Integration Interrupted: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White after Brown

Karolyn Tyson

ISBN 10: 0199736456 / ISBN 13: 9780199736454

Published by Oxford University Press Inc, 2011

About this Item

Integration Interrupted focuses on the consequences, particularly for black students, of the practice of curriculum tracking in the post-Brown era, and on the relationship between racialized tracking and the emergence of academic excellence as a "white thing," or acting white. Num Pages: 240 pages, 5 black and white line illustrations. BIC Classification: JFSL3; JNF. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 231 x 152 x 16. Weight in Grams: 324. . 2011. 1st Edition. Paperback. . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780199736454

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Integration Interrupted: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White after Brown
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199736456
• ISBN 13: 9780199736454
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

An all-too-popular explanation for why black students aren't doing better in school is their own use of the "acting white" slur to ridicule fellow blacks for taking advanced classes, doing schoolwork, and striving to earn high grades. Carefully reconsidering how and why black students have come to equate school success with whiteness, Integration Interrupted argues that when students understand race to be connected with achievement, it is a powerful lesson conveyed by schools, not their peers. Drawing on over ten years of ethnographic research, Karolyn Tyson shows how equating school success with "acting white" arose in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education through the practice of curriculum tracking, which separates students for instruction, ostensibly by ability and prior achievement. Only in very specific circumstances, when black students are drastically underrepresented in advanced and gifted classes, do anxieties about "the burden of acting white" emerge. Racialized tracking continues to define the typical American secondary school, but it goes unremarked, except by the young people who experience its costs and consequences daily. The rich narratives in Integration Interrupted throw light on the complex relationships underlying school behaviors and convincingly demonstrate that the problem lies not with students, but instead with how we organize our schools.

About the Author

Karolyn Tyson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.