Race and Schooling: Theories and Ethnographies

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina made clear, among other things, the continuing significance of race in the United States. As we write, efforts to rebuild the controversial New Orleans school system, which some have argued was among the worst systems in the nation before the storm, is wracked by racial politics. Meanwhile, efforts to secure permanent school placements for poor black storm refugees are facing opposition from some local school boards who not only do not wish to shoulder the inevitable costs of a larger student population but also worry about the impact of such integration on standardized test scores-that anomalous measure that would purportedly contribute to greater equity and instead has come to take on a life of its own, justifying all sorts of racially and economically exclusionary tactics. At the same time, the influence of Katrina on the lives of Indigenous communities in Louisiana and Mississippi has largely been ignored. While scholars continually remind of us of the myopia of the black-white paradigm (Brayboy, this issue; Castagno, this issue;Delgado Bernal, 2002;Lee, 2005), public discussions such as those generated and sustained by media coverage of natural disasters harp on the differential capacities of African Americans and Whites to secure safe haven from the storm, writing other populations out of the national experience.

The historical context of science and education at the American Museum of Natural History

“…History can lend itself to learned hopelessness. This can happen if one does not effectively attend to the racial experiences and the critical interaction between historical contingencies, culturally defined experiences and political relationships (Bartlett & Brayboy, 2006). My upbringing in the Caribbean has therefore allowed me a certain sense of openness about historical occurrences.…”

Acting White: A Critical Review

“…Bartlett and Brayboy (2005) briefly review a new stream of research in this direction including cultural ecological theory, racial formation theory, practice theory cum cultural production theory, critical race theory, and theoretical work on race talk and silence. However, this proliferation of new research needs to be integrated at some point, and parsimony should guide theories lest it would be difficult to conceive practical policies for narrowing the BlackWhite test score gap.…”

The Rhetoric of Care: Preservice Teacher Discourses that Depoliticize, Deflect, and Deceive

“…Since caring is largely understood by scholars to be grounded in teacher-student relationships (Chaskin and Rauner 1995), many recognize the need to disturb monolithic constructions of ''care'' to open the possibility that multiple definitions may emerge and coexist, depending on the social locations and contexts of the teacher and student (see, for example: Antrop-González and De Jesus 2006;Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2002;Bosworth 1995;McKamey 2002). Revealing the dangers of failing to scrutinize taken-for-granted constructions of ''care,'' scholars have also demonstrated how teacher discourses sometimes function as instruments of social reproduction, effectively duplicating inequality through the enactment of dominant tropes and stereotypes that can be re-inscribed even in ostensibly ''caring'' relationships (for examples of such theoretical or empirical work, see: Bartlett and Brayboy 2005;Bourdieu and Passeron 1990;Bowles and Gintis 1976;Tyson 2003;Willis 1977).…”