Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T04:25:11.764Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

STUDYING WHILE BLACK

Trust, Opportunity, and Disrespect1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2014

Sally Haslanger
Sally Haslanger*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
*
Corresponding author: Sally Haslanger, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 32–D808, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. E-mail: shaslang@mit.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How should we explore the relationship between race and educational opportunity? One approach to the Black-White achievement gap explores how race and class cause disparities in access and opportunity. In this paper, I consider how education contributes to the creation of race. Considering examples of classroom micropolitics, I argue that breakdowns of trust and trustworthiness between teachers and students can cause substantial disadvantages and, in the contemporary United States, this happens along racial lines. Some of the disadvantages are academic: high achievement is more difficult when one faces mistrust, ego depletion, effort pessimism, and insult. And within a knowledge economy, exclusion from knowledge work makes one vulnerable to injustice. But the problem goes deeper than achievement, for schools are contexts in which we develop self-understandings and identities that situate us as members of society. If students of color are systematically denied full participation in trusting conversations that create shared knowledge—especially, knowledge that holds power within the dominant culture—they are unjustly deprived resources to form flourishing selves that are suited to the positions of power and authority. The argument suggests that knowledge is not best understood simply as a commodity to be distributed, and opportunity is not just a matter of access. Moreover, even if access is granted, those who are motivated and talented can fail: they drain their willpower by coping with insults, or reasonably lose optimism about their efficacy. Over time, motivation may shift away from achievement, and under the circumstances this can be a rational response. The barriers to achievement are many, but true opportunity is impossible without trust and trustworthiness.

Keywords

Achievement GapEducational OpportunityTrustSocial EpistemologyCritical Race TheoryRaceHigh SchoolBias
Type
Race in a “Postracial” Epoch
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 109 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alcoff, Linda (2000). Habits of Hostility: On Seeing Race. Philosophy Today, 44 (SPEP Supplement): 30–40.Google Scholar
Alexander, Michelle (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth (2010). The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, K. Anthony (2010). The Honor Code. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Baumeister, Roy F., Bratslavsky, Ellen, Muraven, Mark, and Tice, Dianne M. (1998). Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74: 1252–1265.Google Scholar
Blum, Lawrence (2002). I’m Not a Racist, But...: The Moral Quandary of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert (2001). Articulating Reasons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, Nathaniel Adam Tobias (2012). Sexual Semiotics and the Seriousness of Stigma. Paper presented at The Ethical and Political Implications of Implicit Bias Conference, Sheffield, UK, July 13.Google Scholar
Daukas, Nancy (2006). Epistemic Trust and Social Location. Episteme, 3: 109–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald (1984). Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
De Beauvoir, Simone ([1952] 1989). The Second Sex. Trans. and Ed. Parshley, H. M.. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Diener, Carol I. and Dweck, Carol S. (1978). An Analysis of Learned Helplessness: Continuous Changes in Performance, Strategy, and Achievement Cognitions Following Failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(5): 451–462.Google Scholar
Doe v. State of Louisiana (1985). 479 So. 2d 369 (La. Ct. App.).Google Scholar
Dweck, Carol S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1980). Power/Knowledge. Ed. Gordon, Colin. Trans. Gordon, Colin, Marshall, Leo, Mepham, John, and Soper, Kate. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1995). Discipline and Punish. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn (1992). White Woman Feminist. In Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism 1976–1992, pp. 147–169. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Fung, Katherine (2012). Geraldo Rivera: Trayvon Martin’s ‘Hoodie Is As Much Responsible For [His] Death As George Zimmerman’ (VIDEO). Huffington Post, March 23. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/23/geraldo-rivera-trayvon-martin-hoodie_n_1375080.html> (accessed March 30, 2013).+(accessed+March+30,+2013).>Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Glasgow, Joshua (2008). A Theory of Race. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul (1975). Logic and Conversation. In Davidson, Donald and Harman, Gilbert (Eds.), The Logic of Grammar, pp. 64–75. Encino, CA: Dickenson.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1986). Making Up People. In Heller, Thomas C., Sosna, Morton, and Wellbery, David E. (Eds.), Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, pp. 222–236. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1994). The Looping Effects of Human Kinds. In Sperber, Daniel, Premack, David, and Premack, Ann J. (Eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, pp. 351–394. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally (2000). Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be? Noûs, 34(1): 31–55.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally (2011). Ideology, Generics, and Common Ground. In Witt, Charlotte (Ed.), Feminism and Metaphysics, pp. 179–208. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holton, Richard (2009). Willing, Wanting, Waiting. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Job, Veronika, Dweck, Carol S., and Walton, Gregory M. (2010). Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head?: Implicit Theories About Willpower Affect Self-Regulation. Psychological Science, 21(11): 1686–1693.Google Scholar
Koenig, Barbara A., Soo-Jin Lee, Sandra, and Richardson, Sarah S. (2008). Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae (2009). Sexual Solipsism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lessig, Lawrence (1995). The Regulation of Social Meaning. University of Chicago Law Review, 62(3): 943–1045.Google Scholar
Lewis, David K. (1979). Scorekeeping in a Language Game. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8: 339–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, Ron (2003). Social Construction, Social Roles, and Stability. In Schmitt, Frederick F. (Ed.), Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social Reality, pp. 327–353. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Marley-Payne, Jack (2012). Inferential Role and Ideology Critique. Unpublished Manuscript. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Mason, Edward (2013). Knowledge Economy is Leaving Some Behind. Boston Globe. October 27. <http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/10/26/class-divisions-hardening-knowledge-economy/6JQhl3MZVEala25R7syRZP/story.html> (accessed January 16, 2014).+(accessed+January+16,+2014).>Google Scholar
McGowan, Mary Kate (2004). Conversational Exercitives: Something Else We Do with Our Words. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27(1): 93–111.Google Scholar
McGowan, Mary Kate (2009). Oppressive Speech. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 87(3): 389–407.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni (1992). Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Press.Google Scholar
Muraven, Mark, Baumeister, Roy F., and Tice, Dianne M. (1999). Longitudinal Improvement of Self-Regulation Through Practice: Building Self-Control Strength Through Repeated Exercise. The Journal of Social Psychology, 139(4): 446–457.Google Scholar
Muraven, Mark, Tice, Dianne M., and Baumeister, Roy F. (1998). Self-control as a Limited Resource: Regulatory Depletion Patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3): 774–789.Google Scholar
Ogbu, John (1983). Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies. Comparative Education Review, 27(2): 168–190.Google Scholar
Omi, Michael (1997). Racial Identity and the State: The Dilemmas of Classification. Law and Inequality, 15(1): 7–24.Google Scholar
Perry, Theresa (2003). Up from the Parched Earth: Towards a Theory of African-American Achievement. In Perry, Theresa, Steele, Claude, and Hilliard, Asa G. III (Eds.), Young, Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students, pp. 1–108. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Peters, Michael (2002). Educational Policy Research and the Global Knowledge Economy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34(1): 91–102.Google Scholar
Roediger, David (1991). The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Schmeichel, Brandon J., Vohs, Kathleen D., and Baumeister, Roy F. (2003). Intellectual Performance and Ego Depletion: Role of the Self in Logical Reasoning and Other Information Processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85: 33–46.Google Scholar
Seligman, Martin (1990). Learned Optimism. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. (1992). A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 98(1): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shack, William A. (1970-71) On Black American Values in White America: Some Perspectives on the Cultural Aspects of Learning Behavior and Compensatory Education. Social Science Research Council, Sub-Committee on Values and Compensatory Education.Google Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth (1990). The Inessential Woman. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, Quayshawn (2012). What ‘Biological Racial Realism’ Should Mean. Philosophical Studies, 159(2): 181–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert (2002). Common Ground. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25: 701–721.Google Scholar
Stevens, Jacqueline (1999). Reproducing the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, Abigail (2007). What Might Be Learned from the Natural and Social Sciences? Paper Presented at the American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting, Chicago, IL, April.Google Scholar
Stucke, Tanja S. and Baumeister, Roy F. (2006). Ego Depletion and Aggressive Behavior: Is the Inhibition of Aggression a Limited Resource? European Journal of Social Psychology, 36(1): 1–13.Google Scholar
Thomas, Laurence (1989). Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1998). Durable Inequality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (2005). Identities, Boundaries and Social Ties. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.Google Scholar
Wheeler, S. Christian, Briñol, Pablo, and Hermann, Anthony D. (2007). Resistance to Persuasion as Self-Regulation: Ego-Depletion and Its Effects on Attitude Change Processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(1): 150–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitmarsh, Ian and Jones, David S. (2010). What’s the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard (2002). Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Gregory Howard (1995). Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Wise, Tim (2010). Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equality. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.Google Scholar