Under one roof, through many doors: Understanding racial equality in an unequal world.
Item
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Title
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Under one roof, through many doors: Understanding racial equality in an unequal world.
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Identifier
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AAI3103111
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identifier
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3103111
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Creator
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Galletta, Anne.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michelle Fine
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social | Education, Sociology of | Black Studies
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Abstract
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This case study of the desegregation of the Shaker Heights, Ohio, school system, from 1965 through the present, examines how parents, students, and educators have conceptualized racial equality and what their experience of racial equality has been in the school system. Primary methods of data collection included semi-structured interviews and a review of archival materials, with a review of student data. Using a qualitative research approach, the study points to the persistence of relations of power accorded to race and class, in which the potential for loss of white students and, more recently, middle class and affluent black students portends the loss of resources and reputation for academic excellence, a conundrum for desegregated schools. The study notes the district's competing and interdependent efforts to draw African American students into sites of educational privilege for which the district is known, while endeavoring to retain those students who keep the system racially and economically balanced. The study also discusses the increase over time of academically homogeneous classrooms, resulting in patterns of enrollment based on race. An analysis of student narratives suggests the effectiveness of structural and social psychological boundaries in reinforcing racial stereotypes concerning achievement and motivation. The study underscores vastly different experiences of schooling, contributing to the gap between white and black students in terms of accessing equal educational opportunities, producing equal academic outcomes, and exercising equal relations of power. Finally, discrepant experiences in schooling influenced students' views of racial equality in the school system. The study builds on Apfelbaum's theory of relations of power in intergroup conflict (Apfelbaum, 1979, 1999) and theorizes education as a "property of power" (Ng, 1979), with its distribution subject to tensions between beliefs about individual social mobility and beliefs about community-wide social change. The study provides a complex portrait as to how members of a racially and economically diverse community have raised and resisted questions about race and power as they struggled to make racial integration a possibility.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
