How 21st Century Racism Still Affects Education in America

Introduction: The Persistence of Educational Racism

Racism, regardless of its form or target, has always impacted American education in one way or another — in terms of classroom practices, access, admissions policies, quotas, and more generally how students, graduates, and non-graduates are treated by society inside and outside schools, colleges, and universities (for example, in terms of ability to get jobs or afford housing). Moreover, just as America itself has become far more diverse in the 21st century, and just as educational attitudes, goals, and practices have grown more diverse to meet the needs of an expanding and ever more complex society, racism in education — if less visible than in the past — is neither less virulent nor less harmful.

As Beswick observes, "A quarter century of desegregation has not yet solved the self-deprecation, low levels of educational performance, or overall quality of life for America's people of color. Racism in any measure undermines children's self-esteem and erodes the educational process" ("Racism in America's Schools"). Twenty-first century educational racism has perhaps become less publicly visible than the educational racism of past generations in America. Obviously, for instance, it is no longer politically correct in today's society to express or even admit to racist attitudes.

Going even further back, there is obviously no longer any African-American slavery, nor are there the kinds of national and state laws that existed during slavery that prohibited the teaching of black Americans — under any circumstances — to read and write. Nor, in the case of another minority group, is there forced internment of Japanese and Japanese-American youths and their families in American concentration camps in California and elsewhere, as there was during World War II.

But just because racism is no longer as overt as in the past does not mean that it is gone. Tendrils of deep-rooted racist attitudes in education and elsewhere linger on in America today — after all, some unique brand of 21st-century educational racism in America did not spring, fully formed, into the present moment. The unfortunate truth is that the roots of today's stubborn educational racism within America are long, deep, and complex, and they provide the key conditions of possibility for 21st-century racism in education and elsewhere, even if the latter now takes on more subtle forms than it did in the past.

Historical Roots of Racism in American Education

Educational racism has been an unfortunate fact of American life since colonial days, and most likely before. Within the Constitution itself, non-free persons are explicitly described as unequal. Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution states: "Representatives … shall be apportioned among the several States … according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons … and … three-fifths of all other persons" ("Constitution of the United States"). This Three-Fifths Compromise encoded racial inequality at the founding of the nation.

Less than a century later, in 1857, the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision found that America had not constitutionally included Black Americans as participating members or beneficiaries of the privileges of American citizenship ("Dred Scott Case"). Back then, Black Americans' struggles to become even literate — the cornerstone of any effective or meaningful educational program — were inextricably connected to the dominant culture's unwillingness to acknowledge them as full human beings.

For nearly 50 years, the term "affirmative action" has been used in the United States to designate programs, policies, and procedures intended to promote equal opportunities for African Americans, other minority groups, and women "by favoring them in hiring and promotion, college admissions, and the awarding of government contracts" ("Affirmative Action," 2000). Clearly, education in America is less racist than in the past. But educational racism remains very far from being erased, even in the 21st century, for many African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and other non-members of the dominant culture (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001).

Affirmative Action: Rise, Rollback, and Consequences

From the mid-1960s until about the late 1990s, Black Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities were able, for the first time in real numbers, to enroll in colleges, universities, graduate schools, and medical and law schools as a result of affirmative action programs that allowed a certain number of minority applicants to be admitted based on specific criteria ("Affirmative Action"). However, within that same period — and beginning especially in the 1980s — a number of anti-affirmative action court rulings emerged from California, Texas, Michigan, and other states, reaching all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court ("Affirmative Action Ten Years After Proposition 209"). With the passage of Proposition 209 in California in 1996, rendering affirmative action in college admissions in that state illegal ("Proposition 209: Text of Proposed Law"), minority enrollments nationwide again decreased from past levels, which had been the highest ever in the 1970s ("Affirmative Action").

Another blow to affirmative action came in 1996 when the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court prohibited the University of Texas Law School from any consideration of race or ethnicity in future admissions decisions. As in California following the U.S. Supreme Court Bakke decision of 1978, the curtailment of affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Texas Law School resulted in a dramatic decline in minority enrollment at that school ("Affirmative Action").

Loury (2001) describes educational racism as being rooted in "racial stigma" (p. 20), and identifies that stigma as rooted in the legacy of slavery and a lingering reason for ongoing disregard for the welfare of Black Americans and other minorities — educationally and otherwise — by white society as a whole:

"The social isolation and negative perception of urban ghettos is a leading example of racial stigma at work in America today. These black ghetto dwellers are a people apart, ridiculed for their cultural styles, isolated socially, experiencing an internalized sense of despair, with limited access to communal networks or mutual assistance. The purported criminality, sexual profligacy, and intellectual inadequacy of these people are the frequent objects of public derision. It does not require enormous powers of perception to see how this symbolic degradation ties in with the history of race relations in the United States. The historical process that produced these urban black ghettos graphically illustrates how racial stigma, operating over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, helped create the facts that are its own justification." (pp. 20–21)

This analysis by Loury perhaps explains better than any other the tenacity of American prejudice against minorities and Black Americans in particular — a prejudice that leads in turn to educational and other forms of discrimination even today.

Conclusion: Toward Equal Educational Opportunity

In the future it will become more important than ever to discover new ways to continue eradicating the stubborn barriers to minority student equal educational access and opportunity that survive, and in many areas of the United States even thrive, in 21st-century America. As Beswick further states:

"It is not just the condescension and violence exhibited toward minorities that must be taken into account when looking at incidents of racism. Restrictions on minorities' opportunity to succeed are often racially determined. For example, Asian-Americans incur resentment for academic excellence and overachieving. If racism is explicit at the street level of society, it is often implicit and equally entrenched at the highest levels." ("Racism in America's Schools")

Twenty-first century racism, though more diverse than when it was aimed mostly at Black Americans and more covert than before today's norms of political correctness became widespread, is not fundamentally different from the racism within education that has existed throughout American history. In the future it will become more important than ever to discover new ways to continue eradicating the stubborn barriers to minority student equal educational access and opportunity — barriers that are at once causes and effects of racism, and that survive and even thrive in too many areas of 21st-century America.

Works Cited

"Affirmative Action." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. 2000. Microsoft Works Suite 2000 (CD-ROM). Disc 3.

"Affirmative Action Ten Years After Proposition 209." UCLA International Institute. 20 Mar. 2007.

Beswick, Richard. "Racism in America's Schools." ERIC Digest Series, Number EA 49. ED320196. 1990.

"Constitution of the United States." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. 2000. Microsoft Works Suite 2000 (CD-ROM). Disc 3.

Delgado, R., and J. Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

"Dred Scott Case." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. 2000. Microsoft Works Suite 2000 (CD-ROM). Disc 3.

Loury, Glen. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Nelson, Gabe. "Report: Minority Enrollment has Increased." The Wire. 13 Sep. 2007.

"Proposition 209: Text of the Proposed Law." 1996.

Solorzano, D. G., and A. Ornelas. "A Critical Race Analysis of Latina/o and African-American Advanced Placement Enrollment in Public High Schools." High School Journal, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Feb./Mar. 2004), pp. 1–12.