`` Deculturalization And Struggle For Equality `` By Joel Spring

The book written by Joel Spring was based on the constant derogation and the oppression of the people that were not considered “white”. The constant segregation between races caused many fights for equal rights among Native Americans, African American, Asian and Hispanic people. The conflict was never easy because the United States demonstrated an ethnocentric attitude, which caused the idea of deculturalization for many of the incoming immigrant races. The book demonstrates accuracy in many of the historical struggles between education, language, culture lands, and equal rights for a voice among the people in the United States.

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

Who we are and how we are treated as children is directly correlated to who we will become as adults. Spoken by Lyndon B. Johnson, “Until Justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.” These words are echoed throughout the educational system that is put in place today. Jonathan Kozol, an award-winning writer and public lecturer who focuses on social injustice in the United States, reverberates these words in his article, “From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”. Kozol proves his mastery in persuasion by the facts he provides and the personal anecdotes from teachers and students.

In a life threatened by drugs, theft, and violence, African American Roland G. Fryer was able to conquer many hardships and excel in his education as well as his research. He completed his B.A. at the University of Texas at Arlington and went on to earn his Ph.D. in economics from Penn State University. “Acting White,” a scholarly journal published in 2006, is defined by Fryer as interactions in society where minority adolescents who receive good grades don’t reach a high level of popularity as a white adolescent would. The essay studies a specific trend among high-achieving minority students stating, “these gifted students tend to be less popular the more academically successful they are” (Fryer, 5422). In his essay, Fryer argues that the phenomenon of acting white takes place when minority adolescents who achieve academically tend to be less popular when they are compared to white students who also do well academically. He found that this phenomenon is more noticeable in racially-mixed schools than in one-race dominant schools and is attributable to what he calls “group identity”. Fryer also believes that other studies about this phenomenon are biased and so he tries to establish and employ his own method so that it is the most unbiased in his essay.

Racism is an obstacle that continues to play an active role in daily lives across the global. Currently, Americans are outraged by the actions of white police officers toward black men. In Ferguson, Missouri an unarmed, black teenager was shot by a white police officer and a black man was choked to death by a white officer in New York City. Racial tensions run deep in the United States, but race is social construction that is learned. Sociologist Amanda Lewis’s book, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities defends the notion that schools are institutions in which children learn about race and maintain racial inequality.

Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States and the president who signed the Civil Rights Act into law, once said, “Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.” Many are unaware of how well a person can receive their education when their race differs from the dominant white majority of the U.S. Whether it’s ignorance or the deliberate choice of not giving other races the same opportunity to succeed, we don’t know, but that is what we have set out to find. Throughout all of our literature, we can see examples of people not getting the same choices or opportunities as other citizens

The last inner-ring perspective that holds to a colorblind perspective is what we are calling a “technical recognition.” A school leader in this perspective reveals both an awareness of and observation of race at a disengaged and/or superficial notion. Principal Logan Sanders who works in affluent elementary school demonstrates a colorblind perspective of technical recognition. First, principal Sanders recognition of having a diverse population of students is based on having a large population of both Asian and Indian families who are moving into the community. Next, principal Sanders reveals insight into his technical position when he describes the subgoups found in his school. He states,

Media has conditioned society into thinking racial stereotypes are the norm. “Irish people are drunks” and “Asians are good at math” are all classic examples of common racial stereotypes. Author Michael Omi of “In Living Color: Race and American Culture” asserts how media presentation of minorities establishes peoples ' perspectives of “these groups”. However, where do racial stereotypes media portray originate from? It comes from the establishment of America oppressing others. Minorities have been feeling oppressed from the “dominant race” for generations. But, has gotten better? No, it has not. Minorities, more importantly, Black Americans are being discriminated in institutions; in a multitude of southern states they cannot vote without being accused of voter fraud, and schools are “inferential racist”. As mentioned in “Actin’ White” author Stuart Buck tackles the pros and cons of desegregating the school system. Buck expresses how the lack of representation in high level school officials can affect black children negatively. By highlighting racial stereotypes throughout the media, Omi address how “inferential racism” is seen throughout daily “intuitional life” which Buck strengthens in his article when he confronts the negative repercussions of desegregation.

The construction of race and its definition has been ambiguous as it continues to shift within the emphasis of equality and opportunity. The mid-20th century was the beginning of a transition of the values of race in America, sparking the ‘”great transformation”. The great transformation began through many movements, but was most advanced through the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement produced a major shift of ideas of race and power. The definition of race and equality in American society began to change in ways that threatened white supremacy, however did not quite accomplish social equality overall. The process of the articulation of race was complicated, but was able to bring about the creation for a push of an egalitarian

unidentified racial norms. The usurpation from white culture norms in public education concealed the immoral discrimination of African American students and educators. The role of public education determined the unethicality behind the separation of enrollment merely on the basis of race with the dynamics of constitutional constraints. Accessibility to the same resources as whites grants African Americans the control in alleviated the economic discrepancy between the two races. Education asserts the social, cultural, and economic equivalent rights that African Americans deserved to endeavor since the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement. With the new ethnic orientation in public schools, the reformation loosens the suppression of the racial

Brill (1999) explored what it means to be black in America. He reviewed the parts of history that effect blacks today. He, also, examined the effects of slavery and affirmative action on the black community. As cited by Brill, in 1832, De Toqueville predicted that whites and blacks could never live equally in the society. He predicted that, once freed, former slaves would revolt due to the lack of civil rights that they would receive in America. Shockingly, these words hold true even in 2014. The evident tensions that exist today in cities like Ferguson, Missouri are racially charged and are due to the lack of equality that exists between blacks and whites in our country.

We have come to understand public education in the United States as a core principle of one’s rights as a citizen in spite of it not explicitly guaranteed within the Constitution. Despite the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, we continue to witness the fight for complete and total integration within our public schools and thus, racial equality. The 14th Amendment forbid states from denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, but was unclear in terms of it’s exact intention with respect to public education. As a result, were unable to see the effective use and enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments until approximately the 1940s for a number reasons, but I believe that structural racism is the foremost cause. Today, we find ourselves struggling to achieve full integration within our public school system due to the covert intentions behind structural racism and therefore, it’s ability to overpower the law. Structural racism has the ability to impact legal authority in such a way where we end up with a lack of appropriate enforcement legislation at the Supreme Court level and a lack of acknowledgement and remedies for de jure segregation and thus, it is the primary cause of the current segregation within the American public school system.

Institutional racism has solidified its position into various aspects of American society. It has installed itself into employment practices, all levels of education, healthcare, housing, politics and the criminal justice system. Institutional racism has made some subtle changes to replace the boldness of slavery and Jim Crow. However, in educational institutions the effects of racism and discrimination are so delicate they typically go unnoticed by students of color. Individual racism usually happens on the personal level where the prejudice is expressed either consciously or unconsciously while there is some form of interpersonal encounter. When it comes to institutional racism it is similar to the individual concepts, however policies and practices are associated with with the belief of racial dominance of one group over another. It is a powerful system that use race to determine power and privilege(Reynolds et al., 2010). Even after the desegregation of school, educational institution are still separated. In Shelby County where I have lived since 1999 there are schools for minorities, and there are schools for whites. The schools for minorities in the city of Memphis have police officers walking the halls and there no books for learning. There are higher numbers of Whites students enrolled in private, charter, and magnet schools in the more affluent segments of the county. They will be exposed to the advantages of a proper education because of their race and privilege

For decades, it has been well known that the workforce is stratified, if not calcified, by race. The labor economy isn’t merely laminated because different races and ethnicities cluster in different scores. What is not known, are the oblivious individuals who don’t recognize that being White is “normal” and seeing others as different from normal. They notice that the privilege of being able to assume acceptance as “normal” members of society in a world full of cultural differences. White Americans believe they are equal opportunity employers and it’s a barrier most people of color continually battle. This intentional act of “normal”, is reflected upon how an individual in a nominal education attainment could have a poor measure of labor-market skills because schools vary widely in quality leaving students with the inability to perform well on standardized tests. In “The Invisible Whiteness of Being” written by author Derald Wing Sue, he reveals the unacknowledged advantages white Americans receive and how whiteness is considered to be normative and ideal, automatically conferring dominance on fair skinned people. Education experiences for minority students have continued to be substantially separate and unequal. Curriculum quality affects educational opportunity and with the dramatic differences in the labor economy due to white privilege, the only way to a healthy and equal lifestyle is the quality of the education minorities receive. Another prime example of proving the

In recent years, the strongest failings of affirmative action have been revealed: the inability of minority students -- accepted on an affirmative action basis -- to graduate college (Ravitch, par. 7). While the United States and similar governments are trying to quell the ripples of racist and slavery-based pasts, the effectiveness of the strategies employed is being looked over. The ?social promotion? policies of affirmative action end up pushing students with inadequate grades into college where, when faced with having to make a return to remedial teaching, find that graduation is almost impossible (Ravitch, par. 11). The soul of the matter, suggested by Ravitch, exists at an adolescent level where a student?s social and/or family status affects how he or she learns. The end results of this inefficient system of balance, based on liberal society?s collective desire to have minorities catch up with the crowd, can be seen as