For an essay for Education class, I was supposed to write a conversation between two scholars we had read in the format of a script from an academic panel, with myself as a moderator. Possibly as a way to vent stress about my own upcoming academic panel, I wrote myself a very specific personality. The only funny parts are the lines of dialogue marked "Osler" and the scholars' responses to my inane comments, but feel free to read the whole document if you want the unique experience of humor immediately followed by deep fear about the inequities in our nation's public school system.
OSLER: Ladies and gentlemen, to my left we have the pride of the University of Pennsylvania sociology department, author of Unequal Childhoods and co-editor of three, count ‘em, three academic journals! She’s taken on the name Dreamkiller, folks, and that’s ‘cause she’s known for thrashing anyone who suggests that the American Dream of working your way up by your bootstraps is anything but white-livered tomfoolery! Please welcome: Annette Lareau!
LAREAU: I just want to say, that was very unprofessional.
OSLER: And to my right we have the coauthor of Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools. Known world round for cracking the spines of academic tomes and the skulls of anyone who denies that race plays a major role in the American public education system. Please give a round of applause to: Amanda Lewis!
LEWIS: Getting an undergrad to moderate this panel was a mistake.
OSLER: Tonight, we will decide once and for all whether the torturous machinery of capitalism or the sharp bonds of racism are the real cause for gaps in academic achievement. Get ready, because JRC 101 is about to become a battlefield where the ancient sins of the rich and the white are settled in a night of no-hold-barred academic combat! Round 1: What is the relationship between race and class in the American Public School system.
LEWIS: Let me just say that, despite the colorful language in your introduction, you ask a very intelligent question. My stance, as you know, is that within wealthy, successful, diverse schools, schools that express equality as a key value, the tracking system has become a sort of new segregation. The average AP class, for example, was 87.6% white, while the regular class was 53.1% black, and another 36.1% latino.
LAREAU: But couldn’t those difference be explained by economics? I’m not saying that race is not important here, there is an embarrassing disparity in wealth based on race in this country, but in my research I found that class, not race, was the main deciding factor of how parents raised their children and how those children interacted with the school. Specifically, middle class children are raised on what I call a logic of concerted cultivation, by which a barrage of activities teaches them the proper strategies for interacting with institutions like the school. Working class and poor children, who are raised instead on the logic of accomplishment of natural growth, do not gain these same skills and thus are less successful in school. By my calculations, at most 10.9% of the students in regular classes at Riverview High would be white. Is it so unlikely that roughly the same number are working class or poor?
LEWIS: The differences you describe are real, in fact my entire analysis hinges on it, but you erase race too hastily. Since more white students are raised under the logic of concerted cultivation, they are more likely to speak up for themselves, or have their parents speak out for them, which reinforces an idea in the teacher’s mind that white students must be specially looked after. Whiteness gains a symbolic capital wherein the very fact of a student being white means they might speak up, and thus teachers preemptively give them better treatment.
OSLER: So we’ve had some nice abstract sparring out in the clouds up until now, but now let’s get into the blood and guts of how racism and classism work in the real world. Watch out, folks, because it’s about to get raw!
LAREAU: It really isn't. I think the case of Stacey Marshall gets at some of the points Lewis was describing, but at the same time shows the flaws in focusing on race above class. Stacey was a black girl in a middle class family avid about gymnastics. Her gymnastics coach was particularly hard on her, and her mother thought there might be racial undertones to the harsh treatment. So Stacey’s mother advocated for her, and instructed Stacey to advocate for herself, thus instilling the values of concerted cultivation. So even potentially racist encounters serve to reinforce the lessons of class dynamics. A teacher may associate whiteness with symbolic capital at first, but with Stacey in the classroom, they’ll soon learn that at least one student of color speaks up for herself.
LEWIS: And how did the gymnastics team work out for her?
LAREAU: Um, she quit.
LEWIS: You see? And I’m not so sure that Stacey will be treated equally later in life. Even when black parents and students try speaking out for themselves in what you would call an exercise of concerted cultivation, they face more resistance than white parents and students. Specifically when trying to get their children into advanced placement classes, white parents regularly overrode a school’s recommendation while black parents who tried the same technique were met with resistance. One black parent tried to get her bright son into advanced placement math, and his teacher sabotaged his grades so he couldn’t get in.
LAREAU: But I thought you said that parents could override the school’s decision?
LEWIS: Yes, but the mother didn’t know that.
LAREAU: I might be a little presumptuous here, but if the mother is working class or poor, then that’s just a class difference. The system is made for middle class parents, and middle class parents have the vocabulary and skills to understand the system and work it to their advantage. Sabotaging a student for racist reasons is horrifying and inexcusable, but don’t you see that even in that scenario, what makes the concrete difference is class, not race.
LEWIS: But how do you decide what differences are or are not concrete when subtle social interactions carry so much weight? Going in and out of a classroom where you don’t feel like you belong, day after day, does serious psychological damage. And we can quantify that damage using Claude Steele’s research on stereotype threat, which shows that students who feel negatively stereotyped certain situations suffer from extra stress and as a result do poorly.
OSLER: And here we find our brave contestants, collapsed on the mat, bloody and bruised and exhausted. Will one rise to deliver a final kick in the head to her hated opponent, sending her falling into that endless sleep? Or, made battle-bonded sisters by the blows they traded, will they arise and embrace?
LAREAU: Reading perhaps a little too much into John’s comments, I think he wants us to find some common ground to wrap things up. Both of our studies show that schools favor some sorts of culture over others, thus privileging certain students and harming others. In this country, we have an expectation that the education system is essentially meritocratic and equal, but both of our research shows that that is a distant hope at best.
LEWIS: But even there I think I have to push back, Lareau. I agree that the system is unequal, but there is nothing cultural about a black student being told he doesn’t belong in an advanced placement class. That’s racism, plain and simple. Racism facilitated by class expectations that give whiteness cultural capital, but racism all the same.
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