Editor's Review

In this article, Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja, and Daniel Solorzano expand on their previous work by employing critical race theory to explore and understand incidents of racial microaggressions as experienced by Latina/o students at three selective universities. The authors explore three types of racial microaggressions—interpersonal microaggressions, racial jokes, and institutional microaggressions—and consider the effects of these racist affronts on Latina/o students. Challenging the applicability of Vincent Tinto's three stages of passage for college students, the authors explore the processes by which Latinas/os respond to racial microaggressions and confront hostile campus racial climates. The authors find that, through building community and developing critical navigation skills, Latina/o students claim empowerment from the margins.

Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates

We use the concept of intersectionality to explore the psychological meaning of social class and upward mobility in the lives African Americans. Throughout, we pay special attention to the context of education, a site which many Black Americans feel represents their best hope for upward mobility. Literature related to three themes is reviewed and discussed: (a) the history and significance of class divisions within the Black community, (b) experiences of educational institutions as entryways to upward mobility, and (c) the hidden costs of mobility. It is suggested that future research should address the intersection of gender with class and race, the relevance of class to racial identity, and the experience of downward mobility among Black Americans.

/pdf/race-class-and-the-dilemmas-of-upward-mobility-for-african-300ih0strn.pdf

Race, Class and the Dilemmas of Upward Mobility for African Americans

Prior to the 1960s the social and racial composition of America's elite college preparatory boarding schools ("prep schools") was extremely homogeneous; indeed, the most prestigious prep schools were singlesex schools. According to McLachlan (1970), most prep school students were of British and Scottish American extraction, most schools had but a few Catholic or Jewish students, and very few African, Asian, Native, or Hispanic American students could be found on such campuses. Drawing their students from less than one percent of the population, America's prep schools were considered as being primarily for the children of the upper-class, although some middle-class and a few working-class students were admitted on a scholarship basis (Mills, 1959; Baltzell, 1958, 1964; Domhoff, 1967; Levine, 1980). In 1963, with assistance from Dartmouth College and the Rockefeller Foundation, the "A Better Chance" (ABC) program was founded with the purpose of identifying "talented minority children from predominantly inner-city families for placement in some of the country's most selective independent preparatory schools and a few select public secondary schools" (Griffin, 1990). According to Zweigenhaft and Domhoff (1987), 70% of ABC's students were African American. Since 1963 elite prep schools have continued to admit African American students, but not in numbers proportional to the percentage of African Americans in the school-age population. By the early 1980s only 4% of the students attending prep schools in the United States were African American compared to 19% of public high school students (Cookson & Persell, 1985, p. 67). Moreover, most boarding school administrators are from upper-, upper-middle, and middle-class backgrounds, and there are very few African American or other minority faculty members at the elite schools. Being African American in an upper-class academic institution is a unique experience. African American prep school students have the

Race and Class in America's Elite Preparatory Boarding Schools: African Americans as the "Outsiders Within.".

This article examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income students of diverse racial backgrounds to enter elite private high schools in the fall of the ninth grade. Combining ethnographic fieldwork completed during the program with follow-up interviews with ten students after their first semester at boarding school, this article addresses how students interact with and integrate into wealthy, predominantly White schools in an attempt to gain social mobility. Looking at how students interpret their surroundings, the article argues that students are trained to view themselves as “diversifiers” in order to successfully adapt to their new schools. In this role, students perceive themselves as especially serious and motivated students, and their elite peers as naive, and find satisfaction in teaching others how to interact with people from different class and racial backgrounds. The paper concludes by considering the ramifications of the diversifier concept on efforts to diversify elite institutions and proposes further possible research sites where the concept may be applicable.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1742058X0808017X

Editor's Review

References

Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates

Race, Class and the Dilemmas of Upward Mobility for African Americans

Race and Class in America's Elite Preparatory Boarding Schools: African Americans as the "Outsiders Within.".

Diversifiers at elite schools