Genesis of Inequality in US Education System
The African American Diaspora of the United States has experienced slavery, hatred and various other atrocities during the 200 to 300 years of history in the new world. The education policies have changed its course after being a racist bigoted system for years. The inequality, which has been created between the whites, the blacks and the Native Americans from the genesis of America, plays an important role in the background of this research (Reich). This literature review basically deals with the racial segregation due to identity in the United States. This literature review will display a historical overview on the issues like the education of the African American male students because of racism and other inherent problems.
It is a mythical statement that the United States has a ‘classless’ society and the nation of “equal opportunity”. The connection between the race and class in the United States has been in the scenario since the time the African Americans were brought as slaves to work in various plantations and the Native Americans were killed and almost eradicated from the continent. Inequality became a norm in the United States even through various laws were enforced in various government regimes. In 1954, there came a significant change in the American educational world due to a well known law suit between Brown vs. Board of Education (Bohrnstedt). There were various existing state governments in USA who were blatantly supporting the segregation of the blacks and the whites in the educational institutions. Even the use of the public transport and admission in the same school was prohibited according to the state laws. Even today the education system is still fighting to bring equity among the masses of American population. The picture can be drawn clearly with the help of the low literacy rate and high crime rate among the African Americans in the United States. According to Earick’s reports, the white supremacy and privileges are understandable through the support of the educational institutions in racial ideologies and the Eugenics (Race Sciences) played an important role in making life more rotten for the black students in America (Spring).
The recent scenario suggests that the educational inequality among the blacks and whites are due to the high dropout rates and socio economic inefficiencies of the country. According to Coleman’s theory, the problem of racial discrimination and disparity has its genesis in psychology (Coleman). The most efficient way to eradicate this disparity is to eliminate the inequalities in structure and social class. Coleman further states that the basic factors like food, shelter and clothing becomes supremely important to upgrade and educate an entire community. Coleman’s theory clearly suggests the presence of racial discrimination in the educational institutions of the country.
Impact of Brown vs. Board of Education
The report of Aud, Fox and Kewal Ramani suggests that despite several new steps and attention by the government in the last six decades the racial minority’s progress in education has been considerably substandard (Gilbert). The situation can be understood by the fact that the dropout rates of the African Americans are about four times the dropout rates of the Blacks. The participation of the African Americans in the higher education is even less than 50 percent of the whites.
Another report of NAEP suggests that the basic proficiency percentage of the Blacks in the United States is about 29 to 36 percent, which is quite low as compared to the Whites (Anderson). Jack Heckman states that the government has emphasised on the infrastructure building of the schools rather than the development of the African American families. Hence, the root of the problem remained stagnant on this subject. Heckman’s argument was about the inefficiency of the policy makers to implement policies which could have been useful for the betterment of parents in the Black community (Quintana).
This research is done by qualitative as well as quantitative method. The entire research is based on two interviews and twenty sample surveys. The interviews are conducted on one African American and one White American citizen whereas; the sample survey was conducted on ten African Americans and ten Whites in the United States of America. These interviews and sample surveys were conducted in detail and the questions which were asked were entirely relevant for the topic. These interviews of people from two communities will help the research to interpret the viewpoints, assurance and condition of the people in the American Society. The questions are set on the reports of NAEP (National Assessment of Education Policy) and NCES (National Centre of Education Statistics) (Davis).
The research method is basically dependent on few points. They are:-
- The question about the historical inequality between the blacks and the whites were predominant in the interviews. The history of America presents us a picture of problems faced by the Native Americans, the Hispanics and the African Americans. The questions about historical slavery, atrocities and segregation were asked to all the four of them.
- The questions also emphasised the recent policies and laws set by the various state governments along with the central government in the United States.
- The method also emphasises on the issues like the present state of racism and the marginal presence of the blacks in the higher education.
- The research also tries to find out the link between the lower rates of presence of the blacks in the higher education along with high dropout rates with the increasing crime rates in the African American Community.
The setting of the study is based on interviews of twenty two American Citizens. Two methods which were conducted are interviews and sample surveys which were distributed. The interviews were conducted on one African American and one White American. The sample surveys were distributed and collected from ten people from African American community and ten people from American white community.
- Do you think that the history of discrimination of the African Americans in the education system was a reality until 1950’s?
- Do you think things have changed in American education system since the civil rights movement in 1950’s?
- Do you think that the current government policies are good enough for solving the problem?
- Why do you think the Blacks have a higher dropout rate in the schools and colleges in USA?
- Do you think that racism still exists in American institutions?
- Do you find any link between the high crime rate and the high dropout rates of the African Americans? If yes, why?
The sample was mainly qualitative. The research is based on four long interviews of US citizens. Two of them are from the Black community and two of them from the white community.
Current Scenario and Inequalities in US Education
The interviews are conducted successfully and a lot of important findings were obtained from both the interviews and the survey results.
- About 100 percent of the whites agreed with the 100 percent of the blacks that the blacks were discriminated in the education system till 1950s.
- Most of the whites believed that the scenario of American education system has entirely changed after the 1950’s whereas about 70 percent of the whites think that things still to change, as they are economically and socially deprived for hundreds of years.
Table 1.0
- The majority (more than 70 percent) of the whites answered with a big yes whereas 50 percent of the Blacks do not agree with the current government policies. They think the Government is still to provide the required facilities to the deprived section of African Americans.
Table 2.0
- The Majority of the White answered that the dropout rate is a severe concern and it is obviously linked to the increasing crime rates but at the same time they have also denied the role of the Government policies and infrastructure in it. All of the Blacks in the survey and the solo interview which was conducted blamed the inefficiency of the governments of both the states and the country for such a situation.
Table 3.0 (Geier and Geier)
- Most of the people said there is no such presence of racism in the American institutions. Even the blacks have been instrumental in saying that the existence of racism has come down from 1950’s and have almost diminished in the institutions at present.
Table 4.0
- Most of the blacks have claimed that the economic reasons are responsible for the high dropout rates and increase in criminal activities whereas 60 percent of whites claimed that the community and culture of the African Americans is responsible for such a situation.
It is clear through most of the disagreements of the blacks and the whites that there are inconsistencies in terms of the implementation of equal norms among blacks and whites in the US education system. Coleman’s idea of the dropout rates seems to be the reality according to the reports (Downey and Dennis). Despite the fact that the most of the people in the sample survey has disagreed about the presence of racism in the institutions of the United States but it is clear from the answers of the minority statements that it is still marginally present in the institutions. This presence is psychological and historical according to Coleman, which seems to be true through the survey. The survey strongly states that the Government policies are inefficient to address the real problems of the inequality in the education system of the country. Similarly, like Aud and his co writers, the sample survey describes the inefficiencies of the state governments and the Union Governments inefficiency to provide right form of facilities to the minority students (Bottiani, Bradshaw and Mendelson). Heckman’s belief that the real root cause lies in the socio-economic conditions of the community seems to match with the sample survey reports. Most of the blacks have stated that they leave schools because of severe socio-economic problems and costly education system (Baynton).
Conclusion
The situation of the American education system is still to revive the equal norms between the Blacks and the Whites. It is a fact that the cost of education in the United States have increased in the last few decades and this have resulted into havoc problems for the African Americans in the country. There is a considerable disagreement between the Blacks and the whites in various issues like racism, dropout rates and the origin of criminal activities among the African Americans. The findings also suggest the unhappy nature of the African American in terms of US government policy and the facilities they are provided with to cope up with their economic inefficiencies in their community. The anger and uneasiness in the answers of the African Americans are quite different from the outlook of the whites. The uneasiness of the Blacks suggests the current situation in America and their unhappiness over the government policies.
References
Anderson, D. Mark. “In school and out of trouble? The minimum dropout age and juvenile crime.” Review of Economics and Statistics 96.2 (2014): 318-331.
Baynton, Douglas C. “Disability and the justification of inequality in American history.” The disability studies reader 17 (2013): 33-57.
Bohrnstedt, G., et al. “School Composition and the Black-White Achievement Gap. NCES 2015-018.” National Center for Education Statistics (2015).
Bottiani, Jessika H., Catherine P. Bradshaw, and Tamar Mendelson. “Inequality in Black and White high school students’ perceptions of school support: An examination of race in context.” Journal of youth and adolescence 45.6 (2016): 1176-1191.
Coleman, Major G. “At a Loss for Words: Measuring Racial Inequality in America.” The Review of Black Political Economy 43.2 (2016): 177-192.
Davis, Daniel R. “Sustained Inequality.” Race Still Matters: The Reality of African American Lives and the Myth of Postracial Society (2016): 227.
Downey, Douglas B., and Dennis J. Condron. “Fifty Years since the Coleman Report Rethinking the Relationship between Schools and Inequality.” Sociology of Education (2016): 0038040716651676.
Geier, Kathleen, and Kathleen Geier. “Inequality In Black And White”. Pacific Standard. N.p., 2017. Web. 5 June 2017.
Gilbert, Dennis. The American class structure in an age of growing inequality. Sage Publications, 2014.
Quintana, Stephen M., and Lana Mahgoub. “Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Education: Psychology’s Role in Understanding and Reducing Disparities.” Theory Into Practice 55.2 (2016): 94-103.
Reich, Michael. Racial inequality: A political-economic analysis. Princeton University Press, 2017.
Spring, Joel. American education. Routledge, 2015.
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