22c0 Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » African American

African American

September 2, 2005

Anyon, Jean. “Race, Social Class, and Educational Reform in an Inner-City School.” Teachers College Record 97.1 (1995) 69-95.

September 02nd 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, African American, Public School Initiatives

In this article Anyon explores the ways that school reform can fail by observing a reform implemented in a predominately black and Latino grade school in Newark, New Jersey. Anyon argues that “three factors—sociocultural differences among participants in reform, an abusive school environment, and educator expectations of failed reform—occurring in a minority ghetto where the school population is racially and economically isolated constitute some of the powerful and devastating ways that concomitants of race and social class can intervene to determine what happens in inner-city schools, and in attempts to improve them” (70). (Read the article)

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August 23, 2005

Kolko, Beth E., Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman, eds. Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, 2000.

August 23rd 2005 Posted to Race and the Internet, African American, Asian American

Widely acknowledged as a vanguard text on cyberspace race studies, Race in Cyberspace, in collection of twelve essays, directly challenges Internet utopists’ proclamations of an online racial paradise.

The editors begin with an anecdote illustrating how poorly online discourse on race is received, even in critical and mature academic circles. A post on a listserv about a theory positing race as a social, not biological, construct initiated a “flame war,” as the original poster was attacked and labeled a troublemaker for having the audacity to even mention race. The editors were troubled by the fact that the original poster was not attacked for any perceived theoretical flaws, but simply for the act of introducing racial discourse. Online, there seems to be a culture of ignoring race matters. (Read the article)

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August 15, 2005

Kao, Grace and Marta Tienda, “Educational Aspirations of Minority Youth,” American Journal of Education, 106.3 (1998): 349-384.

August 15th 2005 Posted to Race, Gender and Sexuality, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, African American

Kao and Tienda use the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1998 (NELS:88) to analyze how educational aspirations are formed and maintained from eighth to twelfth grades. They find that family socioeconomic status (SES) is the single most important factor, not only in establishing high aspirations in the eighth grade but also in maintaining these aspirations throughout high school. Kao and Tienda conclude that “because black and Hispanic students are less likely to maintain their high aspirations throughout high school, owing to their lower family SES background…their early aspirations are less concrete than those of white and especially of Asian students” (349). Kao and Tienda supplement their quantitative analysis with focus-group discussions with students. In these discussions Kao and Tienda discover that Hispanic and black students tend to be less informed about funding options for college and have less concrete occupational goals than their Asian and white counterparts. (Read the article)

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August 3, 2005

Ogbu, John U. “Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning,” Educational Researcher, 21.8 (1992): 5-14.

August 03rd 2005 Posted to Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, African American

In this article Ogbu argues that two major approaches in the current school reform movement, core curriculum and multicultural education, are inadequate methods of dealing with the struggles faced by minority students in public schools. He suggests that the main reason these methods have failed is that they ignore the often oppositional nature of minority cultures to American mainstream culture. As Ogbu writes, “the crucial issue in cultural diversity and learning is the relationship between the minority cultures and the American mainstream culture. Minorities whose cultural frames of reference are oppositional to the cultural frame of reference of American mainstream culture have greater difficulty crossing cultural boundaries at school to learn” (5). (Read the article)

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July 24, 2005

Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Foreward: Toward A Race-Conscious Pedagogy in Legal Education.” National Black Law Journal v11 (1): 1-14.

July 24th 2005 Posted to Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, African American, The Academy, Court & Policy Issues

Focusing on “the substantive dynamics of the law school classroom and their particular impact on minority students,” Crenshaw argues that “dominant beliefs in the objectivity of legal discourse serve to suppress conflict by discounting the relevance of any particular perspective in legal analysis and by positing an analytical stance that has no specific cultural, political, or class characteristics.” Crenshaw calls this primary mode “perspectivelessness.” Noting that this mode is problematic for many reasons, Crenshaw focuses on the particular burden it places on minority students as they are expected to adopt a worldview that in fact fosters white middle-class values while claiming to carry no perspective. (Read the article)

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July 19, 2005

Nakamura, Lisa. “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.” Reading Digital Cultures. Ed. David Trend. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. 226-235

July 19th 2005 Posted to Race and the Internet, African American, Asian American

“Despite claims by digital uptopians,” contends Nakamura, “identity positions are still very much in evidence” (226). The Internet, she claims, does not realize any racial democracies nor does it create an egalitarian space for its users. Drawing upon her own forays into MUDs (Multi-user Dungeons) or MOOs (MUD, Object-Oriented), which are online, text-driven environments, Nakamura critically reads how users address or attempt to ignore issues of race. Her central thesis argues that the Internet allows for a new kind of racial “passing,” in which members of a minority can assume a “default white” status by simply keeping quiet, and whites can reinforce stereotypes by engaging in “identity tourism.” She calls for the Internet to be a place for thoughtful discourse instead of perpetuating old hierarchies.

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