ERIC Number: EJ1169656
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Feb
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1947-5578
EISSN: N/A
Race, Class, and Whiteness in Gifted and Talented Identification: A Case Study
Barlow, Kathleen; Dunbar, C. Elaine
Berkeley Review of Education, v1 n1 p63-85 Feb 2010
What began fifteen years ago as a volunteer effort to promote desegregation via a gifted and talented magnet school has become a case study analyzing inequalities in the identification of young children for gifted and talented services. We use Cheryl Harris' (1993) argument that "whiteness" is a form of property that creates and maintains inequalities through the conjoining of race and class. We show how gifted and talented status meets the criteria of white property interests and is defended by recourse to law and policy. Efforts to improve identification of students for gifted services reveal that the implicit operation of these interests is an important reason why identification practices favoring white and middle-class children have been resistant to change. Dismantling underlying white property interests in gifted and talented identification is a necessary, though not sufficient step, toward a more just educational system.
Descriptors: Case Studies, Talent Identification, Gifted, Equal Education, Special Education, Whites, Civil Rights, Magnet Schools, School Desegregation, School Resegregation, Race, Social Class
Berkeley Graduate School of Education, University of California, 5648 Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA 94702. Tel: 510-328-3701; e-mail: bre_editor@berkeley.edu; Web site: http://www.berkeleyreviewofeducation.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A