Now We Don’t Think Like That: High School Students’ Perception of the Salience of Race

• In Event: 390 - Section on Race, Gender and Class Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Race, Gender, Class and Youth

Abstract

Racial inequalities continue to persist in various forms such as tracking (where white students tend to dominate upper level courses and minority students are tracked into lower level courses) and white parents’ choices in avoiding sending their children to majority-minority schools. Continued racial inequalities reflect the larger persistence of racism in our society under a covert guise. Racial attitudes, or how people perceive others based on race, are often examined as one of many indicators of society’s progress in racial inequalities. This paper seeks to gauge students’ racial attitudes through conversation about racial inequalities. I aim to answer the following research questions: Do students perceive race to be salient in present day society (i.e. do students believe that racial inequalities continue to exist and that in general race matters)? How do students discuss race when talking about racial inequality? I find that focus group members minimized racial inequalities by providing examples of racial progress, they blamed minorities for their disadvantaged status, and they were not likely to support race-based policies believing such policies to be unfair. Focus group members largely utilized color-blind rhetoric in their discussion of racial inequalities. This illustrates the need for race talk in the classroom with students with an emphasis on the impact of historical racial inequalities on present day racial inequalities.

Author

• Irina Chukhray, Rice University