Person:

Warikoo, Natasha

In this article we argue that social-psychological research on implicit racial associations—relatively unconscious associations based on race—is a fruitful area to explore for a greater understanding of how racial bias affects children in schools. We highlight the key insights of research on implicit racial associations and their implications for education. Further, we identify areas for research on implicit racial associations in education, calling for collaboration between scholars of racial inequality in education and scholars of implicit racial associations. This research is likely to provide a productive new perspective for understanding why and when teachers and other school personnel engage in behaviors that reproduce racial inequality, often in spite of best intentions and commitments to racial equity.

In this article we assess the literature on cultural explanations for ethno-racial differences in K-12 schooling and academic performance. Some cultural arguments problematically define certain ethno-racial identities and cultures as subtractive from the goal of academic mobility, while simultaneously defining the ethnic cultures and identities of others as additive and oriented towards this goal. We review two prevailing schools of thought that compare immigrant and native minority students: cultural ecological theory (CET) and segmented assimilation theory. Second, we examine empirical research that highlights the complexity of culture, focusing on four domains: (1) the school’s cultural ethos; (2) variation in identities and cultural practices within ethnic and racial groups; (3) the multidimensional nature of culture and its variable impact on students; and (4) the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. This literature—when synthesized—suggests that a coherent theory of culture’s impact on ethnic and racial differences in schooling outcomes must unpack the multiple influences of identity and context more deliberately than previous literature has done. Finally, we call for studies that employ comparative research across groups and treat race and ethnicity as dependent rather than independent variables, thereby equipping researchers with the tools to better explain how culture influences schooling and achievement.

In this paper we bring together the literatures on frame analysis, the meaning of race, and campus racial climate to analyze the race frames—lenses through which individuals understand the role of race in society—held by white students attending elite US universities. For most, the elite university experience coincides with a strengthening or emergence of the diversity frame, which emphasizes the positive benefits of cultural diversity. Still, many also hold a colorblind frame, which sees race groups as equivalent and racial identities as insignificant. We highlight the ambivalence these divergent frames create for student perspectives on affirmative action and interracial contact on campus. Our findings demonstrate the mutability of race frames, and we highlight the impact institutions may have on individuals’ race frames. The paper is based on in-depth interviews with 47 US-born white undergraduates attending Brown University and Harvard University.

Given the frequent critiques of elite universities for admitting low numbers of state-school graduates and, more recently, British Afro-Caribbean students, how do students attending those universities make meaning of the admissions process? Through an analysis of 46 one-on-one in-depth interviews with undergraduates attending Oxford University, we show that students believe in the fairness of the admissions process, while lamenting the lack of opportunities for educational advancement faced by some disadvantaged youth in British society. Despite their understanding that many British youth do not have access to educational experiences that make Oxbridge an attainable goal, most students do not support changes to make access more equitable across class or racial/ethnic lines. This perspective, which legitimates the status students gain through matriculation at an elite university, supports the maintenance of unequal access to an Oxford education despite the advantages that education is known to confer to graduates. The findings demonstrate elites acknowledging the disadvantages of particular groups in society without acknowledging their own advantages in the same system. They do so by recognizing two elements of merit: (1) intelligence, which most students assume led to their own admission; and (2) cultivation of that intelligence, which requires elite secondary schools and which most students see as disadvantaging particular groups in society. In the paper we highlight differences in meaning-making between graduates of grammar, comprehensive, and private schools.

In this paper we bring together the burgeoning qualitative literature on the socializing influence of residential colleges; the predominantly survey-based literature on campus racial climate; and the literature on diversity work in organizations, to analyze how two elite universities’ approaches to diversity shape students’ experiences with and feelings about diversity. We employ 77 in-depth interviews with undergraduates at two elite universities, and find that while the universities appear comparable on measures of student demographics and overall diversity infrastructure, they take different approaches. These varying approaches lead to important differences in student perspectives. At the university that takes a power analysis and minority support approach, students who participate in minority-oriented activities develop a critical race theory perspective, while their white and non-participating minority peers frequently feel alienated from that programming. At the university that takes an integration and celebration approach, most students embrace a cosmopolitan perspective, celebrating diversity while paying less attention to power and resource differences between racial groups. The findings suggest that higher education institutions can influence the race frames of students as well as their approaches to multiculturalism, with implications for their views on a variety of important diversity-related issues on campus and beyond.

How do winners of processes of meritocracy make sense of those processes, especially in the face of forceful public critiques of their unequal outcomes? In this paper I analyze the meaning-making with respect to merit in university admissions of White, native-born undergraduates attending elite American and British universities. I find that United States students support the “calibration” of evaluations of merit, and emphasize evaluations of applicants’ contributions to the “collective merit” of their university cohorts. British students espouse a universalist, individualist understanding of merit. While conceptions of merit differed across national contexts, students in both reproduced the notions of merit espoused by their universities. I conclude that in spite of a long history of student protest on college campuses, rather than engagement with symbolic politics on liberal-identified campuses, self-interest in status legitimation dominates student perspectives, ultimately reproducing understandings of merit that will reproduce inequality. The paper draws upon 98 one-on-one in-depth interviews with White, native-born undergraduates attending Harvard University, Brown University, and University of Oxford.

What does it mean to be “American”? Drawing on in-depth interviews with 76 undergraduates attending elite universities and 72 teenaged citizen children of immigrants living in mostly low-income households, we identify understudied economic narratives of Americanness: as future-oriented economic opportunities for elite undergraduates or stratified notions of current economic condition among immigrant-origin teens. We also find, depending on social location, that economic notions of Americanness overlap with other boundaries: whiteness for some immigrant-origin youth, and civic membership for elite undergraduates. Elite students place themselves at the center of Americanness; immigrant-origin youth, even though they are U.S. citizens, sometimes place themselves outside these symbolic boundaries. Still, youth in more disadvantaged social locations sometimes appropriate markers of Americanness in strategies of what we call “defensive inclusion,” employing symbolic boundaries of hard work, multiculturalism and birthplace to contest perceived social boundaries of race and class that might exclude them from the core of “Americanness.” Our findings suggest that researchers should include measures of economic national identity in future survey-based work and examine discursive practices of defensive inclusion in fieldwork

This article shows that an ethnically diverse student population leads to blurred ethnic and racial boundaries. Still, students in New York distinguish themselves much more along ethnic and racial lines than do London students. The evidence presented suggests that in addition to national-level differences, traditional British school structure, which provides continuity of peers through the Form Class as well as time for socializing, leads to less emphasis on ethnic and racial boundaries than in the anomic structure of traditional urban American public high schools. It follows that in order to promote ethnic and racial integration among teens, schools should not only serve integrated student bodies but also should maintain structures that present opportunities for students to bridge racial and ethnic boundaries. The study employs ethnographic data from schools in New York and London and 120 in-depth interviews.

While politicians and scholars have debated the meaning, value, and purposes of multiculturalism for decades, less attention has been paid to the views of a broader group of Britons, despite views on multiculturalism being powerful predictors of, for example, support for Brexit in Britain (Ashcroft, 2016). In this paper I analyze the meaning of multiculturalism for elite university students in Britain. Many British leaders spend their early adulthood in elite universities. Do they hold the same conceptions of multiculturalism that scholars, the media, and politicians espouse? And, do they express strong support for multiculturalism (as they understand it) as discussions about political division in Britain assume? This paper answers these important questions by analyzing 67 in-depth interviews with undergraduates at Oxford University. I find that students define multiculturalism as a diverse array of ethnic groups living in the same society. Most simultaneously report little impact on their lives. Still, a significant minority express concerns about a perceived lack of integration and impingement on traditional British culture. These findings demonstrate precarious support for multiculturalism even among those who express more tolerant, inclusive understandings of British society related to immigration and Brexit in opinion polls.