Journal of Negro Education 

About: Journal of Negro Education is an academic journal published by Howard University. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Higher education & Population. It has an ISSN identifier of 0022-2984. Over the lifetime, 3765 publications have been published receiving 87018 citations. The journal is also known as: The Journal of Negro education.

The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and Public Policy.

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Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.

Abstract: Microaggressions are subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously. Using critical race theory as a framework, the study described in this article provides an examination of racial microaggressions and how they influence the collegiate racial climate. Using focus group interview data from African American students at three universities, it reveals that racial microaggressions exist in both academic and social spaces in the collegiate environment. The study shows how African American students experience and respond to racial microaggressions. It also demonstrates how racial microaggressions have a negative impact on the campus racial climate. ... one must not look for the gross and obvious. The subtle, cumulative miniassault is the substance of today's racism... (Pierce, 1974, p. 516) In and of itself a microaggression may seem harmless, but the cumulative burden of a lifetime of microaggressions can theoretically contribute to diminished mortality, augmented morbidity, and flattened confidence. (Pierce, 1995, p. 281) These two epigraphs by psychiatrist Chester Pierce over a 21-year period speak volumes about an important, persistent, and underresearched social problem in the United States: racial microaggressions. Little is known about microaggressions, and yet this subtle form of racism has a dramatic impact on the lives of African Americans. Pierce and his colleagues have defined racial microaggressions as "subtle, stunning, often automatic, and nonverbal exchanges which are 'put downs' of blacks by offenders" (Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Wills, 1978, p. 66). They further maintain that these "offensive mechanisms used against blacks often are innocuous" and that the "cumulative weight of their never-ending burden is the major ingredient in black-white interactions" (p. 66). Additionally, Davis (1989) defined racial microaggressions as "stunning, automatic acts of disregard that stem from unconscious attitudes of white superiority and constitute a verification of black inferiority" (p. 1576). Racial microaggressions, or unconscious and subtle forms of racism, though pervasive, are seldom investigated (Delgado & Stefancic, 1992; Johnson, 1988; Lawrence, 1987; Sol6rzano, 1998). Occasionally, African American students get a glimpse into the world of unconscious racism as demonstrated in comments such as those related to us by students who participated in the study described in this article: "When I [a White person] talk about those Blacks, I really wasn't talking about you," "You [a Black person] are not like the rest of them. You're different," "If only there were more of them [Black people] like you [a Black person]," and "I don't think of you [a Black person] as Black." Referring to White authority figures in particular (i.e., judges and other criminal justice authorities), Davis (1989) has suggested that Whites are capable of such utterances because "cognitive habit, history, and culture [have made them] unable to hear the range of relevant voices and grapple with what reasonably might be said in the voice of discrimination's victims" (p. 1576). Subsequently, as Pierce (1974) maintained, each Black person "must be taught to recognize these microaggressions and construct his future by taking appropriate action at each instance of recognition" (p. 520). RACE, RAcism, AND RACIAL MICROAGGRESSIONS Our study of the collegiate racial climate and the effect of racial microaggressions begins by defining race and racism. One can argue that dominant groups often attempt to legitimate their position via ideological means or a set of beliefs that explains or justifies some actual or potential social arrangement. According to Banks (1995), an examination of U.S. history reveals that the "color line" of race is a socially constructed category, created to differentiate racial groups and to show the superiority or dominance of one race-in particular, Whites-over others. …

Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality.

Abstract: Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro. New York and Great Britain: Routledge, 1995. 242 pp. $22.95, cloth. Reviewed by Rodney D. Green, Department of Economics, Howard University. Black Wealth, White Wealth opens with an evocative racial comparison of income and wealth which reveals that although half of the top 10 earners in the U.S. are Black, virtually no Blacks are included among the wealthiest 400 Americans. Indeed, the wealth levels for those Blacks who have "made it" into the American middle class are shown to be only 15% of the wealth level of Whites in the same income category. These and other presented data suggest that if Blacks are disadvantaged relative to Whites in terms of income-and they are, earning on average less than 60% of White household incomethen they are completely eclipsed when it comes to wealth. This tale of two middle classes is part of an even bleaker tale of two unequal nations within America, a tale Oliver and Shapiro attribute to three historical processes: the racialization of state policy, the economic detour, and the sedimentation of racial inequality. These three concepts reflect, respectively, how government policy has systematically reduced Black capacity to accumulate wealth by historically limiting access to land, housing, and other wealth builders; how Blacks have been prevented from forming thriving businesses because of institutional barriers to their serving the entire domestic market, leaving Blacks in impoverished niche businesses; and how the cumulative effects of Black oppression have cemented Blacks to the bottom of society's economic hierarchy. The story begins in chapter one, in which the authors revisit Reconstruction's failure to provide the freedmen with elementary productive property-the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. They move next to a review of the Federal Housing Administration's role in deliberately blocking Black home ownership from the 1930s through the 1970s, followed by a contemporary account of how redlining and mortgage discrimination have deepened Black economic deprivation. They also review the ways in which macroeconomic forces such as globalization and deindustrialization have undermined Black economic wellbeing. For example, they point out that these forces have eliminated over half of the Black industrial jobs in the Great Lakes area in the last two decades. In chapter two, Oliver and Shapiro sketch a sociology of race and wealth in America, wrestling (perhaps too briefly) with the race/class debate and invoking Marx and Weber. With this backdrop, they offer additional historical and anecdotal evidence for the three historical processes noted above. Chapter three presents a discussion of the data constraints past researchers have experienced in attempting to study wealth distribution in the U.S. The authors surmount such difficulties themselves by using the relatively new Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data set to measure individual net worth (all wealth) and net financial assets (net worth minus housing equity and automobile value) as they artfully describe the trend of deepening economic inequality between the races since the 1980s. This theme is extended further in chapter four, in which two startling findings are highlighted: (a) though Black income has consistently hovered at around 60% of White income, Black wealth is only one-twelfth of White wealth; and (b) Black financial assets are, at the median, zero! Oliver and Shapiro go on to note that a large share of each race has no financial assets, and even larger shares of both races could not sustain lives even at poverty level for more than a few months if they lost their current income. The absolute wealth differences mentioned above conceal an even graver problem detailed in chapter five. Most Black wealth is shown to consist of home equity and automobile ownership while a substantial share of White wealth is shown to include financial assets, the key to wealth accumulation. …

The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education

Abstract: The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGhee Banks. New York: Simon & Schuster/Macmillan, 1995. 882 pp. $75.00, cloth. Reviewed by Donna Y. Ford, The Ohio State University. In The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, editors Banks and Banks and their contributors have created a scholarly masterpiece that synthesizes research, theory, and policy on multicultural education. The book's 11 parts are woven into a comprehensive body of work not likely to be equalled or duplicated soon. Unlike some multicultural scholars, Banks and Banks have adopted a broadly encompassing perspective on multiculturalism. Their vision of multiculturalism is not limited to multiethnic education-that is, education that attends exclusively to issues of race or ethnicity. Instead, contributors focus on all racially and culturally diverse groups-Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans-as well as examining diversity within and between groups. The editors offer the following definition of multicultural education: A field of study designed to increase educational equity for all students that incorporates, for this purpose, content, concepts, principles, theories, and paradigms from history, the social and behavioral sciences, and particularly from ethnic studies and women studies. (p. xii) Equally noteworthy is the editors' inclusion of demographic matrices often overlooked in education and research on multicultural education: linguistic and economic diversity, diverse families, gender identity, and combinations of these variables. Although no group is viewed as a homogenous collective of common traditions and values, these important (but sometimes superfiaal) cultural distinctions are not given undue attention in the Handbook. Rather, the authors focus their discussions on more substantive cultural issues and variables. Many contributors shed new and additional light on the topic of their chapter; few resort to rehashing the familiar and tiresome discourse that defensively argues the need for multicultural education. The contributors merely present the data, and readers are left to form their own opinions. The Handbook is divided into 47 chapters presented in an in-depth, balanced, and scholarly fashion. Each chapter successfully describes and extends research, theory, policy, and / or practice. The book clarifies the meaning and boundaries of multicultural education and helps to alleviate the widespread misconceptions that hinder its greater acceptance in academia. To this end, contributors use case studies, survey research, ethnographic studies, historical inquiry, philosophical inquiry, and experimental and quasi-experimental research. In keeping with the editors' concept of multicultural education, the contributors also adopt an interdisciplinary approach, borrowing relevant work from history, anthropology, sociology, literature, and other disciplines. Part I summarizes the history, goals, status, and development of multicultural education. It begins with James Banks's article, which outlines key dimensions of multicultural education as well as landmark events in the historical development of ethnic studies and multicultural education. Geneva Gay analyzes the conceptual connections between general curriculum theory and multicultural education. Donna Gollnick reports on national and state-level multicultural education initiatives aimed at students who may be low-income, female, limited-English-proficient, or from racially and culturally diverse groups. Gollnick categorizes these initiatives using the Sleeter and Grant multicultural typology (e.g., singlegroup studies, human relations). Cherry Banks discusses gender and race as factors in educational leadership and administration, focusing on factors that undermine the attainment of leadership positions among women. Although an important chapter, it seems misplaced in this section of the book, and perhaps would have been better placed in Part IX, which focuses on higher education. …