Class Differences in Child-Rearing Are on the Rise - NY Times

Class Differences in Child-Rearing Are on the Rise

By: Claire Cain Miller - NY Times 

December 17, 2015

The lives of children from rich and poor American families look more different than they have in decades.

Well-off families are ruled by calendars, with children enrolled in ballet, soccer and after-school programs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. There are usually two parents, who spend a lot of time reading to children and worrying about their anxiety levels and hectic schedules

In poor families, however, children tend to spend their time at home or with extended family, the survey found. They are more likely to grow up in neighborhoods that their parents say aren’t great for raising children, and their parents worry about them getting shot, beaten up or in trouble with the law.

The class differences in child rearing are growing, researchers say — a symptom of widening inequality with far-reaching consequences. Different upbringings set children on different paths and can deepen socioeconomic divisions, especially because education is strongly linked to earnings. Children grow up learning the skills to succeed in their socioeconomic stratum, but not necessarily others.

“Early childhood experiences can be very consequential for children’s long-term social, emotional and cognitive development,” said Sean F. Reardon, professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University. “And because those influence educational success and later earnings, early childhood experiences cast a lifelong shadow.”

The cycle continues: Poorer parents have less time and fewer resources to invest in their children, which can leave children less prepared for school and work, which leads to lower earnings.

American parents want similar things for their children, the Pew report and past research have found: for them to be healthy and happy, honest and ethical, caring and compassionate. There is no best parenting style or philosophy, researchers say, and across income groups, 92 percent of parents say they are doing a good job at raising their children. Yet they are doing it quite differently.

Middle-class and higher-income parents see their children as projects in need of careful cultivation, says Annette Lareau, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist whose groundbreaking research on the topic was published in her book “Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life.” They try to develop their skills through close supervision and organized activities, and teach children to question authority figures and navigate elite institutions.

Working-class parents, meanwhile, believe their children will naturally thrive, and give them far greater independence and time for free play. They are taught to be compliant and deferential to adults.

There are benefits to both approaches. Working-class children are happier, more independent, whine less and are closer with family members, Ms. Lareau found. Higher-income children are more likely to declare boredom and expect their parents to solve their problems.

Yet later on, the more affluent children end up in college and en route to the middle class, while working-class children tend to struggle. Children from higher-income families are likely to have the skills to navigate bureaucracies and succeed in schools and workplaces, Ms. Lareau said.

“Do all parents want the most success for their children? Absolutely,” she said. “Do some strategies give children more advantages than others in institutions? Probably they do. Will parents be damaging children if they have one fewer organized activity? No, I really doubt it.”

Social scientists say the differences arise in part because low-income parents have less money to spend on music class or preschool, and less flexible schedules to take children to museums or attend school events.

Extracurricular activities epitomize the differences in child rearing in the Pew survey, which was of a nationally representative sample of 1,807 parents. Of families earning more than $75,000 a year, 84 percent say their children have participated in organized sports over the past year, 64 percent have done volunteer work and 62 percent have taken lessons in music, dance or art. Of families earning less than $30,000, 59 percent of children have done sports, 37 percent have volunteered and 41 percent have taken arts classes.

Especially in affluent families, children start young. Nearly half of high-earning, college-graduate parents enrolled their children in arts classes before they were 5, compared with one-fifth of low-income, less-educated parents.

Nonetheless, 20 percent of well-off parents say their children’s schedules are too hectic, compared with 8 percent of poorer parents.

Another example is reading aloud, which studies have shown gives children bigger vocabularies and better reading comprehension in school. Seventy-one percent of parents with a college degree say they do it every day, compared with 33 percent of those with a high school diploma or less, Pew found. White parents are more likely than others to read to their children daily, as are married parents.

Most affluent parents enroll their children in preschool or day care, while low-income parents are more likely to depend on family members.

Discipline techniques vary by education level: 8 percent of those with a postgraduate degree say they often spank their children, compared with 22 percent of those with a high school degree or less.

The survey also probed attitudes and anxieties. Interestingly, parents’ attitudes toward education do not seem to reflect their own educational background as much as a belief in the importance of education for upward mobility.

Most American parents say they are not concerned about their children’s grades as long as they work hard. But 50 percent of poor parents say it is extremely important to them that their children earn a college degree, compared with 39 percent of wealthier parents.

Less-educated parents, and poorer and black and Latino parents are more likely to believe that there is no such thing as too much involvement in a child’s education. Parents who are white, wealthy or college-educated say too much involvement can be bad.

Parental anxieties reflect their circumstances. High-earning parents are much more likely to say they live in a good neighborhood for raising children. While bullying is parents’ greatest concern over all, nearly half of low-income parents worry their child will get shot, compared with one-fifth of high-income parents. They are more worried about their children being depressed or anxious.

In the Pew survey, middle-class families earning between $30,000 and $75,000 a year fell right between working-class and high-earning parents on issues like the quality of their neighborhood for raising children, participation in extracurricular activities and involvement in their children’s education.

Children were not always raised so differently. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is 30 percent to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than those born 25 years earlier, according to Mr. Reardon’s research.

People used to live near people of different income levels; neighborhoods are now more segregated by income. More than a quarter of children live in single-parent households — a historic high, according to Pew – and these children are three times as likely to live in poverty as those who live with married parents. Meanwhile, growing income inequality has coincided with the increasing importance of a college degree for earning a middle-class wage.

Yet there are recent signs that the gap could be starting to shrink. In the past decade, even as income inequality has grown, some of the socioeconomic differences in parenting, like reading to children and going to libraries, have narrowed, Mr. Reardon and others have found.

Public policies aimed at young children have helped, he said, including public preschool programs and reading initiatives. Addressing disparities in the earliest years, it seems, could reduce inequality in the next generation.

Who Is the Happiest at the "Happiest College in America"?

By: Lisette Espinosa - The Student Life

"Many people report a sense of appreciation and pride to be affiliated with CMC, but there are also those who feel disenfranchised." –Claremont McKenna College’s 2011-2012 Campus Climate Task Force Report

"Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don't want to be around each other? No... Before you come asking Mr. Muhammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God made you." – Malcolm X, May 22, 1962, Los Angeles

In elementary school, I remember being proud that my father was a waiter. For Halloween one year I happily dressed up in a white dress shirt, bow tie and my father's waist apron. When my fifth grade teacher asked the class to write about our career of choice, I, of course, wrote "waiter." He politely asked if I could choose something else.

In high school, I wanted to distance myself from my background. I envisioned having a family like my first boyfriend's mother's side of the family, who were mostly white and middle class. This is what a "normal" American family looks like. Since families like mine were not well represented in the media I consumed, I considered my family "abnormal."

Not until college did I realize I had been taught to be ashamed of being from a working class, immigrant Mexican family, despite growing up around many families like my own. Anywhere from the media to the Claremont Colleges, I am constantly receiving the message that we aren't worth anything. To this day, I am still trying to unlearn these twisted concepts of "success" and "normality" that made me want to turn my back on my hometown and community.

One of the many things I've learned from queer activists is that assimilation does not equal liberation. Achieving the "American Dream" for myself does not mean that people like my parents, relatives or hometown community will stop being dehumanized or that they will be given the respect they deserve. You only need to look at the news to list the stereotypes often projected onto working class people of color. These myths and misrepresentations are often internalized.

Maybe most of us have felt out of place at Claremont McKenna College for one reason or another, but my feelings of not belonging cut deep across economic and racial lines. It was uncomfortable coming to CMC and seeing my home being better represented in the poorly paid, working-class staff rather than those more central to managing the school's trajectory and curriculum. Over the years, I have seen many people with similar backgrounds to mine build relationships with the workers at the 5Cs. Referring to the Colleges, a student in my Latina Activism class, Neftali Dominguez HM '17, said in class the first week, "How can they say they care about students of color when they treat their brown workers like shit?" At the Claremont Colleges, it is not unusual for workers to get fired or harassed for organizing for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Within the first weeks of school, I told an upperclassman Latino that I felt like I was admitted to fill a racial quota. Why would they want me here? Impostor syndrome is prevalent among first-generation students. These feelings caught me by surprise as I had never known what it felt like to be the "minority" in my predominantly immigrant, low-income Latinx hometown. The week after classes started, I cried at the Chicanx/Latinx New Student Retreat, where I felt comfortable enough to voice my concerns about the school. Feelings of inadequacy have haunted me throughout my time at CMC, and my struggles with anxiety and depression first arose at the end of my second year.

Students of color often report feeling unwelcome at predominantly-white institutions, and CMC is far from an exception. Our campus climate and institutional culture are primarily grounded in western, white, cisheteronormative upper to upper-middle class values. Last school year, approximately 60 percent of undergraduate students did not qualify for financial aid based on ability to pay. And it was homophobia and transphobia on campus that encouraged me to complete a gender studies sequence. My second year on campus, the LGBTQ-related posters in the Stark elevator were consistently being ripped, written on, and literally clawed at.

The CMC administration knows the college needs a lot of work. As mentioned in their most recent Campus Climate Task Force (CCTF) report: "By some, CMC is perceived as an institution that fails to prioritize diversity and lacks sensitivity to diversity issues." In a formal report released by CMC in 2013, the Climate Task Force, which was composed of students, faculty, and staff, agreed that the college needs to do considerably more to support its students of marginalized identities and backgrounds. In fact, the report outlines CMC's long history of resisting this type of change.

The report states that while CMC's national reputation grew in the 1980s, some members of the CCTF remember that period as "marked by overt misogyny" and "hostility toward gays and lesbians." In 1989, a prominent CMC faculty member "attacked the gay liberation movement" in a campus speech and a publication. Many CMC faculty and administrators resisted pursuing affirmative action and creating ethnic and women's studies departments, unlike other liberal arts colleges at the time. This contributed to CMC's image as a college unwelcoming to those of "diverse backgrounds" and those interested in teaching or learning about these topics. Though praising its reputation as a "leading liberal arts college," CMC’s accrediting body, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, criticized the school’s lack of “recruitment of talented women and persons of color” and “attention to diversity and campus climate issues for minorities” in reports in the 1990’s, 2000, and 2009.

Mirroring its continual neglect of "diversity issues," CMC also reproduces indifference to social inequalities and oppression in its own student body.  

Although 90% of students surveyed in 2011 reported feeling treated well by the CMC student body, Black and Latinx students were less likely to agree that CMC is "free of tension related to ethnicity/race." Furthermore, the college was described by the report as having a "pervasive, 'hyper-masculine' and heteronormative ethos...that generally discourages the expression of nonconforming gender identities and sexual orientations."

In the report, women reported feeling valued as intellectuals and friends by day and sexually objectified by night. My second year, I was sexually assaulted by an intoxicated student who followed me into the elevator and tried to forcefully pull me to his room. Many people have had similar experiences across college campuses.

When Carlos Ballesteros, another CMC student, wrote an op-ed for TSLon how issues regarding the party scene receive a disproportionate amount of outrage compared to issues of diversity on campus, multiple online commenters suggested that he transfer. They had a hard time understanding why Carlos cared so much about having more professors of color and more students from low-income backgrounds. It pained me they could not put themselves in our shoes. I was not surprised The Onion wrote this satire about an "Orange County native" and "Claremont McKenna graduate" who believes those not as well-off must somehow deserve their circumstances: "I look around and see a lot of people who don’t have what I have, which leads me to conclude our social institutions have these built-in disparities for a purpose—one that I trust makes perfect sense."

I have been told by staff that one reason hiring more diverse faculty is difficult is because the hiring process is biased. Those who have connections on campus are more likely to be hired. In addition, the CCTF reported that the problem is in part due to "unwelcoming attitudes" of people currently employed at the college. Letters to CMC administrators and colleagues reveal "instances in which members of the professional community have felt devalued, or have been harassed because of their gender or sexual identity," leaving some faculty "afraid that researching or teaching in gender or ethnic studies would diminish their chances of achieving tenure."

The Climate Task Force offered a long list of recommendations in "community composition," "facilities and space," "policies and practices," "academics: curriculum and advising," "co-curricular activities and student services," and "institutional commitment and celebrated success." Last semester, a group of students interested in organizing those who have felt isolated by the campus climate and institutional culture because of their racial or ethnic identities met to discuss their experiences at CMC. The group, CMCers of Color, sent both CMC President Chodosh and ASCMC a petition of proposed actions that echo many of the same concerns the college's own Climate Task Force Report outlined. Disability issues, socioeconomic issues, and Islamophobia were some of the additional issues underscored.

These problems are not new to those who see disparities and experience these tensions on campus.

I frequently use resources and attend events at Pomona College, Scripps College, and Pitzer College. I would visit Scripps Communities of Resources and Empowerment so often that someone had wondered if I had transferred schools.

At the beginning of this semester, a friend invited me to attend a dinner for Scripps students of color. A tent covered a large portion of Jaqua Quad and a dozen tables were filled with students, faculty, staff and alumni. But the event frustrated me. I could not imagine this type of event being held at CMC. Back during speaker Devanie Dóñez' '94 time as a Scripps student, the welcome reception for students of color was held in a dorm living room, and she noted the event's growth in size. I wondered how many CMC students would have appreciated hearing from their own school what I heard from the alumna Trustee's speech:

"Diversity and inclusion are not themes that we talk about for a month or a year. We will never stop talking about this or these issues... We will never reach a point where the work is done... Tonight, I want to remind you again, you are welcome here. You belong here. You are needed here to be known, to…be visible leaders of the call for the most inclusive Scripps possible. And all the rest of us here tonight...as trustees, as administrators, as educators, we will support you and be accountable to you as we strive to do better...So often assumptions are made about students of color, what it means to be a student of color, who we are, where we are from...One faulty assumption I think we may all face at some point is the idea that diversity and excellence are mutually exclusive. I hear that implied in conversation..."

She also spoke about the time she was mistaken as a dining hall worker because she was Latina. Last semester, a Latina CMC alumna disclosed that she had been confused with housekeeping: "We're out of paper towels."

Not once in my four years have I invited my parents to CMC's Parents Weekend. It feels strange having my parents to “experience CMC culture” when that culture doesn't value their work or experiences.

Whether we believe the Colleges are committed to "diversity and inclusion" or just playing a part key to their image, something is wrong here.

Some will think I am overreacting. Some will say I do not belong at CMC and should have transferred (which I cannot afford). Some will believe I am "biting the hand that feeds me." Others will say I am focusing too much on the negative aspects of CMC's campus (those that I frequently hear in private but hardly in public) and not enough on the positive. I see these types of comments often on Carlos' articles online.

These types of reactions discourages students from speaking up, fearing possible repercussions.

My friend Denys Reyes once wrote, "I understand that it is intuitive to defend our school, but someone's first reaction to injustice should not be, 'Not all of CMC!', but 'What can we do to make sure CMC is not this way again?'"

Luckily, my experiences at CMC resulted in immense personal growth, a re-evaluation of my values and identities, and improved relations with my family and community at home. I am a proud Chicana. My background is not a deficit, but a strength.

Whose voices are the loudest on campus? Whose voices are kept at the margins? Who do we look to for knowledge, and whose knowledge is valued? Are our "success" and "leadership" measured in dollar signs? What role do the colleges play in replicating inequality while touting "responsible leadership"? Who is respected, and who is not given a living wage? Whose life is given priority, and whose lives are criminalized, jailed, detained and disposable? What stereotypes and ideologies do we allow in our lives that contribute to the normalization of structural inequality and social suffering?

This is why I want to ask, who is our Claremont education for?

At P.S. 172 in Brooklyn, a Principal Rewrites the Book

October 23, 2015 - NYT article by Ginia Bellafante

In 1970, Jack Spatola, born Giacomo, a young immigrant from the small town of Paceco on the western tip of Sicily, who had come to the United States at the age of 14 with his parents to live in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was called to service in the Vietnam War. His father was a shoemaker, his mother a seamstress, and neither wanted him to go; Mr. Spatola managed to avoid the draft on the grounds that he was the only person in his family who spoke English. Instead, he went to college — to Pace University — and got into educationFrom the outset he knew he liked challenges, which was fortunate, given that the New York City school system in the ’70s and ’80s provided a caldron full of them. He taught children with special needs, children who didn’t know English (he is trilingual; Spanish is his third language), children coming up in especially rough neighborhoods, like Bushwick. In 1984, he became principal of Public School 172 in Sunset Park, an elementary school, where he has remained for 31 years. In the beginning, his student body was predominantly Puerto Rican; today it is predominantly Mexican and Latin American, with more than 85 percent of those attending eligible for free lunch.

Demographic realities have not hindered achievement. Last year, 98 percent of third, fourth and fifth graders, those required to take state exams toward the end of the year, passed the math test. Seventy-six percent passed the language test. Those figures far exceed citywide averages, which sit in the 30s for both disciplines, and they match or surpass scores at many affluent schools. On the tests administered this past spring, students at P.S. 172 did better than students at P.S. 234, a celebrated school in TriBeCa, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

Even among those students requiring special education, a subset that makes up 25 percent of the population at P.S. 172, the results were impressive — 69 percent received the highest possible score in math. On a recent visit, I watched a small group of fifth graders in a hallway, working through an exercise calling for an estimate of the value of two large numbers when multiplied together. The teacher was about to guide them through an elaborate written formula for rounding off, but before she could proceed, one little boy blurted out the answer, 174,000, correctly calculated in his head within seconds. Students are grouped by their ability for these exercises, and this particular section, I later found out, was the remedial one.

Students at P.S. 172 have performed well for many years. Although scores dipped slightly after the introduction of Common Core standards, they quickly bounced back, and as a result of Mr. Spatola’s long-running success he receives many observers who want to know how he does it. Next month he is expecting a visit from the business guru Jim Collins, who studies what makes certain companies great and some leaders especially adept. Mr. Spatola has a way of speaking in chief executive patois — potential is unknowable and presumably limitless, success breeds joy and so on — but the platitudes belie a rigorous system of self-assessment that is at the center of the school’s philosophy.

Teachers, students and administrators are engaged in a constant process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t; why, for example, one student might be quickly gaining an understanding of symbolism in reading while another isn’t. Professional development is an experience that is not relegated to occasional seminars but is lived daily. Strikingly, members of the school’s senior staff have an extended shared history of knowing what is effective and what isn’t — Mr. Spatola’s assistant principal, Erika Gundersen, has been with him for more than 20 years; the math and literacy coaches on hand to work with teachers to enhance practices have been with him on average more than 12 years.

Mr. Spatola’s most notable innovation, though, may be the manner in which he comes up with the money to finance all the additional academic supports his school deploys in the absence of enormous Wall Street donations, which are available to many charter schools. Mr. Spatola doesn’t use textbooks, which are notoriously expensive (and a major factor in the low graduation rates at community colleges, where students often drop out because they can’t afford them). In the past fiscal year, the city and state spent $100 million on textbooks in New York City schools. At P.S. 172, the allocated money is used to buy primary texts, works of fiction and nonfiction selected by teachers and administrators. Students will, for instance, use the Internet to research how the branches of government work. The many dollars left over are spent on other services.

For Mr. Spatola the commitment is driven by ideology as much as anything else, the theory being that textbooks dilute and essentially cheapen the experience of learning. In fact, textbooks are much rarer in elite private schools than in public ones. Following a similar logic, P.S. 172 creates its own curriculums, grade by grade. It does not use budget money to purchase the expensive curriculum the Education Department recommends for meeting the Common Core standards, which at a school the size of P.S. 172, with its roughly 600 students, could cost close to $50,000.

“It is absolutely crazy to me that a company out west would really have any idea what my children need,” Mr. Spatola said. “If you are a professional, you take ownership of the curriculum.” Otherwise, he continued, “you’re taking away the respect that an educator needs and deserves.”

The question of whether the P.S. 172 model can be made scalable is dependent on the widespread availability of educators who are impassioned and focused and hardworking enough to take on the challenges demanded by the kind of culture the school has established. Devising curriculums and maintaining notebooks on every single child, which are updated constantly — another feature at the school — amount to very labor-intensive efforts. Mr. Spatola still lives in Bensonhurst, but like many chief executives, on Saturday you’ll find him in his office.

Listening While White by David Brooks

July 17, 2015 - NYT by DAVID Brooks

      Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White

Dear Ta-Nehisi Coates,

The last year has been an education for white people. There has been a depth, power and richness to the African-American conversation about Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings that has been humbling and instructive.

Your new book, “Between the World and Me,” is a great and searing contribution to this public education. It is a mind-altering account of the black male experience. Every conscientious American should read it.

There is a pervasive physicality to your memoir — the elemental vulnerability of living in a black body in America. Outside African-American nightclubs, you write, “black people controlled nothing, least of all the fate of their bodies, which could be commandeered by the police; which could be erased by the guns, which were so profligate; which could be raped, beaten, jailed.”

Written as a letter to your son, you talk about the effects of pervasive fear. “When I was your age the only people I knew were black and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid.”

But the disturbing challenge of your book is your rejection of the American dream. My ancestors chose to come here. For them, America was the antidote to the crushing restrictiveness of European life, to the pogroms. For them, the American dream was an uplifting spiritual creed that offered dignity, the chance to rise.

Your ancestors came in chains. In your book the dream of the comfortable suburban life is a “fairy tale.” For you, slavery is the original American sin, from which there is no redemption. America is Egypt without the possibility of the Exodus. African-American men are caught in a crushing logic, determined by the past, from which there is no escape.

You write to your son, “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage.” The innocent world of the dream is actually built on the broken bodies of those kept down below.

If there were no black bodies to oppress, the affluent Dreamers “would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism.”

Your definition of “white” is complicated. But you write “ ‘White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining).” In what is bound to be the most quoted passage from the book, you write that you watched the smoldering towers of 9/11 with a cold heart. At the time you felt the police and firefighters who died “were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”

You obviously do not mean that literally today (sometimes in your phrasing you seem determined to be misunderstood). You are illustrating the perspective born of the rage “that burned in me then, animates me now, and will likely leave me on fire for the rest of my days.”

I read this all like a slap and a revelation. I suppose the first obligation is to sit with it, to make sure the testimony is respected and sinks in. But I have to ask, Am I displaying my privilege if I disagree? Is my job just to respect your experience and accept your conclusions? Does a white person have standing to respond?

If I do have standing, I find the causation between the legacy of lynching and some guy’s decision to commit a crime inadequate to the complexity of most individual choices.

I think you distort American history. This country, like each person in it, is a mixture of glory and shame. There’s a Lincoln for every Jefferson Davis and a Harlem Children’s Zone for every K.K.K. — and usually vastly more than one. Violence is embedded in America, but it is not close to the totality of America.

In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam. But a dream sullied is not a lie. The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow.

This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.

Maybe you will find my reactions irksome. Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change. In any case, you’ve filled my ears unforgettably.

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White Millennials are products of a failed lesson in colorblindness

Originally posted to PBS NEWSHOUR at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white-millennials-products-failed-lesson-colorblindness/#.VRnrVdDu1p5.facebook 
___________________________
BY MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH  March 26, 2015 at 12:58 PM EDT

What I’d like to believe from my observations in the streets of Ferguson and New York City at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests is that, among young white people, there is a real awakening around issues of racial justice. Indeed, the number of white people who have shown up, marched, carried signs, and chanted along with calls for an end to institutionalized racism often surprised me. At a time when optimism was difficult to come by, their presence carried the potential of inspiring hope of a coming revolution. But as a frequent participant and observer of conversations that deal with the quest for racial justice, I know better than to place too much hope in these optics.

For one, movements toward racial justice have always attracted a sliver of the young white population with a disposition geared toward radical politics. They are not necessarily representative of their entire generation. Furthermore, with respect to this particular generation, the Millennials, the education these young white people have received have left them ill-equipped to understand the nature of racism and subsequently supplied them analysis that won’t address the problem. As children of the multi-cultural 1980s and 90s, Millennials are fluent in colorblindness and diversity, while remaining illiterate in the language of anti-racism. This may not be the end of the world, if weren’t for the fact that Millennials don’t know the difference between the two.

To be fair, that’s not entirely their fault. They were taught by their elders, Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers, about how to think about race and racism. The lessons Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers gleaned from the Civil Rights era is that racism is matter of personal bigotry — racists hate people because of the color of their skin, or because they believe stereotypes about groups of people they’ve never met — not one of institutional discrimination and exploitation. The history Millennials have been taught is through that lens, with a specific focus on misunderstanding the message of Martin Luther King, Jr. Certainly, a world where we all loved one another would be ideal, where each person is seen as equal, where “the dream” of children of all different racial backgrounds holding hands with one another without prejudice is a reality. But Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers generally decided to ignore King’s diagnosis of the problem — white supremacy — and opted to make him a poster-child for a colorblind society, in which we simply ignore construct of race altogether and pray that it will disappear on its own.

It’s as Luke Hales, the lead researcher for a study on Millennial attitudes on race conducted for MTV’s Look Different project, told NPR’s Code Switch: “There’s this weird kind of snake-eating-its-tail thing where so many of our audience was brought up to be colorblind, to not talk about race. There’s this whole generation that is scared to tackle this subject, and they were brought up in a world where the topic was fraught with anxiety and danger.”

That anxiety results in deeply misguided ideas about what a future of racial equality would look like. It also produces statistics such as these, summed up by Sean McElwee for Al Jazeera America: “A 2012 Public Religion Institute pollfound that 58 percent of white millennials say discrimination affects whites as much as it affects people of color. Only 39 percent of Hispanic millennials and 24 percent of black millennials agree. Similarly, the MTV poll found that only 39 percent of white millennials believe ‘white people have more opportunities today than racial minority groups.’ By contrast, 65 percent of people of color felt that whites have differential access to jobs and other opportunities. Still, 70 percent of millennials said, ‘it’s never fair to give preferential treatment to one race over another, regardless of historical inequalities.’”

Millennials have inherited a world in which the idea of “reverse racism” has been legitimized, but “reverse racism” only makes sense through the erasure of the power dynamics of racism, which has been accomplished through the teaching of racism as a strictly interpersonal issue of hatred and intolerance.

Similarly, McElwee notes: “Millennials are more likely to view Obama’s electoral victory as proof that racial discrimination has been alleviated. Research showsthat his election led to what is called symbolic racism, the belief that discrimination no longer exists and that persisting inequalities are due to blacks’ weakness. When whites were reminded of Obama’s victory (regardless of whether they supported him) they were more likely to say that racism is behind us and that blacks receive undeserved advantages. They were more likely to say that a continued push for racial equity is unjustified and that any failure of blacks to succeed is their own responsibility.”

For Millennials, racism is a relic of the past, but what vestiges may still exist are only obstacles if the people affected decide they are. Everyone is equal, they’ve been taught, and therefore everyone has equal opportunity for success. This is the deficiency found in the language of diversity. We have spent the post-Civil Rights era concerned with whether or not there is adequate representation for racial minority groups within our existing institutions, not questioning whether these institutions are fundamentally racist and rely on white supremacy for their very existence. Armed with this impotent analysis, Millennials perpetuate false equivalencies, such as affirmative action as a form of discrimination on par with with Jim Crow segregation. And they can do so while not believing themselves racist or supportive of racism.

In a piece for The New Republic, written in response to the University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity video in which members repeatedly said the “N-word” in a chant about excluding black men from their fraternity, Chloe Angyal says, “We need to have an understanding that we aren’t special, unique, and different, but subject to the same forces as everyone else in our sociocultural group.”

One of those forces is history, and in America that is a history of white racial supremacy as the prevailing ideological commitment. Anti-black racism has been the law of the land, manifest in policies regarding housing, employment, education, and the justice system. Our potential to overcome this history is impeded by our unwillingness to interrogate it honestly. Until we do, we will not be able to reckon with the ways in which these forms of discrimination are still with us. And if we aren’t able to make these basic connections, we will pass along our misunderstandings to the next generation, who will still somehow be heralded for their increasingly more tolerant views.

It may be true that white Millennials are more tolerant of the existence of non-white people (though I wouldn’t make a definitive statement on that either way), and even their viability as romantic partners, but this doesn’t translate into a desire for racial justice. As products of an uninterrogated history, their tolerance doesn’t mean they would like to see an end to white supremacy and institutionalized racism. Tolerance has no material impact on the livelihood of those suffering from discrimination and exploitation. Tolerance is not justice. Diversity is not always progress. And while they shouldn’t take a hundred percent of the blame for understanding race and racism the way they do, Millennials will be responsible for unlearning these falsehoods and equipping themselves with analysis that dismantles systems of oppression.

A world where Black Lives Matter is dependent on them doing so.

Backing Away From Zero Tolerance

NYT  EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 26, 2015

Schools across the country are rightly backing away from “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies under which children are suspended for minor misbehavior that once would have been dealt with by the principal and the child’s parents or with a modest punishment like detention. The schools are being pushed in this direction by studies showing: that suspensions do nothing to improve the school climate; that children who are thrown out are at greater risk of low achievement and becoming entangled with the juvenile justice system; and that minority children are disproportionately singled out for the harshest, most damaging disciplinary measures.

A new study of Chicago public schools by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research shows that the trend is beginning to take hold there as well. Beginning in 2009, the district started using policies that were intended to cut down on suspensions and expulsions by solving garden-variety disciplinary problems within the school walls. Among these was the Culture of Calm initiative through which high schools stepped up counseling and introduced a peer-driven system for student juries to mediate disputes that might otherwise have led to fights and suspensions.

Judging from suspension data, the initiatives seem to be working. In the 2013-14 school year, for example, 16 percent of high school students received an out-of-school suspension, down from 23 percent in 2008-9. Over the same period, both high school students and high school teachers have reported in surveys that their schools felt much safer, less disruptive and more orderly.

While these data are promising, out-of-school-suspension rates in the district are still too high, particularly for at-risk students. For example, 24 percent of high school students with a disability and 27 percent of the lowest-performing high school students received out-of-school suspensions in 2013-14. Suspension rates for African-American boys were unacceptably high, with a third of them receiving at least one out-of-school suspension that year.

Principals and teachers are clearly doing a better job of resolving disciplinary problems without excluding children from school. But schools serving the highest-risk students clearly need more support services and training to help those children as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/backing-away-from-zero-tolerance.html?_r=0

Post #2

How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science

By: Claire Cain Miller

New York Times, 2/6/15

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We know that women are underrepresented in math and science jobs. What we don’t know is why it happens.

There are various theories, and many of them focus on childhood. Parents and toy-makers discourage girls from studying math and science. So do their teachers. Girls lack role models in those fields, and grow up believing they wouldn’t do well in them.

All these factors surely play some role. A new study points to the influence of teachers’ unconscious biases, but it also highlights how powerful a little encouragement can be. Early educational experiences have a quantifiable effect on the math and science courses the students choose later, and eventually the jobs they get and the wages they earn.

The effect is larger for children from families in which the father is more educated than the mother and for girls from lower-income families, according to the study, published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The pipeline for women to enter math and science occupations narrows at many points between kindergarten and a career choice, but elementary school seems to be a critical juncture. Reversing bias among teachers could increase the number of women who enter fields like computer science and engineering, which are some of the fastest growing and highest paying.

“It goes a long way to showing it’s not the students or the home, but the classroom teacher’s behavior that explains part of the differences over time between boys and girls,” said Victor Lavy, an economist at University of Warwick in England and a co-author of the paper.

Previous studies have found that college professors and employers discriminate against female scientists. But it is not surprising that it begins even earlier.

In computer science in the United States, for instance, just 18.5 percent of the high school students who take the Advanced Placement exam are girls. In college, women earn only 12 percent of computer science degrees.

That is one reason that tech companies say they have hired so few women. Last year, Google, Apple and Facebook, among others, revealed that fewer than a fifth of technical employees are women.

“The most surprising and I think important finding in the paper is that a biasing teacher affects the work choices students make and whether to study math and science years later,” said Mr. Lavy, who conducted the study with Edith Sand of Tel Aviv University.

In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names. The effect was not the same for tests on other subjects, like English and Hebrew. The researchers concluded that in math and science, the teachers overestimated the boys’ abilities and underestimated the girls’, and that this had long-term effects on students’ attitudes toward the subjects.Beginning in 2002, the researchers studied three groups of Israeli students from sixth grade through the end of high school. The students were given two exams, one graded by outsiders who did not know their identities and another by teachers who knew their names. 

For example, when the same students reached junior high and high school, the economists analyzed their performance on national exams. The boys who had been encouraged when they were younger performed significantly better.

They also tracked the advanced math and science courses that students chose to take in high school. After controlling for other factors that might affect their choices, they concluded that the girls who had been discouraged by their elementary schoolteachers were much less likely than the boys to take advanced courses.

Although the study took place in Israel, Mr. Lavy said that similar research had been conducted in several European countries and that he expected the results were applicable in the United States. The researchers also found that discouragement from teachers in math or science wound up lowering students’ confidence in other subjects at school, showing again the potential importance of nods of encouragement.

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Miller, C. C. (2015, February 6). How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science [Electronic version]. The New York Times, p. A13.