The "Achievement Gap"

For today's reading on the achievement gap and education debt, we will discuss the video below, as well as an article from the Everyday Feminism blog. The reading addresses that white women have benefited the most from affirmative action. Research confirms the argument that gender was a "blindspot" in the original design of affirmative action policies.

Ch. 33, “From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools,” Gloria Ladson-Billings
Ladson-Billings addresses the “achievement gap,” a catchphrase to describe the difference in academic performance between White, minority, and lower socio-economic status students. This gap has been found to be most significantly affected by race and ethnicity, with a brief review of some of the potential causes. Ladson-Billings suggests avoiding too much focus on the gap, because most of the solutions are short-term in nature, and instead to look at the longer standing “educational debt” akin to the financial national debt. This debt is seen as the underlying cause of much of our national problems with regard to achievement, and that addressing it is necessary to truly have desegregated schools, as well as to come closer to fully realizing equality in the United States.

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Black Feminism and Hashtag Activism

53. “(Re)Imagining Intersectional Democracy from Black Feminism to Hashtag Activism,” Sarah J. Jackson Sarah J. Jackson - #Hashtag Activism: The Rise and Influence of Networked Counterpublics from Engagement Lab on Vimeo . Jackson writes about the intersectional lessons of the Black Lives Matter movement, which can be traced to the legacy of the larger Black freedom movement and also to the more recent work of millennial Black activist organizations like the Dream Defenders and the Black Youth Project 100. These recent movements have been created or heavily influenced by Black feminist principles. Millennial movements have eschewed the respectability politics that guided the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and have worked instead to center the voices, experiences, and knowledge of those most often at the margins. Black Lives Matter, founded by Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, has insisted on radical intersectionality: Garza writes that the org...

Controlling Images of Latinos and Native Americans

The two readings assigned for Wednesday's discussion extended earlier conversations about controlling images and media representations. Read the summaries and click on the links to read/skim and/or view the supplemental materials for your comments. Please note, this is not optional. All students are required to post a comment or a question for each post. From Ch. 46: In life history interviews with Latino men, Vasquez-Tokos and Norton-Smith found two recurrent themes: gangs and sports. Most respondents had not been involved in either gangs or sports, but they felt forcibly constrained by these controlling images , which had limited their educational opportunities, access to jobs, and sense of self-expression. Whereas prejudice involves negative emotions and stereotypes, controlling images are systemic and cultural instruments of power. They are not individual ideas, but rather ideological collective representations that offer “strategies of action” that bri...

Contemporary Families Part Two

32. “Loving Across Racial Divides,” Amy Steinbugler In spite of dramatic positive shifts in public attitudes toward racial intermarriage, only a small percentage of people in the United States date and marry across racial lines. Steinbugler’s research explores the ways that race impacts daily life for interracial couples, finding that racism continues to shape everyday life in three primary ways. First, because of racial neighborhood segregation, many interracial couples face challenges of belonging and ease in residential spaces. Second, in spite of intimate relationships, interracial couples may not share the same perspectives on race and racism: White partners in interracial relationships can reflect the attitudes of many White Americans who question the scope and severity of contemporary racism. Finally, interracial couples sometimes reflect the power of racial-gender stereotypes within their relationships. Some highlights: Current public attitudes toward racial ...

Communicating Gender, Race, and Class: 2020

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