Assignment Lecture 10: Ethnicity: When/why is segregation unequal?

Name: Lidia Martínez Lería Date: 12/05/2022 Session 10 Student number: r0875111

Stereotype threat can be a tenacious force in interracial schools where the underachievement of Latino students,
African-American students, etc.. is so common and predictable as to be nearly lawful. This achievement problem is
not caused by skill deficits but there are social and psychological aspects involved. If the only way in which student
learning is assessed is in the form of examinations and non-white students are told that these examinations
measure their academic skills, a trait that their group is stereotyped as lacking in comparison with white students,
this could put them in a quandary and their frustration in carrying out these tasks and consequent poor
performance could be seen as confirming the stereotype. This extra pressure on racialized students is hard to see
down on the ground of everyday schooling because of teachers' biases in analyzing the causes of
underperformance. In addition to the type of assessment and teacher’s biases, there are other contextual factors
that could contribute to this underperformance as racial marginalization in school, racial segregation of academic
networks, group underrepresentation in important roles in school, racial organization of curriculum choices all
reflecting some degree the racial organization of the larger society. We must work with teachers so that they do
not focus so much on the student and his traits as on being responsible for this underachievement, which will
make more visible the circumstances to which the student is adapting in his environment. This could be achieved
by implementing monthly seminars on the topic of underperformance and promoting the recruitment of teachers
with multiracial backgrounds. In addition, we must work on making teachers and students aware of the existence
of this extra pressure and considering new ways of assessing students that do not explicitly measure intelligence
or academic skills as they are currently understood. All these actions could alleviate the pernicious effects of
stereotyping and thus contribute to solving the problem of the racial achievement gap that gives rise to persistent
intergroup tensions that often disrupt our social relations.

On the issue of inter-ethnic tensions, we know that after long periods of segregation, neither blacks nor whites are
adept at interracial interaction. The fact that friendships and social life are significantly organized by race (due to
its promotion of shared social identities) is a major problem because racially homogeneous friendships can
segregate people out of important networks and thus out of important opportunities. Contact opportunities are a
crucial prerequisite for students’ interethnic friendships but the mere presence of other ethnic groups does not
automatically promote positive interethnic interactions. This is because in contexts where ethnicity is salient
intergroup bias is more likely. In this case, the number of students with different immigrant backgrounds is high
(80%) which could lead to feelings of social threat or competition among white students who, in order to maintain
their high status, affiliate with in-group members. It is worth mentioning that teachers’ interactions with students
strongly impact how relationships form among them (Mikami et al., 2012). If the teacher positively interacts with
ethnic minority group students, they can highlight positive behavior that can disconfirm negative stereotypes
(Juvonen et al., 2019). In addition, students will report less racist bullying if they trust that their teacher will react
if a pupil is victimized (Verkuyten and Thijs, 2002). Therefore, if we want to improve social networks in the
classroom, we must first focus on working on teachers' skills in providing emotional support, interacting with
ethnic minorities, and dealing with victimization.

The public often perceives schools with a high share of ethnic minority students as synonymous with low
instructional quality and weak academic performance. This negative association is one of the main reasons
middle-class parents avoid these schools or decide to change their children's schooling, giving rise to the so-called
white flight. We should take into account that parents are free to decide what kind of school they want for their
children and that they are more likely to want to stay and support inclusion initiatives with greater conviction if
they are shown its benefits. For this purpose, the school could organize school visits weekly where parents can see
how their children interact and work in teams with people from different backgrounds and how this is beneficial
to their learning; inform parents from advantaged families of the causes and consequences of social disadvantage
in the education of immigrant students in order to improve their attitudes towards ethnic diversity and lastly,
openly oppose the public funding of private and suburban schools that continue to rely on the selection of pupils
on the basis of their ethnicity in favor of white students. Instead, ask for public money to fund schools that are
committed to desegregation, social inclusion, and equal educational opportunities plans so that this money can be
invested in better education for students and better preparation for an interracial world.