Natasha Kumar Warikoo

Cultural Explanations for Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Academic Achievement: A Call for a New and Improved Theory

In this article we assess the literature on cultural explanations for ethno-racial differences in K–12 schooling and academic performance. Some cultural arguments problematically define certain ethno-racial identities and cultures as subtractive from the goal of academic mobility while defining the ethnic cultures and identities of others as additive and oriented toward this goal. We review two prevailing schools of thought that compare immigrant and native minority students: cultural–ecological theory and segmented assimilation theory. Second, we examine empirical research that highlights the complexity of culture, focusing on four domains: (a) the school’s cultural environment; (b) variation in identities and cultural practices within ethnic and racial groups; (c) the multidimensional nature of culture and its variable impact on students; and (d) the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. This literature—when synthesized—suggests that a coherent theory of culture’s impact on ethnic and racial differences in schooling outcomes must unpack the multiple influences of identity and context more deliberately than previous literature has done. Finally, we call for studies that employ comparative research across groups and understand race and ethnicity contextually, not as mere dummy variables, thereby equipping researchers with the tools to better explain how culture influences schooling and achievement.

Gender and ethnic identity among second-generation Indo-Caribbeans

Abstract This article discusses second-generation Indo-Caribbean (West Indian of Indian descent) teenagers’ ethnic identities, through a look at their taste preferences and self assertions of identity. Both Indo-Caribbean young men and women draw from multiple influences on their identities. In terms of tastes in clothing and movies, however, girls are more interested in things Indian, and in “Indian culture”. Boys, on the other hand, choose to distance themselves from an Indian identity. Three factors explain these gender differences in choices about ethnic identity: (1) different media images for South Asian men and women; (2) a school context lending different levels of peer symbolic status to perceived Indian boys and girls; and (3) a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. The findings in this article point to the need to pay attention to gender differences when considering ethnic incorporation.

Race and the teacher–student relationship: interpersonal connections between West Indian students and their teachers in a New York City high school1

Through a review of interviews with West Indian, African American, and white teachers at a New York City high school with a large West Indian population (ages 14 to 18), in this paper I discuss the complicated nature of teacher–student matching, and its impact on student achievement. I find that West Indian teachers have strong points of connection with their West Indian students, and clearly serve as their advocates when cultural differences such as parental nonparticipation, lack of discipline, and avoidance of eye contact come up. Non‐West Indian teachers, however, also connect with West Indian students. White teachers draw upon common experiences of immigration, and African American teachers draw upon common experiences of race prejudice and American race relations. The downside of strong identification with one group of students—in this case, West Indians—can sometimes lead to a distancing from others—in this case, African Americans. West Indian teachers sometimes identify strongly as West Indian in ...Through a review of interviews with West Indian, African American, and white teachers at a New York City high school with a large West Indian population (ages 14 to 18), in this paper I discuss the complicated nature of teacher–student matching, and its impact on student achievement. I find that West Indian teachers have strong points of connection with their West Indian students, and clearly serve as their advocates when cultural differences such as parental nonparticipation, lack of discipline, and avoidance of eye contact come up. Non‐West Indian teachers, however, also connect with West Indian students. White teachers draw upon common experiences of immigration, and African American teachers draw upon common experiences of race prejudice and American race relations. The downside of strong identification with one group of students—in this case, West Indians—can sometimes lead to a distancing from others—in this case, African Americans. West Indian teachers sometimes identify strongly as West Indian in opposition to negative stereotypes of African Americans, possibly to the detriment of their African American students. Hence, although recruiting teachers of color to serve our increasingly diverse school population is important, teacher training must also spend time on diversity training and developing intercultural understandings.

Symbolic Boundaries and School Structure in New York and London Schools.

This article shows that an ethnically diverse student population leads to blurred ethnic and racial boundaries in high schools. Still, students in New York distinguish themselves much more along ethnic and racial lines than do London students. The evidence presented suggests that, in addition to national‐level differences, traditional British school structure, which provides continuity of peers through the form class as well as time for socializing, leads to less emphasis on ethnic and racial boundaries than in the anomic structure of traditional urban American public high schools. It follows that, to promote ethnic and racial integration among teens, schools should not only serve integrated student bodies but also should maintain structures that present opportunities for students to bridge racial and ethnic boundaries. The study employs ethnographic data from schools in New York and London and 120 in‐depth interviews.

Economic Americanness and defensive inclusion: social location and young citizens’ conceptions of national identity

ABSTRACT What does it mean to be ‘American’? Drawing on in-depth interviews with 76 undergraduates attending elite universities and 72 teenaged citizen children of immigrants living in mostly low-income households, we identify understudied economic narratives of Americanness: as future-oriented economic opportunities for elite undergraduates or stratified notions of current economic condition among immigrant-origin teens. We also find, depending on social location, that economic notions of Americanness overlap with other boundaries: whiteness for some immigrant-origin youth, and civic membership for elite undergraduates. Elite students place themselves at the centre of Americanness; immigrant-origin youth, even though they are U.S. citizens, sometimes place themselves outside these symbolic boundaries. Still, youth in more disadvantaged social locations sometimes appropriate markers of Americanness in strategies of what we call ‘defensive inclusion’, employing symbolic boundaries of hard work, multiculturalism and birthplace to contest perceived social boundaries of race and class that might exclude them from the core of ‘Americanness’. Our findings suggest that researchers should include measures of economic national identity in future survey-based work and examine discursive practices of defensive inclusion in fieldwork.

The next generation of immigration scholarship

Tomas Jimenez’s The Other Side of Assimilation is an insightful study of immigration from the perspective of non-immigrants. While most studies of immigration consider how immigration changes immigrants and their children, Jimenez instead investigates how immigrants and their children change “established” Americans (that is, people who are US-born and have US-born parents). This creative approach takes seriously assimilation as a two-way process, shaped by both immigrants and established Americans, as Alba and Nee (1997) described in their groundbreaking theory of assimilation more than twenty years ago. Alba and Nee (1997) define assimilation as “the decline, and at its endpoint the disappearance, of an ethnic/racial distinction and the cultural and social differences that express it” (863), pointing out that assimilation can be driven both by changes in the immigrant group as well as in established residents. Jimenez’s book is long overdue in the literature on immigration and assimilation – it is the first major book examining just how the process Alba and Nee outlined unfolds on the host side of the immigration boundary. Jimenez’s previous work on “replenished ethnicity” (2010) began his investigation of how immigrants shape the lives of established individuals – in the case of replenished ethnicity, how immigrants strengthen the ethnic identities of co-ethnics who are second and later generation. The Other Side of Assimilation takes this work one step further, comparing three distinct locales in Silicon Valley to understand how established Americans change through the presence of immigrants in their neighbourhoods. Jimenez studied three Silicon Valley neighbourhoods: Cupertino, Berryessa and East Palo Alto, conducting, along with his graduate students, about sixty in-depth interviews in each with adults who are neither immigrants nor the children of immigrants. Cupertino is noteworthy for its high property prices and reputation for high-performing schools, which have attracted professional immigrant parents to settle there. Cupertino’s population is half immigrants and two-thirds Asian American. Most Cupertino respondents in

Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous SocietyOur Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society, edited by LewisEarlCantorNancy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. 263 pp.

habitat,’’ Lauster reminds readers (p. 198). While I have minor quibbles with the book—the two portions of the book feel a bit disjointed, many of the interview quotes are slightly overwrought, and the author’s dislike of single-family homes occasionally borders on polemical—The Death and Life of the Single-Family House tells an important story about Vancouver’s success in overcoming its addiction to single-family homes. By reminding readers about the benefits of vibrant city life, Lauster’s story would no doubt earn the approval of Jane Jacobs, from whom the title is borrowed.

27.95 cloth. ISBN: 978069 1170480.

Reading six reviews of my book is a humbling experience. I am honoured by my colleagues’ careful attention to my work, and for their feedback. They raise many important issues related to my investigation of undergraduates attending elite US and British universities and their understandings of race and meritocracy. Below, I focus on four topics the critics raise. First, I take up the question of race frames, their origins, and how individuals draw upon them. Second, I address questions of sampling. Third, I address issues related to university admissions – in particular, an admissions lottery, and the role of quantitative measures like the SAT in producing inequality in admissions outcomes. Finally, I address questions related to my perspective as an American scholar of race in Britain. Together the feedback makes for a rich research agenda on meaning-making on race and meritocracy.

A research agenda on race and meritocracy

rise of Muslim political parties which, influenced by Islamic ideologies and movements in Egypt, Algeria, and Afganistan, aspire to reconstruct society according to Islamic laws (the shariah). Karim captures this clash powerfully in a common set of views and allegations circulated by the clergy, which include blaming NGOs for promoting a culture of ‘‘shaheb [NGO male field-worker] over shami [husband],’’ calling women’s increased interactions with men and public sphere participation ‘‘NGO-sponsored prostitution,’’ alleging that NGOs were converting the poor to Christianity, equating Western donors with the East India Company, burning down NGO offices and schools, and conflating female labor in NGO-sponsored livelihood projects with female promiscuity. She explains that this opposition to NGO-sponsored development projects is in part economically motivated (to get a share of the financial resources commanded by NGOs) and in part ideologically motivated. After decades of research published on the NGO sector in Bangladesh, it is surprising to learn how NGOs as influential as BRAC and Proshika had to recognize and bend to the social power and influence of the clergy in order to keep operating successfully in the rural societies of Bangladesh. Karim’s interpretations sometimes appear as a one-sided critique of NGOs. She mentions the role of NGOs in introducing radical liberal ideas about women’s roles, establishing the presence of women in the public sphere, enabling some women to achieve ‘‘limited practical freedoms,’’ promoting the notion of liberal democracy, and promoting a political culture among its rural beneficiaries, including political participation by women. Yet, instead of adequately commending the transformative role of NGOs in the rural societies of Bangladesh, Karim writes in a roundly negative assessment that ‘‘These democracy discourses have brought a profusion of development dollars from Western agencies to the NGO sector to promote human rights and good governance’’ (p. 133), and ‘‘. . . it is more instructive to examine how NGOs and the clergy are entangled in similar motivations. The NGOs and clergy attempt to establish their governance over rural subjects’’ (p. 135). In conclusion, Karim suggests that instead of supporting development NGOs, efforts should be directed at invigorating citizens’ groups as sites for collective action so that people can gain command over their own destinies. After such a trenchant criticism of NGOs and indirectly of the Islamic establishment, such an uncritical view of citizens’ groups as always enlightened and egalitarian (and without speculating on the forces to which they might become susceptible) seems surprising. Overall, however, this book sheds light on the political economy within which NGOs and development programs operate in a country and, for that reason, is extremely valuable.