Prudence L. Carter

Segmented assimilation and minority cultures of mobility

Recent work on second-generation immigrants posits that racial discrimination and a restructuring economy are likely to create different paths of assimilation for recent non-white immigrants than earlier European immigrants followed, and may even decouple acculturation and economic mobility. But while these discussions have considered the minority lower class as a possible destination for assimilation, middle-class minorities have been largely ignored. This article considers how the experiences of middle-class minorities might alter our models of second-generation incorporation. We propose that the minority middle classes share a minority culture of mobility, a set of cultural elements responsive to distinctive problems that usually accompany minority middle-class status, including problems of interracial encounters in public settings and inter-class relations within the minority community. We illustrate this minority culture of mobility with a brief case study of the African-American middle class, and di...

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.

Educational Equity Demands Empathy

An educator finds empathy is key to conntecting students with each other and with their instructors.

Education’s Limitations and its Radical Possibilities:

Public education aims to grow generations of literate, critical, creative, and civically engaged students who edify and build a living democracy. Somewhere, that purpose has faltered.

Learning the Hard Way: Masculinity, Place, and the Gender Gap in Education

provides is that moral panics about Islam and Muslims are not isolated incidents. However, the book focuses mainly on one dimension of the interconnectedness—that of localities through the common figure of folk devils. A further study of unending cycles of moral panics over a longer period of time within the same nation might shed light on the mechanisms that produce the ongoing sense of crisis around Muslims. These continuous crises keep a constant focus on Muslims as a threat to social order and national values and thus ontologizes them as the antagonistic force vis-à-vis the nation. As a result, basic issues such as the welfare state, democracy, human rights, and women’s (or gay) rights are now debated as if they are achievements based on cultural unity threatened by Muslims. In this new political environment, cultural rather than economic attributes increasingly define social groups. In this sense, the highlight of the book is undoubtedly the last entry, in which Greg Noble criticizes the ‘‘tendency in uses of moral panic theory to collapse the complex processes of symbolization into a singular, dominant, ideological representation of the folk devil’’ (p. 218) which is also characteristic for this collection. He points out that there is always a public discussion of the other side of the story. What makes Muslims into an ontological category is the unresolvable antagonism between the good moral order and the evil (threat). The imagining of evil moves between an abstraction and a remarkable specificity—a movement central to the cultural panic around Muslims. For all its uneven study of (at times) incomparable cases, the book addresses the vastly unexplored connection between disparate moral panics around Islam and Muslims in the Western part of the globe. A more systematic exploration of these connections might show that the production of the devil is not a ‘‘simple’’ case of Islamophobia but the production of a new global threat that is used to justify the new hegemonic order. Learning the Hard Way: Masculinity, Place, and the Gender Gap in Education, by Edward W. Morris. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012. 212pp.

Race in the Schools: Perpetuating White Dominance?By Judith R. Blau with Elizabeth Stern and other collaborators. Lynne Rienner, 2004. 237 pp. Cloth,

26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780813553696.

49.95; paper,

number of mid-range theories, such as the culture of poverty argument, the discussion of the declining significance of race, trickle-down economics, as well as theories of gender and racial segregation and discrimination, is exemplary. In sum, I am impressed by Iceland’s precise, yet easy-going presentation style, by his command over a vast amount of empirical data, and by his ability to explain complex concepts and theories in an interesting and accessible way. This is an excellent handbook, which should be widely used in and outside of classrooms.