Gorokhov, Steven

SOC 001
999393637
07/23/14

Education and The Perpetuation of Racial and Class Inequality in the American
Schooling System

Six decades after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools is
unconstitutional, much of the American public believes that racism is a ghost of the
past. To many, the desegregation of schools and the antiracism movement have
succeeded in their goals, providing equal opportunities to minorities, primarily
African-Americans. Yet, in reality, the core fabric of America seems to still feature
systematic racism; we can particularly see this in our school system. Jonathan Kozol,
in his article, Still Separate, Still Unequal: Americas Educational Apartheid,
demonstrates how the integration movement has been working backwards and
displays the true inequalities in American schools. As one of the most important
institutions in the process of social reproduction, the educational system is largely
responsible for perpetuating systematic inequality and white dominance in
American society.
The nature of racism, according to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (), changes as a
normal outcome of racial contestation in a racialized social system. () Since the
abolition of slavery, racism in the United States has become progressively more
covert and hidden rather than clearly visible and freely expressed. As a result of
this hidden nature, it is common for whites to deny that racism continues to be an
issue in the Post-Civil Rights Era. It is conceived of primarily as something of the
past, which exists currently only in the minds of irrational racists (Bonilla-Silva
1997).
The dominant view is that American society is a meritocracy that rewards
are distributed fairly based on merit. This view is thoroughly individualistic, as it
holds that, through hard work and individual effort, anyone can improve his or her
social status. This myth of equal opportunity is used as a justification for the
unequal distribution of wealth and other rewards in our society. Those in lower
strata are assumed to be there because they either do not possess merit, have not
worked hard enough to improve their status, or have made bad personal decisions
and are, therefore, deserving of their situation. This perspective, however, neglects
to take into account the historical context of current inequality and fails to
acknowledge the existence of different societal structures, such as schooling, that
combine to perpetuate this inequality and prevent marginalized groups from
achieving upward mobility.
As the clich goes, our children are our future, and their easiest path to
upward mobility is to embrace the school system. Yet, for many kids in urban and
poor areas, their schools are failing them and hurting their chances of upward
mobility. Students of color find themselves in schools named after civil rights
leaders, but they exhibit almost no racial diversity. Many of these schools have
95%+ black and Hispanic students and less than 5% white students. Kozol writes,
Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no
less segregated now, while thousands of other schools around the country that had
been integrated either voluntarily or by force of law have since rapidly
resegregating. ( ) This renewed segregation in schools is the underlying factor that
allows for politicians to treat students of color differently from white students.
School funding provides clear evidence of how policies directly affect
students of color and lead to systematic inequalities. In almost every state, property
taxes determine school funding, the obvious result being better-funded schools in
wealthy areas. Kozol ( ) describes in detail the effects this disparity in funding has
on poor, predominantly black and Hispanic students in urban areas. Racial
minorities disproportionately attend schools with few resources, outdated
technology, lower-paid teachers, and lower per-pupil spending. In 2005, per-pupil
spending in New York City was $11,700 compared to $22,000 in Manhasset, Long
Island, a wealthy suburb ( ). Kozol describes the astonishing differences in urban
and inner-city school conditions, ranging from overcrowded schools and clean
bathrooms to differences in educational programs, and each factor seems to further
indicate that racial segregation is present. ( ) The arts have been known to be a
curricula that values acceptance of all different kinds of people. Yet, libraries and
programs such as arts are many times non-existent to inner city students. Gross
discrepancies in teacher salaries between the city schools and the suburban white
schools play another important role in Kozols claim. The greater the teachers
salary the greater the spending limit per student, which inadvertently places the
white student a step ahead and creates yet another barrier between the different
student populations. In one example, Kozol points out politicians tendencies to
decrease funding to urban schools, attributing cuts to imminent budget crises. Yet,
when the economy bounces back up, the minority schools do not receive their
funding back, and, thus, their funds are constantly being depleted. The bad times
were seized upon politically to justify the cuts, and the money was never restored
once the crisis years were past, Kozol writes. ( )
An important contributor to the perpetuation of white advantage in schools
is undoubtedly the presence of a large number of white educators who are unwilling
to acknowledge their own privileges as white people. In Peggy McIntoshs (1990)
article White privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack, she writes a list of
instances of white privilege in her everyday life. She also writes that one of the most
important steps in addressing this problem is to acknowledge your race and that
racism exists. Whites, perhaps in educator positions, who deny that the invisible
knapsack exists, are, therefore, working backwards on the inequality issue. Bonilla-
Silve attempts to categorize the justifications of these types of people as The Four
Frames of Color-Blindness. The first frame of abstract liberalism represents the
tendency for whites to agree that all Americans, regardless of race, should have
equal rights and equal opportunities while, at the same time, opposing government
policies that could actually bring about such equality, like affirmative action or
busing. The second is minimization of racism, which stands for the white belief
that, although there is still discrimination against blacks, it is not as bad as it used to
be, and it is no longer the main thing holding blacks back. Third, cultural racism
refers to the movement away from Jim Crow beliefs that there is something wrong
with blacks biologically, towards the cultural belief that blacks have mostly bad
families, bad values, and a bad worth ethic. Lastly, the fourth frame, naturalization
of racism suggests that racist practices in society are seen as natural, as a part of
human nature, and not as an outcome of white racism. It is the last two of these
frames that fuel the perpetuation of racism in schools, when adopted by teachers
and faculty. The cultural racism frame is an example of blaming the victim, as it
deems black culture deficient when held up against the normative white culture.
Then, to further instill this, whites are absolved of all blame in the fourth frame, as
racism is an outcome of the natural world and not of white actions and beliefs.
When combined, these two presumptions form an incorrigible belief system that
prevents white teachers and politicians from helping solve the prevalent racism in
American education.
Another fundamental problem in our schooling system that leads to
inequality is the failure of assessment tests to fairly assess students abilities. In
many urban systems, third-graders results on a high stakes test determine their
eligibility to be promoted. ( ) Their placement into gifted and honors classes is also
many times based on assessment tests. Although each students grades are
standardized and judged as equal, the opportunities students had before third grade
were certainly unequal. There are expensive children and there are cheap
children, writes Marina Warner. ( ) On one side, hundreds of thousands of children
of the very poor in much of the United States are denied preschool education. On the
other side, affluent parents in New York City can send their toddlers to expensive
early-education programs that give their children the social competence and
rudimentary skills to surpass the minority students when they meet in first grade.
So, by the time both students take the same third grade test, the affluent students
have already completed six or seven years of education, while the poor, black and
Hispanic students have, perhaps, received half of that. ( ) For this reason, judging
the assessment tests results paints only half of the picture. Administrators and
politicians must also incorporate the opportunities presented to the child in
determining his/her placement, so as to figure out what the child achieved with
what he/she had.
As a three year old, I was one of the White students in lovely little
Montessori programs. I did not enter the public schooling system until third grade
because of my parents wealth and decision to send me to a private school. When I
finally met the public school kids, I saw that they focused much less on education
and classroom activities and more on recess and outdoor activities. My four years in
the bubble of private school surely gave me a cultural advantage based on
experience, and this disparity wouldnt be leveled out for several years.
The institution of education, thought to be societys great equalizer is, in
fact, responsible for a great deal of the inequality that is found in American society.
Renewed segregation, unequal funding, culturally unaware teachers, and a high
emphasis on assessment testing all combine to perpetuate existing racial
inequalities and to uphold white dominance in the US. An atmosphere of liberalism,
colorblindness, and the myth of meritocracy serve to hide and justify this
dominance. By closely examining the structure of education, we can deconstruct it
and begin to eradicate the institutional racism that so extensively pervades it.