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ERIC Number: EJ1048949
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jan
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0038-0407
EISSN: N/A
"Once You Go to a White School, You Kind of Adapt": Black Adolescents and the Racial Classification of Schools
Ispa-Landa, Simone; Conwell, Jordan
Sociology of Education, v88 n1 p1-19 Jan 2015
Studies of when youth classify academic achievement in racial terms have focused on the racial classification of behaviors and individuals. However, institutions--including schools--may also be racially classified. Drawing on a comparative interview study, we examine the school contexts that prompt urban black students to classify schools in racial terms. Through Diversify, a busing program, one group of black students attended affluent suburban schools with white-dominated achievement hierarchies (n = 38). Diversify students assigned schools to categories of whiteness or blackness that equated whiteness with achievement and blackness with academic deficiency. Students waitlisted for Diversify (n = 16) attended urban schools without white-dominated achievement hierarchies. These students did not classify schools as white or black, based on academic quality. We assert that scholars may productively conceive of schools, not just individual students, as sites of potential racial classification. Furthermore, the racial classification of schools reinforces antagonism between black students attending ''white'' and ''black'' schools and perpetuates harmful racial stereotypes.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Grade 8; Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Elementary Education; Secondary Education; Grade 9; High Schools; Grade 10
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 0824564