Education Policy and Social
Differentiation:
The Racial/Ethnic and Gender
Analysis
What would
you tell your
daughter?
2
Let Baby Tells You --Effective
parent-child communication
(Learning the skills)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w93uRX9hc
qM&NR=1
How to behave on a bus?
Working class code:
Mom: "Hold onto the strap when the bus starts."
Child: "Why?"
Mom: "Because I said so!"
Child: "Why?"
Mom: "Sit down and do as you're told."
Middle class code:
Mom: "Hold onto the strap when the bus starts."
Child: "Why?"
Mom: "Because when the bus starts, you might fall down."
Child: "Why?"
Mom: "The bus jerks when it starts, and you might trip."
Child: "Why?"
Mom: "Sit down and do as you're told."
Two Parenting Strategies
1. Concerted cultivation
– Middle-class parents look for opportunities to
develop children’s talents and inclinations
– Organized activities that give children skills –
conversational, leadership, and intellectual
– Encourage children to ask questions and negotiate
– They are more likely to be argumentative,
complain of boredom, demand attention
– As a result, middle-class children gain a sense of
being entitled to have adults’ focus attention
Overemphasis on children’s perceived needs:
“Today, the center of the middle-class home
is the calendar … Month after month,
children are busy participating in sports,
music, scouts, and playgroups. And, before
and after going to work, their parents are
busy getting them to and from these
activities.”
Overemphasis, cont’d
“[f]amily life, …, is frequently frenetic
Parents, especially mothers, must reconcile
conflicting priorities, juggling events whose
deadlines are much tighter than the
deadlines connected to serving meals or
getting children ready for bed … At times,
everyone in the middle-class families seemed
exhausted.”
Two Parenting Strategies, cont’d
2. Accomplishment of natural growth
– Parents do not feel responsible to involve
intensely in children’s lives
– Maintain strict boundaries between the world of
adults and the world of children
– No time or resources to organize activities for
children
– Children learn to entertain themselves, create
games, and are rarely bored or exhausted
– Daily interaction with kins
Working class family:
“Working-class and poor children, despite
tremendous economic strain, often have more
“childlike” lives, with autonomy from adults and
control over their extended leisure time.”
“…family members spent more time together in
shared space … Working-class and poor children
also developed very close ties with their cousins
and other extended family members.”
Home Advantage
• Home-school relationship
• Social class differences in cultural resources:
– Educational competence
– communication skills
– occupational status of parents and teachers
– Dimension of work: interconnections between
work and home
Parent-Teacher communications
“The parent-teacher interactions at Prescott [middle-class
school] were often longer, more causal, and included more
purely social exchanges… At Colton [working-class school]
conversations between parents and teachers were shorter,
more explicitly focused on school matters and more stilted.
Prescott teachers [said]:
[The parents] will be very friendly because they’re people
who … because of their status in the world are used to
making conversation and being polite and being open. All
those sorts of things make them successful people.
Lareau, Home Advantage
Differential Habitus by Race/Ethnicity?
– Definition of habitus: ….
• “The habitus, the durably installed generative principle
of regulated improvisation, produces practices which
tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the
objective conditions to the production of their
generative principle, while adjusting to the demands
inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as
defined by the cognitive and motivating structures
making up the habitus.” (1977, P.78)
• Annette Lareau argues that race is not as
relevant as social class
Differential Habitus by Gender?
• Dumais SA. 2002. Cultural capital, gender,
and school success: the role of habitus.
Sociology of Education 75(1):44–68
Race & Ethnicity – Are they distinct?
Race
Ethnicity
Involuntary; a matter of
external categorization
Based on differences of
phenotype or nature
Rigid; involves superior and
subordinate groups
Arise from processes of
exclusion
Grown out of the European
colonial encounter with the
non-European world
Voluntary; a matter of internal
self-identification
Based on differences of culture
Flexible; involves coordinate
groups
Arise from processes of
inclusion
Grown out of the history of
nation-state formation
Roger Brubaker (2009)
Ethnic Stratification
• Hierarchical ordering of racial/ethnic groups in
society
• It is highly associated with class stratification
but cannot be explained away by social class
backgrounds
The Black-White Gap
• Even when socioeconomic status is statistically
controlled,
– A sizeable black/white gap in cognitive test scores,
grades, college graduation
– Black students do less homework and are rated by
teachers as being less attentive, not working as
hard for good grades, and more disruptive
– B-W gap exists among infants between 9 & 15
months
Downey (2008)
Ethnic Stratification in the labor market
• Neoclassical economic perspective (G. Becker)
– Employers’ taste
• Marxist perspective (M. Reich)
– Blacks are scapegoats for problems of capitalism
– Effect: weakens workers’ bargaining power, and
employers are able to keep wages low
– Racism helps to legitimize inequality, alienation, and
powerlessness. White workers are able participate in
another group’s oppression which compensate for
their misery. This is solace for an unsatisfactory life.
E. Bonacich on Ethnic Stratification
• Split Labor Market
– Price differs for the same kind of work by two
groups of workers, e.g., B & W, men and women
– Ethnic formation by
(a) entry of new nationalities, and
(b) resources have historically been roughly correlated
with color around the world
– Ethnic structure: three classes of people
•Business class / employer
•Higher paid labor
•Cheaper labor
E. Bonacich, cont’d
• Problem with the Marxist view
– assumes that racial/ethnic differences are enough
to prompt racial antagonism and result in price
differential.
• Initial price of labor was determined by
– Resources (economic, information, political)
– Motives (supplement income or improve position
in homeland)
E. Bonacich, cont’d
• Victory of higher paid labor through
– Exclusion
• 1960s, Australian White workers prevented importing labor
from India, China, Japan and the Pacific Islands
• Around 1900, the Gentleman’s Agreement, preventing
further immigration of Japanese Labor into the U.S.
– Caste arrangement
• Cheaper labor cannot be excluded, e.g., indigenous people,
slaves
• Use laws, customs, and beliefs to prevent undercutting
• Example: 1869 Discovery of diamond. White workers came,
followed by capitalists. White workers unionized to ensure
exclusive supremacy in the labor market
• Capitalists supported a liberal ideology of open competition
for ethnic minorities
Historical & Legal Contexts of Ethnic
Inequality in Education in the U.S.
• The Jim Crow laws (1876-1965) mandated racial
segregation in all public facilities, public places
(e.g., restrooms, restaurants and drinking
fountains), and public transportation
• Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson of 1896:
– H. Plessy (7/8 Caucasian and 1/8 African blood) paid
for a 1st class seat on a white coach but was forced to
leave and imprisoned
• The rule “separate but equal” was upheld
• Public schools were racially segregated by law
Historical & Legal Contexts, cont’d
• Supreme Court case Brown v Board of
Education (1954)
– Linder Brown, a third grader, had to walk six
blocks to her school bus stop to ride to her
segregated black school that was one mile away,
while a white school was seven blocks from her
house
– Got help from civil rights organization, NAACP
– Unanimous decision that rejected the previous
ruling of Plessy v Ferguson
Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of
race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible"
factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of
equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...
Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a
detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater
when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the
races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro
group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to
learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a
tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of
negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they
would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system... We
conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of
"separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities
are inherently unequal. …
James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy
(2001)
• The Supreme court’s rule was based on
– violation of fundamental freedom
– effects of schooling
• Desegregation began: Enforcement Decree 1955
required federal district courts to be used to end
segregation of public schools
• Civil Rights Act (1964) passed by Congress to speed
up desegregation
• Title VI: prohibit distribution of federal funds to
schools with racially discriminatory programs
The Coleman Report (1966)
• 1964 Civil Rights Act authorized the
Commissioner of Education to conduct a
survey which would examine "the lack of
availability of equal educational opportunities
for individuals by reason of race, color, religion,
or national origin in public educational
institutions at all levels in the United States."
The Coleman Report, cont’d
• Coleman defined the concept of equality of
educational opportunity in terms of school
effect, i.e., equality of results given the same
individual inputs
– Students of the same background and ability
should have the same educational results
– If not, one needs to trace sources of unequal
inputs, such as per-pupil expenditure, teacher
quality, class size, provision of facilities, etc.
What are the factors that affect students
outcomes?
Inputs
(resources)
School
Outputs
(results)
The Coleman Report, cont’d
• Major findings
– Most students studied in segregated school
– Pronounced regional disparities
– Blacks scored substantially lower than Whites and
the gap widened with grade
– Relative importance of inputs:
• students' socioeconomic background
• teacher quality
• facilities and curriculum
– Minorities who attended White schools had higher
test scores than those who attended all-minority
schools  busing, forced integration
Desegregation in
Little Rock,
Arkansas
John Ogbu’s Explanation of Ethnic
Inequality in Schooling
• Black - White differences cannot be explained by
social class differences
– less class variation within Blacks as a group
– within social class, significant B-W inequality in
performance
• Cultural Ecological Theory:
– “ecology” refers to the setting, environment, or world of
minorities (structural factors)
– “cultural” refers to the way minorities see their world and
behave in it
Ogbu, cont’d
• Two major parts:
– White treatment/ the System
• Instrumental discrimination (employment & wages)
• Relational discrimination (residential segregation)
• Symbolic discrimination (language and culture)
Ogbu (cont’d)
• Two major parts:
– White treatment/ the system
• Instrumental discrimination (employment & wages)
• Relational discrimination (residential segregation)
• Symbolic discrimination (language and culture)
– Black response/ collective solution
• For instrumental discrimination, they develop folk theory
of how they can succeed
• For relational discrimination, they become mistrustful of
Whites and their institutions
• For symbolic discrimination, they may develop an
oppositional cultural and language frame of reference
The Burden of “Acting White”
“School learning is therefore consciously or
unconsciously perceived as a subtractive process: a
minority who learns successfully in school or who
follows the standard practices of the school is
perceived as becoming acculturated into the white
American cultural frame of reference at the expense
of the minorities’ cultural frame of reference and
collective welfare.”
Fordham & Ogbu (1986)
Types of Minorities
• Voluntary / Immigrant minorities
– Chinese, Cubans, Japanese, Koreans,
Filipinos, West Indies
• Involuntary / Caste-like minorities
– Black Americans, Native Hawaiians,
American Indians, Mexican Americans
Types of Minorities (cont’d)
• Voluntary / Immigrant minorities
– chose to move to the U.S.
– positive dual framework of reference
– accommodation without assimilation
– Pro-school attitudes & behaviors
• Involuntary / Castelike minorities
– through slavery, conquest, colonization
– dual status-mobility frame of reference
– oppositional cultural framework of reference
– Anti-school attitudes & behaviors
Jeremiah Wright - Hate speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd
JB-qkfUHc&feature=related
Features of Ogbu’s Classification
• The classification is not determined by race
– Koreans in the U.S. and in Japan
– Maya Indians in the U.S. and Mexico
– Black Americans in Ghana and the U.S.
• Voluntary and involuntary minorities are ideal
types and represent two ends of a continuum
– Refugees, migrant/guest workers, undocumented
workers are closer to involuntary minorities
– Descendants or later generations are closer to
voluntary minorities
Testing the Oppositional Culture
Hypothesis
• Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey (1998)
• Farkas, Lleras & Maczuga (2002) found oppositional
culture (“my friends make fun of people who do
well”) in high poverty schools.
• Tyson (2003) found that “acting white” taunts have
more to do with speech, dress, and style than
academic effort
• Horvat & Lewis (2003) found that the burden of
“acting white” did not appear to be important in
peer relationships
Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey (1998)
• Perception of the “system”: Black students are
significantly more likely than white students to
report that education is important to getting a job
later on and to have higher occupational
expectations than white students.
• Perception of the “system”: Black students are
significantly more likely than their white
counterparts to report good treatment by teachers,
less likely to agree that it is OK to break rules, and
more likely to report a feeling of satisfaction from
doing what they are supposed to do in class
Ainsworth-Darnell (cont’d)
• “Community forces”: relative to white students,
African American students are especially popular
when they are also seen as very good students
• However, Black students‘ cultural skills (homework,
effort, disruption, in trouble) are consistent with the
oppositional culture model
• These cultural skills, not attitudes, explain the B-W
achievement gap, after SES is controlled
Testing the Oppositional Culture
Hypothesis
• Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey (1998)
• Farkas, Lleras & Maczuga (2002) found oppositional
culture (“my friends make fun of people who do
well”) in high poverty schools.
• Tyson (2003) found that “acting white” taunts have
more to do with speech, dress, and style than
academic effort
• Horvat & Lewis (2003) found that the burden of
“acting white” did not appear to be important in
peer relationships
Lingering Questions
• What else explains the low performance of
Black students when SES is statistically
controlled?
• Is the residual unmeasured SES, or
unmeasured environmental differences?
• What is the role of the school?
Condron (2009)
Determinants of Racial Disparities in
Cognitive Skills (Farkas 2003)
• Prior skills and experiences
– 2/3 to ¾ of the B-W cognitive gap at kindergarten entry is due to
SES differences
– Very large difference in the number of words spoken and the
extensiveness of the vocabulary used (Hart & Risley 1995)
• Opportunity to learn / school factors
–
–
–
–
–
Minority students are placed in lower ability groups, lower tracks
attend racially segregated schools that are low-performing
Have lower teacher skills, teacher expectations, teacher turnover
Special education, grade retention, and summer fallback
Disadvantaged neighborhood surrounding school
• Student efforts
– Blacks and Hispanics put in less efforts
Differentiation Among Immigrant
Minority Groups
• The Segmented Assimilation Theory (A. Portes,
R. Rumbaut, M. Zhou)
• paths to assimilation/modes of incorporation
– growing acculturation and parallel integration into
white middle-class
– Rapid economic advancement with deliberate
preservation of the immigrant community’s values
and tight solidarity
– Opposite direction to permanent poverty and
assimilation into underclass
Segmented Assimilation
Modes of Incorporation:
3 receiving factors influencing immigrant success
in host country
Societal
Response
Government
Policy
Co-ethnic
Community
Affirmative Action Policies
• Government policies that give preference to
some social groups in order to redress past
grievances
• Examples
– U.S. case
– Malaysian case
Affirmative Action in the U.S.
• Affirmative action was first signed by President John
Kennedy in 1961
• It required government contractors to "not
discriminate against any employee or applicant for
employment because of race, creed, color, or national
origin" as well as to "take affirmative action to ensure
that applicants are employed, and that employees are
treated during employment, without regard to their
race, creed, color, or national origin“
• Affirmative action was extended to women in 1967
• It has been contested on constitutional grounds
Bakke v. University of California
• Allan Bakke, a 35-year-old white man, had failed twice
to gain admission to the University of California
Medical School at Davis.
• The school reserved 16 places in each entering class of
100 for "qualified" minorities, as part of the
university's affirmative action program
• Bakke's qualifications (college GPA and test scores)
exceeded those of any of the minority students
admitted
• Bakke contended that he was excluded from admission
solely on the basis of race
• What did the supreme court rule?
Bakke (cont’d)
• Four of 9 justices contended that any racial quota
system violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• The other 4 justices held that the use of race as a
criterion in admissions decisions in higher education
was constitutionally permissible
• Justice Powell, Jr., casting the deciding vote, argued that
the rigid use of racial quotas violated the Fourteenth
Amendment.
• But Powell also contended that the use of race was
permissible as one of several admission criteria.
• So, the Court managed to minimize white opposition to
the goal of equality while extending gains for racial
minorities through affirmative action.
Gratz v. Bollinger and
Grutter v. Bollinger
• In 1997, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, two
white applicants who were denied admission to
the University of Michigan, filed a lawsuit against
the University on the grounds that its
undergraduate admissions policies discriminated
against white applicants.
• In the same year, Barbara Grutter filed a similar
lawsuit against the University's Law School after
being denied admission to the Law School.
• In 2003, these two lawsuits reached the U.S. Supreme
Court. President George W. Bush took the unusual step
of publicly opposing the policy before the court issued
a ruling. The court found that race may be considered
as a factor in university admissions in all public
universities and private universities that accept federal
funding. But, it ruled that a point system was
unconstitutional. In the first case, the court upheld the
Law School admissions policy, while in the second it
ruled against the university's undergraduate
admissions policy.
• In November 2006, Michigan voters passed Proposal 2,
banning most affirmative action in university
admissions. Under that law race, gender, and national
origin can no longer be considered in admissions.
Is Affirmative Action a lost cause?
• Race-sensitive
admissions increase the
likelihood that blacks
will be admitted to
selective universities
• Black students are
successful in their
subsequent careers,
and they have actively
participated in civic and
community affairs
Gratz v. Bollinger &
Grutter v. Bollinger
• In October 1997, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick
Hamacher, two white applicants who were
denied admission to the University of Michigan,
filed a lawsuit against the University on the
grounds that its undergraduate admissions
policies discriminated against white applicants.
• Barbara Grutter filed a similar lawsuit against the
University's Law School in December 1997 after
being denied admission to the Law School.
• In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court found that race
may be considered as a factor in university
admissions in all public universities and private
universities that accept federal funding. But, it
ruled that a point system was unconstitutional.
The court upheld the Law School admissions
policy, while it ruled against the university's
undergraduate admissions policy.
• In November 2006, Michigan voters passed
Proposal 2, banning most affirmative action in
university admissions. Under that law race,
gender, and national origin can no longer be
considered in admissions.
Is affirmative action a lost cause?
Affirmative Action in Malaysia
• Malay - 60%, politically dominant
• Chinese - 30%, was economically dominant
• Indian - 10%
Mahathir bin Mohamad
(Prime Minister of Malaysia, 1981-2003)
Mahathir (1970), The Malay dilemma
"Rice cultivation, in which the majority of the
Malays were occupied, is a seasonal occupation.
Actual work takes up only two months, but the yield
is sufficient for the whole year. This was especially
so in the days when the population was small and
land was plentiful. There was a lot of free time...
The hot, humid climate of the land was not
conducive to either vigorous work or even to
mental activity. Thus, except for a few, people were
content to spend their unlimited leisure in merely
resting or in extensive conversation with
neighbours and friends."
"The history of China is littered with disasters, both
natural and man-made. … flood… famine … waves
of invaders, predatory emperors and warlords
ravaged the country. For the Chinese people life
was one continuous struggle for survival. In the
process the weak in mind and body lost out to the
strong and the resourceful... Like emigrants
everywhere they were … moved by a desire for a
better life, and obviously by the determination to
work for this... The Malays whose own hereditary
and environmental influence had been so
debilitating, could do nothing but retreat before the
onslaught of the Chinese immigrants."
New Economic Policy, 1971-1990
Policy Objectives
• Eradication of poverty irrespective of race
• Elimination of the identification of race with
economy
Bumiputera ethnicity
• Malays in the Peninsular
• indigenous people in East Malaysia
• “son of the soil”
Favorable treatments to Bumiputera
• opportunity to government contracts and
licenses
• Change medium of instruction in secondary
schools
• quotas in university admission
• scholarships
• establish new higher education institutions
exclusively for bumiputeras
Secondary Education Attainment
by Ethnicity & Cohort
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Malay
Chinese
Indian
0
1940-44 1945-49 1950-54 1955-59 1960-64 1965-69
Why do affirmative action
policies work in Malaysia but
not in the United States?
End