Race-gender matters: Schooling among second -generation Dominicans, West Indians and Haitians in New York City.
Item
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Title
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Race-gender matters: Schooling among second -generation Dominicans, West Indians and Haitians in New York City.
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Identifier
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AAI9946194
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identifier
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9946194
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Creator
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Lopez, Nancy.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Julia Wrigley
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Date
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1999
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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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Education, Sociology of | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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At the close of the twentieth century, women in the United States attain higher levels of education than do men, especially in minority and immigrant communities. This dissertation investigates how race and gender processes, as lived experiences, mold the outlooks of minority and immigrant youth toward education. The central questions of the study are: How do racialization processes differ for men and women? How do racial(izing) and gender(ing) processes intersect in the school setting? How have men and women experienced work within the postindustrial economy? And finally, how do home life and gender roles influence how men and women view education?;The primary data for this study come from focus groups, life history surveys (N = 66) and follow-up in-depth interviews (N = 41) with the children of the largest new immigrant groups in New York City, Dominicans, Haitians and Anglophone West Indians. All participants were young adults, between the ages of 18 to 30. Participation observation in a public high school was also conducted.;This dissertation combines racial formation theory, critical feminist theory, cultural frame of reference theory and segmented assimilation theory to propose the race-gender experience outlook theory as a framework for understanding minority and immigrant schooling. In this framework, two concepts are crucial, race-gender experiences and race-gender outlooks. Race-gender experiences are the episodes in which men and women undergo racial(izing) and gender(ing) processes. Race-gender experiences can take place in a variety of social spheres, including public space, school, work, and the home. Overtime, repeated race-gender experiences affect the way in which men and women view the world. Race-gender outlooks are life perspectives on education and how social mobility is attained in the larger society.;The main finding of the study is that both men and women agreed with their parents' views about the importance of an education for attaining social mobility. However, women maintained optimistic outlooks, while men had ambivalent, but not oppositional, outlooks toward schooling. These differing outlooks were not innate, but were rather an outgrowth of the different experiences men and women had had with racializ(ing) and gender(ing) processes across key social spheres throughout their youth and young adulthood.
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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.
