Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:25:52.246Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

DIVERSIFIERS AT ELITE SCHOOLS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2008

Rory Kramer
Rory Kramer*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
*
Rory Kramer, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Suite 113, Philadelphia, PA 19143. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income students of diverse racial backgrounds to enter elite private high schools in the fall of the ninth grade. Combining ethnographic fieldwork completed during the program with follow-up interviews with ten students after their first semester at boarding school, this article addresses how students interact with and integrate into wealthy, predominantly White schools in an attempt to gain social mobility. Looking at how students interpret their surroundings, the article argues that students are trained to view themselves as “diversifiers” in order to successfully adapt to their new schools. In this role, students perceive themselves as especially serious and motivated students, and their elite peers as naïve, and find satisfaction in teaching others how to interact with people from different class and racial backgrounds. The paper concludes by considering the ramifications of the diversifier concept on efforts to diversify elite institutions and proposes further possible research sites where the concept may be applicable.

Keywords

Boarding SchoolsDiversificationEducational NonprofitsElite Education
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 2008 , pp. 287 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Akom, Antwi (2003). Reexamining Resistance as Oppositional Behavior: The Nation of Islam and the Creation of a Black Achievement Ideology. Sociology of Education, 76(4): 305–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baltzell, E. Digby (1964). The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1996). The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Trans. Clough, Lauretta C.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brower, Aaron and Ketterhagen, Annemarie (2004). Is There an Inherent Mismatch between How Black and White Students Expect to Succeed in College and What Their Colleges Expect from Them? Journal of Social Issues, 60(1): 95–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, Lorene (1991). Black Ice. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Carter, Prudence L. (2003). “Black” Cultural Capital, Status Positioning, and Schooling Conflicts for Low-Income African American Youth. Social Problems, 50(1): 136–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Prudence L. (2005). Keepin' It Real: School Success beyond Black and White. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cookson, Peter W. Jr. and Persell, Caroline Hodges (1985). Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Cookson, Peter W. Jr. and Persell, Caroline Hodges (1991). Race and Class in America's Elite Preparatory Boarding Schools: African Americans as the “Outsiders Within.” Journal of Negro Education, 60(2): 219–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. ([1903] 1989). The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Fordham, Signithia (1991). Racelessness in Private Schools: Should We Deconstruct the Racial and Cultural Identity of African-American Adolescents? Teachers College Record, 92(3): 470–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1961). Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Hicks, David V. (1996). The Strange Fate of the American Boarding School. American Scholar, 65(4): 523–535.Google Scholar
Horvat, Erin McNamara and Antonio, Anthony Lising (1999). “Hey, Those Shoes Are Out of Uniform”: African American Girls in an Elite High School and the Importance of Habitus. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 30(3): 317–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvat, Erin McNamara and O'Connor, Carla (Eds.) (2006). Beyond Acting White: Reframing the Debate on Black Student Achievement. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Howard, Judith A. (2000). Social Psychology of Identities. Annual Review of Sociology, 26: 367–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuriloff, Peter and Reichert, Michael C. (2003). Boys of Class, Boys of Color: Negotiating the Academic and Social Geography of an Elite Independent School. Journal of Social Issues, 59(4): 751–769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamont, Michèle, Kaufman, Jason, and Moody, Michael (2000). The Best of the Brightest: Definitions of the Ideal Self among Prize-Winning Students. Sociological Forum, 15(2): 187–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Mooney, Margarita, Torres, Kimberly C., and Charles, Camille Z. (2007). Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States. American Journal of Education, 113(2): 243–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Association of Independent Schools (2007). NAIS Independent Schools Facts at a Glance. ⟨http://www.nais.org/resources/statistical.cfm?ItemNumber=146713⟩ (accessed March 30, 2007).Google Scholar
Portes, Alejandro and Rumbaut, Rubén G. (2001). Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Powell, Arthur G. (1997). Lessons from Privilege: The American Prep School Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sidanius, Jim, Van Laar, Colette, Levin, Shana, and Sinclair, Stacey (2004). Ethnic Enclaves and the Dynamics of Social Identity on the College Campus: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1): 96–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sittenfeld, Curtis (2005). Prep: A Novel. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Tatum, Beverly Daniel (1997). “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” And Other Conversations about Race. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Torres, Kimberly C. and Charles, Camille Z. (2004). Metastereotypes and the Black-White Divide: A Qualitative View of Race on an Elite College Campus. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(1): 115–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Mary C. (1999). Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willie, Sarah Susannah (2003). Acting Black: College, Identity, and the Performance of Race. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweigenhaft, Richard L. and Domhoff, G. William (2003). Blacks in the White Elite: Will the Progress Continue? Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar