Tracking and Racialization in Schools

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bedelia Nicola Richards

The tracking literature examines how academic hierarchies contribute to race and class differences in academic achievement, but it pays scant attention to how school structures also influence students’ racial and ethnic identities. Relatedly, race/ethnicity and immigration scholars focus on how schools serve as sites for observing the social construction of racial and ethnic identities but do not account for how school structures actively shape these identity outcomes. This study makes a contribution to the immigration, race/ethnicity, and education literatures by examining how academic tracking influences the racial and ethnic identities of second-generation West Indian students. Consistent with the tracking literature, the author finds that Mayfield High School’s academic hierarchy contributes to the racialization of West Indian students and, in doing so, intensifies their racial group consciousness. It also shows how academic tracking simultaneously increases the salience of ethnic identity among Afro-Caribbean students. These findings point to the significance of educational institutions in shaping racialization processes in schools and contribute to broader conversations regarding the evolution of the color line in American society.

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Selka

This article provides an overview of the Brazilian religious landscape and an introduction to this special issue on new religious movements in Brazil. I stress how the Brazilian religious landscape, although often imagined as a place of religious syncretism and cultural mixture, is crosscut by an array of boundaries, tensions and antagonisms, including ones grounded in race and class. The article outlines the major topics and problems taken up by the contributors to this issue, including appropriation across lines of race, ethnicity and class; the growing influence of evangelical Christianity in Latin America and beyond; esoteric religious practice in the late modern era; and questions of purity and authenticity, syncretism and anti-syncretism. Through their engagement with these themes, the articles in this issue contribute to a number of important discussions that relate not only to the study of religion in Brazil but to the study of new religious movements in general.


2022 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna K. Ginther

It has been a decade since “Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards” was published. Receiving the American Society for Cell Biology Public Service Award allows me to reflect on this research and its impact. In this essay, I share the story of how my research interests and professional networks provided the opportunity to do this important work. I also make the case for improved data and mentoring to address race and ethnic disparities in NIH funding.


1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Waters

This article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. Three types of identities are evident among the second generation – a black American identity, an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity, and an immigrant identity. These different identities are related to different perceptions and understandings of race relations and of opportunities in the United States. Those youngsters who identify as black Americans tend to see more racial discrimination and limits to opportunities for blacks in the United States. Those who identify as ethnic West Indians tend to see more opportunities and rewards for individual effort and initiative. I suggest that assimilation to America for the second-generation black immigrant is complicated by race and class and their interaction, with upwardly mobile second-generation youngsters maintaining ethnic ties to their parents’ national origins and with poor inner city youngsters assimilating to the black American peer culture that surrounds them.


2009 ◽  
pp. 95-101
Author(s):  
Yu-Wei Lin

As some scholars claim, the digital divide, referring to the perceived gap between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not, entails that not having access to this information is an economic and social handicap (Compaine, 2001). In software design, structured inequalities operate along the main axes of gender, race/ethnicity and class. Each of these in turn generates its own structure of unequal practices giving rise to institutionalised sexism, racism or class divisions/conflict. “Gender, race and class also crosscut each other in various complex ways, sometimes reinforcing and at other times weakening the impact of existing inequalities” (Cohen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 100). For instance, Webster’s research (1996) employing feminist approaches to study computer system designs addresses the issue of a male-dominated system design field, which continuously excludes female users’ needs, requirements, interests and values in the innovation process. She criticises that, “Human factors may be bolted onto existing methods of systems design, local and contingent knowledge of work and information handling processes held by users in an amorphous sense may now even be incorporated into the systems design process, but this does not create an awareness of the way in which skills and knowledge are defined in gender-divided terms” (p. 150).


1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Krieger ◽  
Elizabeth Fee

National vital statistics in the United States present data in terms of race, sex, and age, treated as biological variables. Some races are clearly of more interest than others: data are usually available for whites and blacks, and increasingly for Hispanics, but seldom for Native Americans or Asians and Pacific Islanders. These data indicate that white men and women generally have the best health and that men and women, within each racial/ethnic group, have different patterns of disease. Obviously, the health status of men and women differs for conditions related to reproduction, but it differs for many nonreproductive conditions as well. In national health data, patterns of disease by race and sex are emphasized while social class differences are ignored. This article discusses how race and sex became such all-important, self-evident categories in 19th and 20th century biomedical thought and practice. It examines the consequences of these categories for knowledge about health and for the provision of health care. It then presents alternative approaches to understanding the relationship between race/ethnicity, gender, and health, with reference to the neglected category of social class.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward C. Polson ◽  
Kevin D. Dougherty

Religious participation has reinforced the color line in American society for generations. Despite rising racial and ethnic diversity across U.S. communities, most Americans continue to belong to congregations composed primarily of others from their own racial/ethnic groups. Yet recent scholarship suggests that the presence of multiple racial or ethnic groups in the same congregation is increasing. The authors examine how the racial/ethnic composition of U.S. congregations is related to white attenders’ friendship networks and comfort with other racial/ethnic groups (i.e., blacks, Hispanics, and Asians). Using national survey data, the authors find that whites in multiracial congregations report more diverse friendship networks and higher levels of comfort with nonwhites than do whites in nonmultiracial congregations. However, the influence of worshipping with another race/ethnicity seems to be most pronounced for whites in congregations with Hispanics. Moreover, neighbors and friends of other races have more impact on whites’ friendship networks and attitudes than do congregations. The authors discuss implications of these findings for understanding U.S. intergroup relations and the potential of congregations to address the color line.


2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-460
Author(s):  
Miroslava Chávez-García

The television sitcom The Brady Bunch (1969–1974) and its subsequent reruns presented upper-middle-class whiteness and a version of idealized family life as normative. Its underrepresentation of racial, ethnic, and class differences did more than serve as a form of escapism for young Latina/o television watchers—it impacted their sense of identity and self-esteem, their attitudes toward their own parents, and their own later modes of parenting, as the author’s personal experience illustrates. At the same time, the series’ few episodes that did depict minority characters encouraged stereotyping that influenced the larger population. A content and visual analysis of episodes of The Brady Bunch confirms the sitcom’s repeated themes of gender and sexuality and its near absence of focus on differences of race, ethnicity, and class.


Author(s):  
Abu Saleh Mohammad Sowad

This article argues that having representatives from all parts of the society in politics will help the policies to be more people-centric. Including more and more women in the political field will not diminish the significance of representing any minority group in legislative issues, rather it will focus on proliferating the dynamic interest of those underestimated people who are incessantly being doubly enslaved, not just for their socio/religious/class/ethnic identities, but additionally for their gender identities. This argument is based on the claim that women's increased participation in the political field is required not only on the grounds that there are some particular women's issues that could be more effectively taken care of by women. Additionally, no sort of development in society can be accomplished by keeping women in a marginalized position. Hence, this article suggests that we can begin with by having gender as the most important axis in politics and ultimately reach to a fairer and libertarian culture by progressively comprising other axes.


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