Research Notes - Spring 2010

Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a conceptual framework, Shaun Harper and colleagues have developed a comprehensive examination of the policies created to ensure racial equity for African Americans in higher education and the development of those policies over time.

That history can be characterized as an “‘up-and-down’ struggle.” The authors provide an account of that struggle — from the establishment of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for the education of freed slaves in the 19th century, to the desegregation initiatives sparked by the Civil Rights movement and the Brown v. Board decision, to the subsequent backlash and attempts to dismantle affirmative action. Gains notwithstanding, the authors conclude that “to characterize the current status of African Americans as inequitable would be a gross understatement.”

From an abundance of issues that have contributed to the demise of progressive policies, they home in on two: the pressures imposed on HBCUs and the policy conflicts confronting Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). HBCUs, on the one hand, face declining enrollments as more of their traditional student base elects to attend PWIs; on the other, funding inequities have made it harder for HBCUs to compete for students, even as a series of court rulings has placed pressure on them to recruit more non-African Americans. Meanwhile, efforts to dismantle affirmative action at postsecondary institutions continue, with the most recent examples being two cases at the University of Michigan — Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger.

Understanding race as a social construct, CRT challenges the ways in which racial ideologies and various manifestations of white supremacy shape American life. Seen through its lens, the shifting landscape of policies regarding African Americans and higher education reveals the historical centrality of race to the present situation and promises a more nuanced understanding of current dilemmas.

Taking CRT’s “racial realism” approach, the authors argue that, by accepting that racism is endemic to the culture, African Americans can refocus their energies from unattainable goals to realistic strategies for addressing racial inequities on campus.

They also outline the way in which interest-convergence — another of CRT’s central tenets — resonates through the history of African Americans in higher education. In their analysis of four areas — white missionaries and the founding of HBCUs; legislation like Brown v. Board and Title VI, state support of HBCUs, and affirmative action and college admissions — they ask, in effect, what motivated white support of these various initiatives.

If the racial justice promised in early policies is to be realized, policymakers and their institutional counterparts must understand the structural barriers that produce the current disparities in access and attainment. “While an elite group of African Americans have realized the promises of Brown v. Board,” the authors write, “the kinds of gains — social, political, and economic — that this group has made need to become more widely achievable to ensure access and equity. Much remains to be done.”

“Access and Equity for African American Students in Higher Education: A Critical Race Historical Analysis of Policy Efforts,” by Shaun Harper, Lori Patton, and Ontario Wooden, appears in The Journal of Higher Education, 80(4).

Also from Shaun Harper

Again drawing on one of the central tenets of Critical Race Theory — interest convergence — Shaun Harper considers how community colleges (and their athletic departments) would benefit from increasing the transfer rate of black male students to four-year institutions. “Race, Interest Convergence, and Transfer Outcomes for Black Male Student Athletes” appears in New Directions for Community Colleges, 147.

Data collected from face-to-face interviews with 143 black male undergraduates at 30 PWIs provide a counter-narrative to the dominant view of this population. Harper’s findings demonstrate that there is a significant overlooked population of highachieving black male students on these campuses; that their simultaneous experiences of racism and success require them to adopt multifaceted coping strategies; and that to resist what Harper describes as “niggering,” they employ positive self-representation and immediate confrontation of racist stereotyping.

“Niggers No More: A Critical Race Counternarrative on Black Male Student Achievement at Predominantly White Colleges and Universities” appears in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(6).

Racial minority students are less likely to engage in the high-impact educational experiences that are known to enhance student learning and improve degree attainment rates. In proposing the adoption of race-conscious engagement practices, Harper argues that institutions must actively set out to engage racial minority students and do so in ways that address their particular context and needs. “Race-Conscious Student Engagement Practices and the Equitable Distribution of Enriching Educational Experiences” appears in Liberal Education, Fall 2009

The No Child Left Behind legislation gaurantees parents the legal right to move their child from a “failing” school. Why then, asks Sigal Ben-Porath, do so few exercise that right?

In the debate over school choice, libertarians aim to bring the benefits of the marketplace into the educational system, while egalitarians hope for social justice. Whatever their end goal, both agree on the primacy of individual choice over regulation and intervention.

In Ben-Porath’s view, both ideas suffer a fatal flaw: the assumption of a rational actor. Drawing on insights from behavioral economics and ethnographic network studies, she sees choice as a far more complicated matter than simply weighing options and selecting the one that most closely aligns with one’s goals. Rather, she concurs with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman: “‘rational models are psychologically unrealistic.’”

Empirical research on choice points to an array of influences that go largely ignored in the current debate, she continues. Notable among them are the way choices are presented, individual attitudes about risk and gain, and marginal channel factors that nonetheless can exert a strong influence on decision-making.

Consider the parents of the child whose school hasn’t made Annual Yearly Progress. Lacking adequate information about their options—and not being able to afford the cost of acquiring it—they will most likely make an intuitive decision based on immediate judgments (“My child feels fine there”).

But even those who do choose another school don’t base their decision on a classic cost-benefit analysis. Rather, parents rely on social networks, searching out anecdotal information from friends and relatives.

For policymakers, Ben-Porath’s analysis points to two areas of concern: the flow of information about available choices and the design of the choice set itself.

While Ben-Porath observes that the former is the “most amenable to policymaking intervention,” she adds that “it is not sufficient to educate individuals to choose wisely and inform them of their options. Society should be required to develop an equitable choice set.” To that end, she argues that choice policies need to take into account the family preferences as well as the societal aims.

“Choice policies need to avoid defaults,” she concludes, which effectively consign the children most in need to the weakest schools. Instead, policymakers should “develop a choice structure by which all must choose a school, and are properly supported in the process.”

“School Choice as a Bounded Ideal” appears in The Journal of the Philosophy of Education, 43(4).

The past 15 years have seen an increased rate of Mexican immigration into the United States, much of it to communities with few Latino residents. In an ongoing, four-year ethnographic study of one of these towns, Stanton Wortham and Penn GSE colleagues focused on residents’ and immigrants’ perceptions of this New Latino Diaspora.

The study site, a suburb of 30,000 in the Northeastern U.S. called Marshall, has seen its Mexican population grow from about 100 in 1990 to at least 6,000 in 2008. Twenty percent of the students in its school system are now Mexican.

In Marshall, as in other New Latino Diaspora towns, “more positive models of immigrant identity often have space to take hold,” the authors write. Thus, these new immigrants to Marshall do not necessarily experience the negative stereotyping typical of areas with a long-standing Latino presence.

Rather, Marshall residents tend to draw on models associated with earlier immigrant groups and describe Mexicans as hardworking and uncomplaining — a positive civic influence. Like the Italian and Asian immigrants before them — and in contrast to the local African-American population — these new immigrants are defined as “model” minorities.

This characterization does not hold, however, when the topic turns to education. Overall, Marshall’s educators had fairly low expectations for their Mexican students, particularly in comparison to Asian Americans, who were described as being “big on education.”

“Educators in New Latino Diaspora towns face a challenge,” the authors write. Often under-resourced, schools in New Latino Diaspora towns struggle to serve a population of students with which they have limited experience; most likely, they do so in a context where those students are not expected to excel academically.

Those struggles notwithstanding, the authors conclude by posing the real challenge to educators: “Given the flexibility of social identification in the New Latino Diaspora, might educators have opportunities to identify Mexican students not only as hardworking but also as academically promising?”

“Mexicans as Model Minorities in the New Latino Diaspora,” by Stanton Wortham, Katherine Mortimer, and Elaine Allard, appears in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 40(4).

In the years after Brown v. Board, when many believed that historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were on the road to oblivion, one consultancy — the Oram Group — was working on major fundraising campaigns for these institutions.

Although virtually unexamined in the literature, the Oram Group can serve “as a lens through which we can view the development of modern day fundraising at black colleges,” observe Marybeth Gasman and Noah Drezner.

A for-profit firm that served progressive causes, the Oram Group was well ahead of its time in its hiring practices — by 1964, both women and blacks held high-level positions — as well as in its work with HBCU clients like Tougaloo College, Howard University, Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta), and Dillard University.

Unlike their competitors, the Oram Group urged black colleges to focus on alumni and the emerging black middle class and worked closely with leadership to build campaigns that would have a long-term impact.

Finally, the Oram consultants encouraged their clients to promote the idea that, rather than being vestiges of segregation, HBCUs were vital to the whole of American society.

“A Maverick in the Field: The Oram Group and Fundraising in the Black College Community during the 1970s” appears in History of Education Quarterly, 49(4).