Christine Clark

Turning the Tide of the Digital Divide: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Surfing

This is the final article in a seven-part series on multicultural education and the digital divide, focusing primarily on race, class, sex, language, and disability. Over the last 2 years, we have explored the divide in general, paying special attention to how it relates to (a) race, class, sex, language, and disability; (b) access to computers and the Internet; and (c) multicultural education and equity. Our goal was twofold. First, responding to the lack of urgency within the field of multicultural and social justice education to critically examine and address the digital divide, we intended to highlight its contribution to continuing inequities in education. Second, responding to simplistic approaches for eliminating the divide by taking it out of a larger context of educational inequities, we intended to suggest strategies, general and specific, for dismantling the divide through multicultural education content, pedagogy, and philosophy.

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Critical Race Theory Perspective on College Rankings

Abstract:Critical Race Theory contends that institutions codify and sustain racial inequalities even absent explicitly racist motives or actions. College ranking systems perpetuate such institutional racism by socially constructing minority-serving institutions (MSIs) as less valuable and prestigious. By assigning greater worth to criteria favoring more selective institutions, ranking systems assign lower scores to institutions enrolling higher percentages of underrepresented students. The authors compared three higher education institution ranking systems appraisals of MSIs. These systems employ varying methodological approaches to classifying college status, with apparent impacts on MSIs performances. Implications of these rankings on the standings and fortunes of MSIs are considered.