Place and Stigma in Adolescents’ Interpretations of Schools

• In Event: 038 - Regular Session. Sociology of Education: Disadvantaged Students in Advantaged Contexts

Abstract

Although much research has examined the messages that students receive about race at school, less has analyzed how racialized spatial stigma, or the stigmatization associated with residence in racially segregated and economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, affects these processes. To address this gap, we draw on interviews with two groups of comparable urban Black adolescents. One group was enrolled in Diversify, an urban-to-suburban busing program (n=38). Members of Diversify attended predominantly White, affluent suburban schools. They defined their schools as “White” and believed that this “Whiteness” was at the root of their school’s academic rigor, safe environment, and well-behaved student body. Diversify students also complained about stereotyping at school, and believed that racialized conceptions of urban poverty drove suburban classmates’ and teachers’ negative treatment of them. Nevertheless, they believed they were benefiting from the “Whiteness” of their schools. Members of the comparison group were waitlisted for Diversify (n=23). They mostly attended majority-minority urban schools. Unlike Diversify students, their narratives did not reveal an ethno-racial understanding of schools. We explain these differences by pointing Diversify students’ personal, every-day, face-to-face experiences with racialized spatial stigma at school and the construction of suburban schools as “superior” and distinctively White spaces. We also discuss the implications of our findings for the reproduction of inequality.

Author

• Jordan Andrew Conwell, Northwestern University