Keepin’
It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White.
Prudence Carter. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005. Pp. 219. $29.95, hardcover. ISBN: 0-19-516862-3. TEL:
212-726-6057
Black and second-generation Latino students consistently test lower and graduate
less often than their white and Asian counterparts. The entrenched thinking
is that these students associate school success with whiteness, and are rebelling
against schooling itself.
This book, from Harvard sociologist Prudence Carter’s extensive interviews
with black and Latino students, reveals a much more complex picture of inner-city
education. She uses her findings to transcend partisanship and challenge the
way policymakers and black and Latino communities approach school reform.
The at-risk black and Latino students she interviewed overwhelmingly believed
in school. Contrary to inner-city stereotypes, they saw school as a positive
means to the typically American dream of middle-class comfort.
So, where did we go wrong? The problem, she says, is how we imagine success.
And American culture—from the standards of grand acts like “No
Child Left Behind” to the everyday socialization that start in schools
and lead to the workforce—is still defined by a white-Protestant work
ethic. So, she says, black and Latino students must often choose between three
cultural paths:
Noncompliant believers most likely believe in education, but chafe under the
culture of schools (restricted clothing, speech, etc.) and are often, as a
result, average to failing students.
Cultural mainstreamers focus on success in the greater society, not clinging
to their cultural identity. Their “acting white” is not the cause
of their school success, but often the cause of their professional success.
Cultural straddlers can operate in both the white culture and their own, fluently
switching from the slang and dress of their culturally similar friends to
standard English and codes of the dominant culture.
Female students, Carter says, are much more likely to become cultural mainstreamers
or cultural straddlers, while male students, seeking to become “hard”
and “street,” are more likely to see their schooling end up at
the “University of Pen[itentiary]” than the “University
of Penn[sylvania].” But these differences remain in the culture, not
as a reaction to the idea of school.
Carter sees hope in the students, teachers, and community leaders whom she
calls “multicultural navigators.” These leaders are able, if not
fully to bridge the divide, at least to serve as ambassadors between groups.
She says multicultural navigators require schools integrated by race, class,
and ethnicity, if we are to expand the definition of success beyond cultural
requirements.
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