Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial and Educational Achievement in the Obama Era

doi:10.17763/HAER.79.2.L18T23KJ16317X0K

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Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial and Educational Achievement in the Obama Era

Journal Article•DOI•

Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial and Educational Achievement in the Obama Era

Prudence L. Carter¹•Institutions (1)

Stanford University¹

30 Jun 2009-Harvard Educational Review (Harvard Education Publishing Group)-Vol. 79, Iss: 2, pp 287-297

TL;DR: The authors argues that the opportunity gap still exists in our nation's schools and that we must continue to push for truly integrated schools, where black and Latino students are provided with the resources, high standards, and care to meet their full potential.

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Abstract: Reflecting on the 2008 election, Prudence Carter challenges the popular notion that President Obama's victory is symbolic of a postracial society in the United States. Citing statistics about the opportunity gap that still exists in our nation's schools—as well as the recent Supreme Court cases that served to halt racial desegregation— Carter argues that we must continue to push for truly integrated schools, where black and Latino students are provided with the resources, high standards, and care to meet their full potential. Although she sees President Obama's victory as a symbol of national potential, Carter calls on all of us to work toward ending the "empathy gap" that exists both in and out of our nation's schools.

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Journal Article•DOI•

Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education.

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Joel Olson¹•Institutions (1)

Northern Arizona University¹

01 Dec 2005-Perspectives on Politics

TL;DR: The central problem of American democracy, according to Danielle Allen, is a lack of trust among citizens as discussed by the authors, and the challenge of democratic politics, ironically, is to turn strangers into friends.

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Abstract: Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. By Danielle S. Allen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 254p. $25.00 cloth.It may seem odd, given its title, but this is a book about friendship. The central problem of American democracy, according to Danielle Allen, is a lack of trust among citizens. For democracy to be stable, its citizens must feel confident that the obligations and opportunities of society are shared equitably. Yet majority rule is a breeding ground for distrust, particularly in a polity marked by race. Without trust, there is nothing to bind the minority and the majority together. The task of this book is to find ways for citizens to trust one another in these unsettled times. Doing so, Allen argues, requires developing habits of political friendship. The challenge of democratic politics, ironically, is to turn strangers into friends.

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242 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Empathy, Teacher Dispositions, and Preparation for Culturally Responsive Pedagogy:

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Chezare A. Warren¹•Institutions (1)

Michigan State University¹

01 Mar 2018-Journal of Teacher Education

TL;DR: Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) offers elaborate empirical and theoretical conventions for becoming an effective teacher of diverse youth as mentioned in this paper, where empathy has been found to improve classroom teachers' performance.

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Abstract: Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) offers elaborate empirical and theoretical conventions for becoming an effective teacher of diverse youth. Empathy has been found to improve classroom teachers’...

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184 citations

Cites background from "Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial a..."

...Others have done some theorizing about the relevance of empathy to teaching more generally, and offered considerations for its application in practice (Arghode et al., 2013; Carter, 2009; Cooper, 2010; Marx & Pray, 2011; McAllister & Irvine, 2002; Tettegah & Anderson, 2007)....
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...Several scholars (Carter, 2009; G. Howard, 2006; T. C. Howard, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2010; Peck et al., 2015) have argued that effective teachers likely utilize empathy in their work, even if these teachers do not name empathy as a factor of their teaching....
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...This gap in the literature persists despite increased admonition that teachers working with youth in multicultural schooling contexts develop empathy (Carter, 2009; Dolby, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Marx & Pray, 2011; McAlinden, 2012; Tettegah, 2007; Tettegah & Anderson, 2007), and empirical evidence of empathy’s utility for improving the quality of teachers’ crosscultural or cross-racial classroom interactions (Arghode, Yalvac, & Liew, 2013; Cooper, 2010; Feshbach & Feshbach, 2011; Goroshit & Hen, 2016; McAllister & Irvine, 2002; Peck, Maude, & Brotherson, 2015; Stevens, 1967; Warren, 2013, 2014b, 2015b; Warren & Lessner, 2014)....
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...…gap in the literature persists despite increased admonition that teachers working with youth in multicultural schooling contexts develop empathy (Carter, 2009; Dolby, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Marx & Pray, 2011; McAlinden, 2012; Tettegah, 2007; Tettegah & Anderson, 2007), and empirical…...
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Journal Article•DOI•

Towards a Pedagogy for the Application of Empathy in Culturally Diverse Classrooms.

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Chezare A. Warren¹•Institutions (1)

University of Pennsylvania¹

01 Sep 2014-The Urban Review

TL;DR: This paper examined the academic, behavioral, and social/relational interactions of four White female high school teachers with their Black male students and found that empathy, as a professional disposition applied by teachers to negotiate interactions with students, requires two phases of implementation.

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Abstract: Empathy is theorized to improve the teaching effectiveness of teachers in urban and multicultural classroom settings. However, the field has few models useful for training and preparing teachers to cultivate empathy as a professional disposition. This study examines the academic, behavioral, and social/relational interactions of four White female high school teachers with their Black male students. Findings suggest that empathy, as a professional disposition applied by teachers to negotiate interactions with students, requires two phases of implementation. Phase 1 is the acquisition of new knowledge. Phase 2 is the strategic negotiation of that knowledge and interpretation of student feedback to make the necessary pedagogic adjustments in subsequent student–teacher interactions. Implications for teacher education and professional development are discussed.

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82 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Desiring Diversity and Backlash: White Property Rights in Higher Education

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Leigh Patel¹•Institutions (1)

Boston College¹

12 Aug 2015-The Urban Review

TL;DR: The authors argue that the current incidences of backlash to diversity are best understood as a dynamic of complicated, historic and intertwined desires for racial diversity and white entitlement to property, and frame this argument in the theories of critical race theory and settler colonialism, each of which provide necessary but incomplete analytic tools for understanding systemic racism and property rights.

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Abstract: In this theoretical essay, I argue that the current incidences of backlash to diversity are best understood as a dynamic of complicated, historic and intertwined desires for racial diversity and white entitlement to property. I frame this argument in the theories of critical race theory and settler colonialism, each of which provide necessary but incomplete analytic tools for understanding systemic racism and property rights. Situating universities and colleges as white settler property established on seizure contextualizes both the ways in which the desire for diversity is connected to white supremacy and leads to subsequent backlash to the presence of people of color, particularly those in positions of authority. I close with a discussion of the tension between property rights and potential cultural transformation.

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67 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Conflicts and Contradictions: Conceptions of Empathy and the Work of Good-Intentioned Early Career White Female Teachers

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Chezare A. Warren¹•Institutions (1)

Michigan State University¹

01 Jul 2015-Urban Education

TL;DR: This article examined early career white female teachers' conceptions or beliefs about empathy and how those conceptions informed their professional decision making, and found that several conflicts and contradictions exist between teacher participants' conceptions of empathy's relevance to her teaching, and what they do in their actual teaching practice.

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Abstract: Empathy is theorized to help teachers build strategic student–teacher relationships, develop productive parent partnerships, and acquire professionally informed social and cultural perspectives of students and families. However, this literature offers little empirical evidence regarding how practicing teachers conceive of and enact empathy in their work with students of color in urban schools. This article examines early career White female teachers’ conceptions or beliefs about empathy, and how those conceptions inform their professional decision making. Findings suggest several conflicts and contradictions exist between teacher participants’ conceptions of empathy’s relevance to her teaching, and what they do in their actual teaching practice.

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52 citations

Cites background from "Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial a..."

...Carter (2009) contends that school equity in the Obama era falls short if practitioners fail to attend to the empathy gap (p. 294)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools

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Gloria Ladson-Billings¹•Institutions (1)

University of Wisconsin-Madison¹

01 Oct 2006-Educational Researcher

TL;DR: This article argued that a focus on the achievement gap is misplaced and instead, we need to look at the education debt that has accumulated over time, which comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components.

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Abstract: The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. education. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is misplaced. Instead, we need to look at the “education debt” that has accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy with the concept of national debt—which she contrasts with that of a national budget deficit—to argue the significance of the education debt.

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2,366 citations

"Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial a..." refers background in this paper

...…in conjunction with the state and national legislative branches, must develop educational policies that demonstrate a mindfulness of the massive educational “debt,” to borrow from Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006), that people of color inherited from systems of colonization, genocide, and slavery....
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...While we know that the issue of inequality is multifold in its origin, I believe that an Obama administration, in conjunction with the state and national legislative branches, must develop educational policies that demonstrate a mindfulness of the massive educational “debt,” to borrow from Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006), that people of color inherited from systems of colonization, genocide, and slavery....
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Journal Article•DOI•

An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.

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Paul Hanly Furfey, Gunnar Myrdal, Richard Sterner, Arnold M. Rose

01 Jun 1944-American Sociological Review

1,683 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy

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Michael Banton, Gunnar Myrdal

01 Mar 1964-British Journal of Sociology

TL;DR: In the fall of 1938, the economist and former member of the Swedish parliament Gunnar Myrdal traveled from Stockholm to New York City with his wife and research collaborator, Alva Reimer Mårdal, their three children, and two nannies to begin work on the Carnegie Corporation of New York's comprehensive study of black Americans as discussed by the authors.

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Abstract: In the fall of 1938, the economist and former member of the Swedish parliament Gunnar Myrdal traveled from Stockholm to New York City with his wife and research collaborator, Alva Reimer Myrdal, their three children, and two nannies.1 He was in the United States to begin work on the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s comprehensive study of black Americans.2 Far from being Myrdal’s own idea, the study was commissioned by the elite philanthropic organization, which had spent months searching for an appropriate director to head it. Interestingly, the foundation had never considered an American. This is because Carnegie Corporation president Frederick P. Keppel had deemed Americans too emotionally involved in American race relations to offer any objective analyses of black life in the country. That said, he thought that a white European man could be objective (or rather, trustworthy) in his approach, and even more, that such a person could survey white-black relations in the United States “with an entirely fresh mind.”3 Keppel’s advisers had cautioned that scholars from Nazi and colonial European countries likely would provide prejudicial, rather than objective, examinations of white-black relations by equating this social dynamic with majority-minority relations back home. So he zeroed in on the Scandinavian countries, whose populations he presumed to be homogeneous. He gave consideration to Myrdal after a former colleague in philanthropy mentioned him. By then, Myrdal was a celebrated economist on either side of the Atlantic, an experienced policymaker in Sweden, and an adviser to the Rockefeller organizations on the developing social sciences throughout Europe.4 This capable scholar and politician likely seemed ideal to the Carnegie Corporations’s president for several reasons. Keppel not only hoped that the European director would be reliable and offer a fresh take on American race relations but he had made clear to his advisers that he also expected the individual to translate a comprehensive analysis of American race relations into holistic policy prescriptions.5 A respected European social scientist such as Myrdal with experience as a policy expert in a national legislature surely fit this image. As head of the American project between 1938 and 1942, Gunnar Myrdal staffed a team of over 150 social scientists and research assistants across the country (ix–xx).6

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955 citations

"Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial a..." refers background in this paper

...…Louisville, referred to as the “PICS” cases.3 In 2007 the justices adjudicated another case highlighting the “American dilemma”—a term coined by Gunnar Myrdal (1944) and revived by political scientist Jennifer Hochschild (1984) that signals the contradictions between American democratic ideals,…...
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Book•

Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal

[...]

Andrew Hacker¹•Institutions (1)

Stanford University¹

01 Jan 1992

583 citations

Monograph•DOI•

Keepin' it real : school success beyond black and white

[...]

Prudence L. Carter

01 Mar 2007

TL;DR: In this paper, Minding the gap: Race, Ethnicity, achievement and cultural meanings, beyond belief: Acculturation, Accommodation and Non-compliance, and the conflicts of schooling.

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Abstract: Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Minding the Gap: Race, Ethnicity, Achievement and Cultural Meanings 1 Beyond Belief: Acculturation, Accommodation and Non-compliance 2 "Black" Cultural Capital and the Conflicts of Schooling 3 Between a "Soft" and a "Hard" Place: Gender, Ethnicity, and Culture in the School and at Home 4 Next Door Neighbors: The Intersections of Gender & Pan-Minority Identity 5 New "Heads" and Multicultural Navigators: Race, Ethnicity, Poverty & Social Capital 6 School Success Has No Color Appendix

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550 citations