Learning Your Place: An Education in Racialized Hierarchy

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 19. Race and Ethnicity in Education 3

Abstract

In simple, complex, and contested ways, societal norms about race and status are re-inscribed in the classroom, day after day. This process is complicated by emotions, as messages about value, understanding, and connection direct and amplify each student and teacher’s self-presentation and impression management, dramatically raising the stakes of social interaction. In keeping with the American Sociological Association’s 2018 Annual Meeting theme of Feeling Race: An Invitation to Explore Racialized Emotions, this paper presents data from a year-long ethnographic study in an affluent public middle school in the Silicon Valley area, highlighting the role of emotions in the classroom, as students confront and challenge racialized identities that limit or grant access to academic and personal advancement. Even in well-resourced classrooms, led by well-prepared and well-meaning teachers, the organizational routines of schooling and the socially available narratives about race, intelligence, value, and power can shape student-student and teacher-student interactions in decisive ways that can affect students’ classroom participation, evaluation, and grades. Through three classroom examples, I show these dynamics in action.

Author

• Amanda Frye Leinhos, Stanford University