Critical Race Theory Discussion Of Community Cultural Wealth

This paper is intended to explore and report upon the topics posited by Tyrone C. Howard in his book, Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap in Americas Classrooms. Closely examining each and every chapter as they come and how the structure of this book gives a detailed framework and guidance system for novice and experienced teachers to take their pedagogical skills to more diverse and multicultural levels. Also, this paper will review a few lessons or projects that can be adapted and used within my personal educational institute in order to create

Students who attend schools can be affected by their culture, race and background, much like how Puerto Ricans were oppressed in East Harlem in the 1980’s. This article explains how race can affect how people of certain races grow up, and how they are treated, and how when this treatment is unfair, the students usually drop out of school. “Study examines how race, culture influence school discipline, dropout rates”.

In the collateral-collectivist cultures (African-American, Hispanic and Asian), emphasis is placed on the family, above all else. This means that in these cultures, even education is second to the needs of a family. When teaching children from these cultures, it is important not be ethnocentric, but rather understand the structure of their cultures. As teachers, we cannot be colorblind; for it is a disservice to those we teach.

Education and economic justice were two forms of systemic inequalities that make inequality difficult to talk about. Education is a requirement if someone wishes to have a better life, but not everyone has access to quality education. In the U.S there has always been a battle, people of color have fought to be able to access quality education, (Philips, 2016: 130) they are constantly attending inferior and ineffective school where there are many distractions for students to be fully successful in the classrooms. Often these schools where children of color attend lack quality facilities, educational resources, and qualified teachers. Someone can’t help to notice that in general such unqualified schools are mostly in color people’s neighborhoods.

In the United States, each and every day, more minority children are born than white children. Fewer and fewer white parents are giving birth to multiple children, while many minority parents from African-American cultures to Hispanic cultures are continuing to have the same number of children, and possibly more. With all these minority children entering the U.S. education system, there is a problem current minority students are facing; there is a shortage of minority teachers. While there are minority teachers in the workforce, when Richard Ingersoll and Henry May, in their report: "The Minority Teacher Shortage: Fact or Fable?", looked at the data in 2011, they found that there is not a shortage in terms of number of teachers, but a shortage of minority teachers in the places that need them most: inner-city schools, with high minority populations. Minority students assimilate better with a teacher of the same ethnic background and the contrary view of this was highlighted in a 2012 skit by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key. The duo did a skit of an inner-city black substitute teacher inside of a middle class, almost all white classroom. Using his current cultural capital (defined as: “…the general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills that are passed on from one generation to another,” (McLaren, 80,) the teacher, Mr. Garvey, acts as a disciplinarian. He takes attendance and when a student corrects his inner-city pronunciation (i.e. says “Jay-quellin”

According to the article Community Cultural Wealth by Dr. Taray-Yosso cultural wealth is defined as an areal of knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed and utilized by communities of color to survive and resist operations. Although cultural wealth deals with the many skills aspects of economic growth, both of which are crucial to the attainment of higher education nonetheless cultural wealth can be categorized into three defiant groups known as cultural ties, cultural capital and cultural wealth. The success of a college education is dependent upon my factors most of which are concepts of family, aspirational, social and resistant capitals.

Despite changes in the landscape for treatment of ethnic minorities in the United States over the past 200 years, issues with racism has never stopped being an issue and continues to tarnish and tatter the very fabric of our nation. There has been a history of violence against Black people that dates back 400 years, to a time when the first slave was forcefully brought here to the USA (Rogers, 2015). From that time on, people of African descent have been dehumanized and treated as second-class citizens and this has become an ongoing community issue (Diversi, 2016). Racial classification was created as a way to condone slavery and maintain the primacy of the white race (Tolliver, Hadden, Snowden, & Manning, 2016). Aymer (2016) explains that the Critical Race Theory (CRT) provides a way to understand that the violence that Blacks face in America originates from the societal belief in White superiority and, when trying to understand the Black reality, centuries of racial oppression must be discussed (Aymer, 2016). CRT acknowledges that racism is primarily a problem in America and has contributed to the social disparities in the U.S. In addition, it notes other forms of oppression that are important to discuss and work through. CRT does not believe in the legal rhetoric that there is an impartial, equal way of dealing with individuals in the community that has nothing to do with color and everything to do with achievement and hard work. It also takes on an interdisciplinary

In the words of Malcolm X, “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation... It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."

The role of Critical Race Theory provides us with the idea of “racial realism”, the idea that racism, the normalcy of white supremacy is part of the everyday life of an ‘other’, in other words, racial or indigenous minorities in Canada. Consequently, the Critical Race Theory gives an understanding of the power that can be given to a definition such as ‘race’, and how heavily influence the way society functions and sparked in a cultural divide in Canada due to the simple idea that biological and aesthetic difference. The Critical Race Theory gives us the understanding of how common it is for an individual, but most dominantly, a person who is Caucasian or who has light complexion can easily identifies with their ‘race’, and view a person of another colored complexion as an ‘other’ because this normalized.

It begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom. She is then able to respond to students' use of these cultural learning tools positively by noticing, naming, and affirming when students use them in the service of learning.” The idea is for teachers to form a partnership of learning with the student, to facilitate the growth of the student’s neuroplasticity. Properly intellectually stimulated, a student will grow millions of new brain cells; brain cells with trillions of synaptic connections that will enable the student to think in more intellectually sophisticated

Cultural capital is the main form of capital that contributes to status in ways that are not always seen and recognized, like knowledge, status expressed in good social status. For instance education, manners and also unconscious details, things that enquire the air of being natural, of just being simply the way that one is. Those are the norms that are learned very early on, those things you pick up on from having been born in a particular social context with the particular type of people around you who behave in certain ways.

Pierre Bourdieu (1979) argued that Upper-class maintains its position on top by passing on cultural capital. Cultural capital means the knowledge and social skills needed to fit in top level of society.

Building cultural capital with urban students and making material more relatable requires teachers to build personal relationships with students. there are the major tenets to building productive relationships with students : acknowledging ,valuing, respecting , demonstrating fairness, exhibiting realness, and having fun (Skillful Teachers 319). When urban teachers develop relationships with their students those students are able to better connect with the class material. Delpit explains it as urban students are more able to interact with the content when their teachers interacts with the content. The strongest relationship is between the students and the teachers with the content as a aspect of that relationship.( Delpit 140). Delpit cites

“Cultural Capital refers to non-financial social assets that promote social mobility beyond economic means. Examples can include education, intellect, style of speech, dress, or physical appearance” (Wikipedia 2014).

Education is a privilege given to people in a free society so they can gain knowledge and have a broad awareness of the world they live in. However, this privilege has unequally been stripped from people of color throughout history. People of color currently experience education at a disadvantage because they are taught with the understanding that they should naturally recognize the culture, when they do not. There are many steps educators can take to help students of color gain the education they deserve, but they are stuck in their self-proclaimed, righteous methods and believe change is unnecessary. In Lisa D. Delpit’s essay, “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children,” she argues that there are