![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
The tracking literature examines how academic hierarchies contribute to race and class differences in academic achievement, but it pays scant attention to how school structures also influence students’ racial and ethnic identities. Relatedly, race/ethnicity and immigration scholars focus on how schools serve as sites for observing the social construction of racial and ethnic identities but do not account for how school structures actively shape these identity outcomes. This study makes a contribution to the immigration, race/ethnicity, and education literatures by examining how academic tracking influences the racial and ethnic identities of second-generation West Indian students. Consistent with the tracking literature, the author finds that Mayfield High School’s academic hierarchy contributes to the racialization of West Indian students and, in doing so, intensifies their racial group consciousness. It also shows how academic tracking simultaneously increases the salience of ethnic identity among Afro-Caribbean students. These findings point to the significance of educational institutions in shaping racialization processes in schools and contribute to broader conversations regarding the evolution of the color line in American society.
References
|
Alba, Richard D., Nee, Victor. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Angrosino, Michael . 2007. Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Bashi, Vilna . 1998. “Racial Categories Matter Because Racial Hierarchies Matter: A Commentary.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21(5):959–68. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Bashi, Vilna, McDaniel, Antonio. 1997. “A Theory of Immigration and Racial Stratification.” Journal of Black Studies 27(5):668–82. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo . 2004. “From Bi-racial to Tri-racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(6):931–50. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Butterfield, Sherri-Ann P. 2004. “We’re Just ‘Black’: The Racial and Ethnic Identities of Second Generation West Indians in New York.” Pp. 288–312 in Becoming New Yorkers: Ethnographies of the New Second Generation, edited by Kasinitz, Phillip, Mollenkopf, John, Waters, Mary. New York: Russell Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Camarota, Steven A. 2012. Immigrants in the United States, 2010: A Profile of America’s Foreign-born Population. Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies. Google Scholar | |
|
Carter, Prudence L. 2003. “‘Black’ Cultural Capital, Status Positioning, and Schooling Conflicts for Low-income African American Youth.” Social Problems 50(1):136–55. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Carter, Prudence L. 2005. Keepin’ It Real: School Success beyond Black and White. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Clerge, Orly . 2014. “Balancing Stigma and Status: Racial and Class Identities among Middle-class Haitian Youth.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(6):958–77. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Conchas, Gilberto . 2001. “Structuring Failure and Success: Understanding the Variability in Latino School Engagement.” Harvard Educational Review 71(3):475–505. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Crowder, Kyle D., Tedrow, Lucky M. 2001. “West Indians and the Residential Landscape of New York.” Pp. 81–114 in Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York, edited by Foner, Nancy . Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Diamond, John B., Huguley, James P. 2014. “Testing the Oppositional Culture Explanation in Desegregated Schools: The Impact of Racial Differences in Achieve-ment Orientations on Academic Performance.” Social Forces 93(2):747–77. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Downey, Douglas B., Ainsworth-Darnell, James W. 2002. “The Search for Oppositional Culture among Black Students.” American Sociological Review 67(1):156–64. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Feliciano, Cynthia . 2009. “Education and Ethnic Identity Formation among Children of Latin American and Caribbean Immigrants.” Sociological Perspectives 52(2):135–58. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Ferguson, Ann Arnett . 2001. Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Flores-González, Nilda . (2002). School Kids/Street Kids: Identity Development in Latino Students. New York: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Fordham, Signithia . 1996. Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Fordham, Signithia, Ogbu, John U. 1986. “Black Students’ School Success: Coping with the ‘Burden of Acting White.’” Urban Review 18(3):176–206. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Hallinan, Maureen T. 1994. “Tracking: From Theory to Practice.” Sociology of Education 67(2):79–84. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Harris, Angel L. 2006. “I (Don’t) Hate School: Revisiting the Oppositional Culture Theory of Blacks’ Resistance to Schooling.” Social Forces 85(2):797–834. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Kasinitz, Philip . 1992. Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Kasinitz, Philip, Battle, Juan, Miyares, Inés. 2001. “Fade to Black: Children of West Indian Immigrants in Southern Florida.” Pp. 267–300 in Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, edited by Rumbaut, Rubén G., Portes, Alejandro. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Kasinitz, Philip, Mollenkopf, John H., Waters, Mary C., Holdaway, Jennifer. 2008. Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age. New York: Russell Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Kelly, Sean . 2009. “The Black-White Gap in Mathematics Course Taking.” Sociology of Education 82(1):47–69. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Kubitschek, Warren N., Hallinan, Maureen T. 1998. “Tracking and Students’ Friendships.” Social Psychology Quarterly 61(1):1–15. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lee, Jennifer, Bean, Frank D. 2007. “Reinventing the Color Line Immigration and America’s New Racial/Ethnic Divide.” Social Forces 86(2):561–86. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lee, Valerie E., Bryk, Anthony S., Smith, Julia B. 1993. “The Organization of Effective Secondary Schools.” Review of Research in Education 19:171–267. Google Scholar | Abstract | ISI | |
|
Lewis, Amanda E. 2003. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Lewis, Amanda E., Diamond, John B. 2015. Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Lopez, Nancy . 2003. Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Lucas, Samuel R., Berends, Mark. 2007. “Race and Track Location in US Public Schools.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 25(3):169–87. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Marrow, Helen B. 2009. “New Immigrant Destinations and the American Colour Line.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32(6):1037–57. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Massey, Douglas S., Denton, Nancy A. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
New York City Department of City Planning . 2004. The Newest New Yorkers 2000: Immigrant New York in the New Millennium. New York: New York City Department of City Planning. Google Scholar | |
|
Noguera, Pedro A. 2009. The Trouble with Black Boys: . . . And Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar | |
|
Oakes, Jeannie . 1994. “More Than Misapplied Technology: A Normative and Political Response to Hallinan on Tracking.” Sociology of Education 67(2):84–91. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Ocampo, Anthony C. 2013. “‘Am I Really Asian?’ Educational Experiences and Panethnic Identification among Second-generation Filipino Americans.” Journal of Asian American Studies 16(3):295–324. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Ogbu, John U. 1978. Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-cultural Perspective. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Ogbu, John U. 1988. “Class Stratification, Racial Stratification and Schooling.” Pp. 163–82 in Class, Race, and Gender in American Education, edited by Weiss, Lois . Albany: State University of New York Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Omi, Michael, Winant, Howard. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Ostine, Regine . 1998. “Caribbean Immigrants and the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity: Limits of the Assimilation Perspective.” Research Perspectives 4(1):1–10. Google Scholar | |
|
Perry, Pamela . 2002. Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identities in High School. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Pierre, Jemima . 2004. “Black Immigrants in the United States and the ‘Cultural Narratives’ of Ethnicity.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11(2):141–70. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Portes, Alejandro, Fernández-Kelly, Patricia, Haller, William. 2009. “The Adaptation of the Immigrant Second Generation in America: A Theoretical Overview and Recent Evidence.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 35(7):1077–1104. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Portes, Alejandro, Zhou, Min. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530(1):74–96. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Richards, Bedelia Nicola . 2014. “Ethnic Identity on Display: West Indian Youth and the Creation of Ethnic Boundaries in High School.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(6):978–97. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Rios, Victor M. 2011. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York: New University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Rivera, Raquel Z. 2003. New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Sáenz, Rogelio, Douglas, Karen Manges. 2015. “A Call for the Racialization of Immigration Studies: On the Transition of Ethnic Immigrants to Racialized Immigrants.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1):166–80. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Stepick, Alex, Grenier, Guillermo, Castro, Max, Dunn, Marvin. 2003. This Land Is Our Land: Power and Interethnic Relations in Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Treitler, Vilna Bashi . 2013. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Treitler, Vilna Bashi . 2015. “Social Agency and White Supremacy in Immigration Studies.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1):153–65. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Tyson, Karolyn . 2011. Integration Uninterrupted: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White after Brown. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Vickerman, Milton . 2001. “Tweaking a Monolith: The West Indian Immigrant Encounter with ‘Blackness.’” Pp. 237–56 in Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York, edited by Foner, Nancy . Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Warikoo, Natasha K. 2011. Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Waters, Mary C. 2001. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Wells, Amy S., Crain, Robert L. 1999. Stepping Over the Color Line: African-American Students in White Suburban Schools. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Woldemikael, Tekle . 1989. “A Case Study of Race Consciousness among Haitian Immigrants.” Journal of Black Studies 20(2):224–39. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Yancey, George . 2003. Who is White? Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Google Scholar | |
|
Zephir, Flore . 2001. Trends in Ethnic Identification among Second Generation Haitian Immigrants in New York City. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Google Scholar |
