“Although schools play an active role in perpetuating these and other stereotypes, they also contain the seeds of potential change. Schools can curricular change that disrupt and challenge these stereotypes.” Stacey J. Lee

As educators we are in a a unique and powerful position to help fight social injustices such as stereotyping. As the reading suggests, one way to do this is through the curriculum. Though they may have improved a bit over the years, many, if not most, of school curricula are dominated by white European narratives. This functions to exclude or severely marginalize minority ethnic groups, their importance, and their contributions. The effects can be devastating, as the article explains. Ethnic groups, such as Asian Americans, get the message that their stories and contributions are not as important in our society. I found it extremely sad to learn many things in this article, one being that many Asian Americans don’t describe themselves as American because they know that others don’t see them that way. This sort of exclusion is unacceptable. This is a result of white domination that persists in our society in many forms. It is our job as teachers to remedy this injustice by working to include the stories of Asian Americans and other minority ethnic groups into our curriculum and by valuing and honoring the realities of all who make up our multicultural society.

“As education scholars, we cannot continue to allow poor and working-class students and other underrepresented groups and our families to struggle alone against the hegemonic designs of U.S. public school.” Prieto, The sting of social hierarchies.

In this article, Prieto wrote about her personal experiences and feelings of being an immigrant kid, which are really touching to read. She is from minority group and working-class, who has to take the burden of sharing family responsibility at a young age. Plus, his family members are resisting American culture, and avoid her from getting involve in American society. All of these factors add up the difficulties for her to adjust to the US culture. The article was published 10 years ago, and right now the cognition of constructing multi-culture educational setting has been accepted by more and more schools and educators. But, we still couldn’t deny that there are still kids and family, especially the “poor and working-class”, are struggling to fight with social bias in and out of schools. In my opinion, schools and teachers could play important roles to redirect this trend. School is the primary environment for immigrant kids to contact American cultures. If teachers could form a classroom culture to appreciate the contributions of working-class, and foster a positive view toward the immigration groups, students can model their teachers and gradually redirect their previous bias on different social classes. Currently, especially during recent years, schools have put more attention on multi-culture learning environment. And, more and more educators are joining to fight against the “hegemonic designs of U.S. public schools”. Hopefully, more students from poor and working-class could find out a better way to define themselves and face future challenges positively.

“Caribbean-origin individuals may distinguish themselves from African Americans in an attempt to ward off further disparagement (Waters 1999; Zéphir 1996). In conducting her research with second-generation Haitian youth, Zéphir (2001) found that those youth who had migrated at high school age and who thus retained their French accents bore these as a point of pride because they felt it distinguished them from African Americans.” – Doucet & Suarez-Orozco, “Ethnic Identity and Schooling”

The school I taught at before this year was the most racially diverse setting I’ve ever been in. Watching the students discuss racial distinctions and segregate themselves accordingly was astonishing. In one instance, I had one student (of Dominican origin) announce to the entire class that he “hated” his classmate in the desk beside him because that student was Puerto Rican. In another case, a young sixth grade girl (of Haitian origin) told another teacher, “I’m not black; I’m light-skinned.”  Continue reading Racial Identity Stratification →