in Place shows another way in which being born into a life of financial struggle can ruin even that one great route to success and mobility.
It is important to consider the role of human agency in this phenomenon: obviously, some who were born into two or more generations of poverty are able to overcome the symbolic loss of years of schooling in order to exceed the economic status of their parents and grandparents. Still, it is saddening to consider the many who fall prey to this system of disadvantage. That an individual’s capability of success can be determined (or, at least, influenced) by the upbringing of family members multiple generations before them presents grim prospects for the future of the poor black community. If the young are so heavily impacted by the older generations’ economic status, it seems there must be many more generations of widespread economic prosperity before upward mobility becomes as easy as it should be.
The Gang as a City Maker
I think that the news clip parallels Ralph’s observations and conclusions about the gang in On the Run. Like in Mr. Otis’ view of the traditional gang, they are uplifting the community rather than leading its destruction. They denounce looting and burning of businesses, and they lead marches in opposition to the institutionalized oppression of the black community. However, while Mr. Otis’ vision involved a gang full of clean-shaven men wearing cardigans, these men in Baltimore do not have the same traditional ‘respectable’ (and, in our society, this word is often synonymous with the appearances and behaviors of white people) look. Even in a professional setting like a television interview, they still wear casual clothing and bandanas that indicate gang affiliation. They do not adhere to respectability politics by changing their appearance to something atypical of the stereotypical gang member: without letting go of deep rooted aspects of their identity, they are still able to behave like the ideal political gang.
This fact reminded me a lot of the idea of black city makers. These men wield influence that allows them to direct what goes on in their city. They attempt to end police brutality through organized protest, and they speak out against destruction of community buildings, working actively to curb violence among city residents. As we read earlier, black city makers are not often lawmakers of city officials; rather, like these gang members, they are often just residents who take steps to create change in their own communities. Anyone can be a legitimate agent of change – a city maker – even young men who proudly wear their ‘flags’.
A second aspect of the news clip that I wanted to comment on was the depiction of the rival factions/gangs uniting as a threat to the community. This misinformation is an indicator of how gangs are forced to function in the community today. Because so much fear and animosity have been assigned to the gangs by groups outside of the community (like the media), they are often painted as fundamentally destructive forces. Any action that they take, then, is seen through that lens. Even if the gangs were to attempt to work together, providing joint protection for their neighborhoods and eliminating the rivalry that often makes it difficult for students to walk home from school in rival territories, they would likely be portrayed as just a lawless, dangerous coalition. The aim of the police would be to break them up rather than encourage the consolidation, no matter how beneficial it truly would be to the community. Perhaps because of this the modern gang can no longer function the way Mr. Otis remembered it. Now so fragmented, internal as well as external factors would make it extremely difficult for the factions to come back together. And, even if they did, their value as a large, community-oriented organization might be mistaken for and/or publicized as a very bad thing for the community at large. Are gangs, then, destined to forever exist the way they do now (which is often as a very violent presence in the community) or does their identity as black city makers give them the power to unite in the name of improvement?
Ethics in Ethnography
I thought the Slate article on the nature of ethnography was very interesting. On the question of whether or not obfuscating identities and events in ethnographies is a problematic practice or a relatively harmless, integral aspect of these studies, I am inclined to believe the latter. The Slate article talks quite a bit about how institutional review boards require complete anonymity as a condition of ethical, publishable research. I would suggest that anonymity is probably also a required condition on the other end. For studies like Goffman’s, I imagine many subjects request anonymity before allowing ethnographers to study and record their lives. Because so many of their daily actions are illegal – ranging from driving with an expired/revoked license to dealing drugs to unlawfully sharing electricity with neighbors – it is hard to believe any of these subjects would want to be identified in a nationally published study. Who would choose to be entirely truthful with an ethnographer without a promise of anonymity and, thus, immunity from embarrassment and legal consequences? In these cases, anonymity is sometimes the only way for a researcher to get any valuable information.
Because of this, it seems that readers must simply trust authors to tell the truth. It is good practice, as well, for readers to take more wild claims (such as some made by Goffman) with a grain of salt. Because the entire field of ethnography is grounded in the promise of anonymity to subjects as well as institutional review boards, there is just no way to thoroughly verify a work. I think this is just a part of the nature of the discipline. Ethnography may not be a precise science – or even a precise social science – because it is rarely entirely truthful and can never be truly proven, but that is not necessarily its goal. Ethnography is not a regurgitation of facts and statistics. Rather, it is a detailed look into a specific community and its distinctive inhabitants. While it may sometimes read like a fantastical piece of fiction, this is only because it depicts real life: messy and not able to be fully understood by numbers alone. Rather, ethnography shows how recorded statistics affect individuals’ everyday lives. I think that, because this is the function of ethnography, muddying dates, names, and characters a bit is not very harmful. It does prevent the reader from ever knowing the precise truth of what happened, but readers trust that ethnographers make their writing choices in a way that is faithful to the overall spirit and culture of the community they study. While this can possibly lead to deliberately misleading ethnographies, these are the exception rather than the rule.
Obstacles in Education
Beyond residential segregation and proximity to very poor neighborhoods, access to education is an important factor in the tendency of middle class black youth to backslide economically. Even with personal choices and wider housing discrimination that keeps middle class black families geographically near highly impoverished communities, education can help keep middle class black youth from illegal/dangerous activity and aid in upward mobility. Access to quality education and a school administration that puts students’ needs first can be invaluable for students’ success in school and beyond. In fact, a caring school environment is one of the 40 Developmental Assets for children and adolescents put for by the Search Institute and used to train tutors and mentors that work with children.
The problem, then, stems from the fact that many black students across the nation today do not have access to quality, well-rounded education. School segregation is still a reality and it was documented in a 2014 study of public schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama by Nikole Hannah-Jones. According to Jones, “[i]n Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.” She explains further that while white students are no longer isolated in entirely white schools, Latino and black students are often segregated into almost entirely black and/or Latino schools. Between 1990 and 2011, 54% of black students in America were enrolled in schools with white populations of 1% or less. Integration is no longer a reality in many low-income (often Southern) school districts. Black students are cut off from youth of other backgrounds, limiting their cultural awareness and further isolating them within the black community (which includes those poor neighborhoods that they are likely to fall into). The black students interviewed by Jones in these Tuscaloosa schools understand the issue at hand, and seem uncertain that they are “learning as much as the city’s white students were” in their schools.
When cut off from access to a good education system – one that has many cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds present and is equal to the education system of white students in the same city – black students can lose potential for upward mobility and economic progress. Even the best students in all-black schools face a shortage of resources and other roadblocks that can prevent them from continuing to higher education. This unfairness is a trend in many areas of life for black youth. I think that so often black youth are demonized for being violent, criminal, or lazy, when in fact they are systemically deprived of resources and opportunities that would allow them to avoid violence or crime and turn to other methods of financial gain and social interaction. Until we can come to this conclusion as a country and enact change in housing and educational segregation, it will be difficult for the black middle class to gain the stability and influence that the white middle class has. How might we bring wider attention to this issue in a way that can actually bring about effective social change? Is this something that the black community can attempt to remedy within itself, or must there be cooperation from multiple groups?
The Middle Class vs. The Masses
One idea that I brought up in my reaction paper for last week was self-segregation between the black elite and ‘the masses’. Because the black bourgeoisie stemmed from free mulatto men and women during slavery, wealth and status within the black community were originally tied to an intrinsic quality within the elite individuals: their partial ‘whiteness’. Because of this they saw themselves as innately superior and did not wish to be associated with the greater black community. Each of the readings last week spoke to middle class black communities distancing themselves from poorer blacks, whether they did so by aligning themselves with white communities or just sticking close to other wealthy blacks. This interesting phenomenon has been widely observed and proven empirically, and it highlights the (often detrimental) focus on class disinfection within the black community. I think it is important to consider what effect this practice of self-segregation and distinction has on the black community at large. I, for one, see the rift between black people from different classes as a large problem for the black community. It impedes progress for the whole group by preventing the unity that the black community needs to find solutions for its problems. When, as we mentioned in class, prominent and/or wealthy black individuals disparage movements like Black Lives Matter, it makes it that much easier for others outside of the movements to discredit and dismiss them. It justifies inaction on the part of people in power and adds doubt to the validity of the movement. After all, if something like Black Lives Matter was really that important to black people, wouldn’t they all agree about it? Further, self-segregation and the like within the community contribute to the narrative of the homogenous monolith of the black masses. This mindset is extremely harmful because of how dehumanizing it is – it stops ‘outsiders’ from seeing individual poor black Americans as humans and seeing their issues as real human issues. Instead, they are ignorable. Further, it can give a ‘pass’ to people outside of the community (who do not bother to learn its roots or the injustices inflicted upon it) to blindly criticize poor blacks for laziness or other undesirable traits. If certain black people can make it into the white mainstream, shouldn’t the rest of them be able to? This inaccurate argument is made to seem less inaccurate when the very black people who have made it into the white mainstream endorse this kind of thought.
Original Sin
One concept that stuck with me from class discussion last week and the week before was the idea of slavery being the ‘Original Sin’ of race in America. I see this as a particularly striking description because the Original Sin, in biblical tradition, is a stain on humanity that cannot be overcome. It characterizes human nature and society for all time, causing painful repercussions that humanity is never meant to escape from. In the Catholic tradition, each person is born already ‘contaminated’ by Original Sin. Though a very pessimistic view of race and race relations in America, I think this viewpoint at the very least demonstrates how impactful slavery truly was. It assigns to slavery the weight it actually had on the development of American society, rather than sugarcoating it as a painful era from which both the black and white communities in America should have already been able to overcome. Insomuch as the Original Sin was humanity’s fall from God’s grace, slavery doomed America to be forsaken and ‘godless’ because of its unforgivable sin.
By implying that humanity will never be able to to recover from its sin, the comparison also implies that black Americans will always be in a position of subordination. What I find most interesting about this that the community against which the sin was committed is the one that has to suffer from it. The sinner benefits perpetually from his transgression rather than being justly punished by an omnipotent God – in a clear break from the biblical tradition. Perhaps it is this lasting inequality that makes slavery the Original Sin from which America as a whole can never recover. Still, though it is slightly comforting to think that racial inequality is a curse upon the entire American society preventing it from fulfilling its full potential, it also seems to provide a justification for keeping black Americans on the lowest rung of the social ladder forever. The sense of resignation inherent in this point of view excuses continued oppression by labelling it as a natural and unbreakable component of American society. Though I agree that the effects of slavery have been long lasting and will take much more time and work to cure, I disagree with any approach that justifies racist behavior on the basis of inevitability.
Week 3 Blog Post
Something I found particularly interesting about the “Legacy of Courage” short film was Ronnie Hodges’ account of the apprehension she felt approaching her grandmother’s house. She explains her fear that she would be seen as an intruder or potential criminal in the neighborhood, which had over time become “ritzy” and predominantly white. This gentrification can be seen not only in the former Seventh Ward of Philadelphia but in neighborhoods of major cities across the nation. It is particularly important because of its effects on the populations of the areas pre-gentrification: often black people and other people of color. Homes and local businesses in areas that are often very poor are ‘taken over’ and replaced by newly constructed upscale buildings and chain businesses. Though this phenomenon can improve the areas in an economic sense, it is also often responsible for pushing out the original residents, displacing them from their long-time homes through rising prices. The Seventh Ward, which was not long ago the center of black life in Philadelphia, is now a place where the families of black residents are afraid to knock on their grandmothers’ doors. The principle of gentrification – meaning the improvement of local houses and buildings and the influx of money into poorer communities – is not necessarily bad. Gentrification, in my opinion, is harmful when it deprives the ‘native’ communities of these benefits and leaves them with only the disadvantages. Gentrification has serious consequences, including the destruction of hubs of black history and culture. It also creates, over time, insurmountable wealth disparities: those original inhabitants who are not forced to leave get poorer, excluded from economic success, and the ‘gentrifiers’ (be them wealthy individuals or corporate businesses) generate profit and remain affluent. Further, the gentrifying agents are usually white, repeating an historical pattern on a small scale by destroying neighborhoods of historically oppressed ethnic groups. It would be interesting to hear of other benefits of gentrification that I did not address, or to see examples of gentrification that were not a harmful burden on preexisting communities. It is normal for areas to shift and change in demographics, but gentrification is an accelerated and localized agent of this change, especially in areas like the Seventh Ward which held such historical significance for a specific community.
Madison Whitney – Introduction
Hi Everyone! My name is Madison Whitney and I’m a freshman living in Weld Hall. I haven’t yet decided on a concentration, but I’m considering Government with a secondary in either African American Studies or WGS. I’m most interested in politics and social justice issues, as well as where politics meets direct public service / community outreach. So far this year I’ve gotten involved with Kuumba, the Association of Black Harvard Women, and the Black Students Association.
I was drawn to this class as an introduction to the African and African American Studies department. I’m excited to take a class of this nature, which I’ve never had the opportunity to do before, and to explore the black American experience through a sociological lens. With many issues within the black community now receiving increased media and political attention, this class could be a great venue to consider and discuss these important issues. I hope to be able to explore many different perspectives, including those of my fellow classmates as well as those of the authors and sociologists whose writings we will be studying. As a black woman, I also hope to gain a greater academic understanding of my own community and to contemplate new ways to address its plights through both an individual and governmental approach.
I’m excited to begin on Tuesday!