Working Method

Research and Social Justice

Lois Weis, Michelle Fine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415948265
• eBook ISBN: 9781134000524
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Working Method focuses on the theory, method, and politics of contemporary social research. As ethnographic and qualitative research become more popular, noted scholars Weis and Fine provide a roadmap for understanding the complexities involved in doing this research.

SECTION 1
Full Composition and Initial Fracturing

CHAPTER 1
Dear Zora: A Letter to Zora Neale
Hurston Fifty Years After Brown

Michelle Fine, Janice Bloom, April Burns, Lori Chajet, Monique Guishard, Tiffany Perkins-Munn, and María Elena Torre

Dear Zora:

Sorry that it has taken so long to respond. Actually, it’s been 48 years. For the benefit of readers, we’ll reprint your prophetic letter to the editor of the Orlando Sentinel and offer a rather lengthy response:

Editor: I promised God and some other responsible characters, including a bench of bishops, that I was not going to part my lips concerning the U.S. Supreme Court decision on ending segregation in the public schools of the South. But since a lot of time has passed and no one seems to touch on what to me appears to be the most important point in the hassle, I break my silence just this once. Consider me as just thinking out loud….

I regard the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court as insulting rather than honoring my race. Since the days of the never-to-be-sufficiently-deplored Reconstruction, there has been current the belief that there is no greater delight to Negroes than physical association with whites. The doctrine of the white mare. Those familiar with the habits of mules are aware that any mule, if not restrained, will automatically follow a white mare. Dishonest mule traders made money out of this knowledge in the old days.

Lead a white mare along a country road and slyly open the gate and the mules in the lot would run out and follow this mare. This ruling being conceived and brought forth in a sly political medium with eyes on ‘56, and brought forth in the same spirit and for the same purpose, it is clear that they have taken the old notion to heart and acted upon it. It is a cunning opening of the barnyard gate with the white mare ambling past. We are expected to hasten pell-mell after her.

It is most astonishing that this should be tried just when the nation is exerting itself to shake off the evils of Communist penetration. It is to be recalled that Moscow, being made aware of this folk belief, made it the main plank in their campaign to win the American Negro from the 1900s on. It was the come-on stuff….

It is well known that I have no sympathy nor respect for the “tragedy of color” school of thought among us, whose fountain-head is the pressure group concerned with this court ruling. I see no tragedy in being too dark to be invited to a white school social affair. The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory education provisions for Negroes in the South as is done for white children…. Thems my sentiments and I am sticking by them. Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self association. That old white mare business can go racking on down the road for all I care.

Zora Neale Hurston, Eau Gallie
(August 11, 1955, Orlando Sentinel)

In 1955 you understood what few were willing to acknowledge. More than that, you dared to speak aloud, in unpopular dialect, about the white mare that seduces with promises of equality, freedom, and choice as it guarantees continued oppression and betrayal. As you suggest, promises of racial equality in public education in the United States have been covert operations that reproduce privilege. Nevertheless, with the wisdom of hindsight, we view Brown with a DuBoisian dual consciousness: as a radical interruption of law and educational practice, subverted almost immediately by the white mare of persistent racism.

The dual legacy of Brown reveals itself in the project of desegregation, which has indeed led African Americans, Asian Americans, African Caribbeans, Latinos, low-income White youth, undocumented immigrant students, youth with disabilities, girls, gays, and lesbians into institutions, clubs, and communities from which their great grandparents, grandparents, and parents may have been barred. In many cases, however, these students—youth of color and those who live in poverty, in particular—participate within such desegregated settings, from the margins. Academically, they witness excellence, but most sit just a classroom away. More African American and Latino students attend segregated schools than was true just a decade ago (Orfield & Easton, 1996).

And yet at the same time, in the spirit of Brown, a number of desegregated districts are interrogating questions of the “gap.” Maybe not as deeply as we would wish or as radically as we would hope—but they are interrogating. And, even more compelling, in urban areas throughout the United States there is a proliferation of intellectually exciting, inquirybased, vibrant, bold small schools dedicated to overcoming the odds for youth in poverty, immigrant students, and adolescents of color. And community-based organizations, youth activists, and parent groups throughout the country are organizing with and for public education as a site of democratic, liberatory possibility (see Sisters and Brothers United, personal communication; Anand, 2003; Guishard et al, 2003). These schools, districts, and neighborhood organizations toil in the legacy of Brown. Refusing the white mare of persistent racism, they understand that with struggle comes resistance. They have dipped in the puddles of rich educational possibilities, slipped in the muddy waters of relentless inequality, and currently wade through the waters of despair. We write with a dual purpose: to recognize the power of Brown’s progeny and to reveal where the persistent inequities continue to undermine. We write to honor what has been rich and powerful, to canvass the topography of Brown then and now, to “out” the duplicitous white mares of today, and to excavate the puddles of radical possibility that carry a genetic trace to the spirit of the Brown decision. You will be flattered to know that 23 years after you wrote this letter to the editor, the amazing writer Alice Walker spent much time theorizing your stance in literary and political history. In 1979 Walker wrote: “Is Hurston the messenger who brings the bad news, or is she the bad news herself? Is Hurston a reflection of ourselves? And if so, is that not, perhaps, part of our ‘problem’ with her?” (Walker, 1979, p. 2) And 25 years later, Zora, you are still on our minds.

We Begin With Echoes: Hearing Voices Across Fifty Years Since Brown

I am no fool; and I know that race prejudice in the United States today is such that most Negroes cannot receive proper education in white institutions…a separate Negro school, where children are treated like human beings, trained by teachers of their own race, who know what it means to be black in the year of salvation 1935, is infinitely better than making our boys, and girls doormats to be spit and trampled upon and lied to by ignorant social climbers, whose sole claim to superiority is ability to kick “niggers” when they are down. (DuBois, 1935, pp. 328–329).

Most people, for some reason unknown to me, accept injustice. Why is that? When God created us, did he make us in the image of a welcome mat? No. So why are so many people getting stepped on? Speak Up! Let your voice be heard with the intent to inspire others. (Travis Marquis, 2002)

We write through an echo chamber of historic struggle and resistance, saturated by the words of DuBois in 1935 and Travis Marquis, age 21, of the South Bronx in 2002. Surrounded by the vibrant and electric words of civil rights struggles of the past and the yearning, despair, and resistance of youth today, we deepen our critical understandings of the legacies of Brown. Zora, we work with your analysis acutely in our consciousness because we believe that the spirit of Brown, in its fullest sense, sits at the core of our national democracy But Brown, of course, has been “hijacked,” as Asa Hilliard III (2002) would tell us—for it was always intended as a strategy toward justice, equity, and intellectual freedom, not a mechanistic formula of body counts and color codings. We review here the racialized life of public education today in a northeastern corner of the United States, to understand the victories and the ongoing struggles from the perspective of youth who live in the shadows of Brown, and who will determine its future.

The evidence we present reveals that the struggle for academic racial justice has, indeed, been “hijacked” by the better-funded movement for White and elite privilege that founded, and currently governs, America. The public sector of public education has been fiscally hollowed, with the demand for equal resources trivialized into a (denied) quest to sit beside a White child. The fire of Brown for equity, power, and justice has been blanketed, watered down. Youth of color today learn about a victory 50 years old as they daily confront largely segregated, underfunded schools, high-stakes tests that terrify and punish, with only some educators credentialed to teach. They are constantly witnessing locks being secured on the doors of Higher Education. A publicly financed welcome mat for African American and Latino youth sits at the barbed-wire rim of America’s prisons and, with college tuition rates rising and financial aid drying up, the promises of military life seduce those most vulnerable (Fine, Anand, Jordan, & Sherman, 2000). Somewhere in their souls, though the numbers may be unknown, young people in New York know that in 1994, for the first time in history, their state expended more of its budget on prisons than on public universities (Gangi, Schiraldi, & Ziedenberg, 1998).

The radical realignment of the public sphere requires serious reflection on Brown and its progeny.

But before we’re through, Zora, we’ll also tell you about those spaces in schools and communities throughout the United States where youth are learning and teaching, organizing and demanding, laughing and embodying the other legacy of Brown—the legacy of fighting back, never giving up, struggling for racial equality in a sea of greed and neoliberal individualism. We listen as youth yearn for and demand equity in public education in the United States, at the beginning of the 21st century.

Echoes: The Faultlines of Racial Justice and Public Education

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, we continue to confront what is called an “achievement gap” across racial and ethnic groups, and across social class fractions (Anyon, 1997; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Ferguson, 1998; Fine, 1991; Fordham, 1996; Hochschild, 2003; New York ACORN, 2000; Orfield & Easton, 1996; Wilson, 1987).¹ In 2001, a series of school districts within the New York metropolitan area, in suburban New York and New Jersey, joined to form a consortium to address this question of the “gap” and invited us to collaborate on research. Drawing on the writings of Ron Hayduk (1999) and Myron Orfield (1997), we conceptualized an ethnographic regional analysis of the political economy of schooling as lived by youth in and around the New York City metropolitan area.

By crossing the lines separating suburban and urban areas, integrated and segregated schools, deeply tracked and detracked schools, we designed the work to reveal joints across county lines and to identify important contrasts (Orfield, 1997). We sought to document the codependent growth of the suburbs and the defunding of urban America and to reveal the fractures of inequity and the pools of possibility that fill the topography of “desegregated” suburban and urban communities and schools. We hoped, finally, to capture some of the magic of those schools in which rich, engaging education flourishes for youth across lines of race, ethnicity, class, geography, and “track.”

We undertook this project committed to a textured, multimethod critical ethnographic analysis of urban and suburban schooling. Youth and adults designed the project to speak back to questions of racial, ethnic, and class justice in American education. To reach deep into the varied standpoints that constitute these schools, we created a participatory action research design with youth representing the full ensemble of standpoints within these urban and suburban desegregated settings (Anand et al., 2002; Fals Borda, 1979; Fine et al., 2001; Freire, 1982).

The Design

We have, since January 2002, been collaborating with youth from eleven racially integrated suburban school districts, one New Jersey urban district, and three New York City high schools, crossing racial, ethnic, class, gender, academic, geographic, and sexuality lines. We designed a series of research camps in schools, on college campuses, and in communities ranging from wealthy Westchester suburbs to the South Bronx of New York City.

At the first research camp, a 2-day overnight at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey, youth participated in “methods training”: learning about quantitative and qualitative design, critical race theory, and a series of methods including interview, focus group, observation, and survey research (e.g., we read with them Harding, 1987; Collins, 1991). Urban and suburban students and those of us from the Graduate Center crafted a survey of questions on the “gap,” incorporating some of Tony Bryk’s items on school climate and trust, as well as some of Constance Flanagan’s items on civic engagement. The survey was intended to be distributed across districts, focusing on youth views of distributive (in) justice in the nation and their schools.

The youth insisted that the survey not look like a test, and so creatively subverted the representations of “science” by including photos, cartoons for respondents to interpret, a chart of the achievement gap, and openended questions such as “What is the most powerful thing a teacher has ever said to you?” Available in English, French Creole, Spanish, Braille, and on tape—because the inner ring suburbs are far more diverse than most believe (Orfield, 1997)—the survey was administered to close to 7,000 9th and 12th graders across districts. Within 6 weeks, we received more than 4,000 completed surveys—brimming with rich qualitative and quantitative data that could be disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, and “track.” Beyond the surveys, over the past year we have engaged in participant observations within four suburban and two urban schools, arranged four cross-school visitations, and conducted over 20 focus group interviews. In addition, five school “teams” pursued their own questions crafted under the larger “opportunity gap” umbrella.

The Children of Brown: Civic Engagement and Equity

Although the history of today’s desegregation is a complex montage of victories and disappointments, we have gathered a glistening layer of evidence about how youth in desegregated settings think about education and racial justice. In these data you can find the proud progeny of Brown and the white mare of betrayal. Consistently and across racial and ethnic lines, young people who attend desegregated schools hold high aspirations for college and strong values for multiracial justice and education. They embody a sense of the power and the unfulfilled promise of a multiracial/multiethnic democracy. They appreciate attending desegregated schools, but worry that the nation has walked away from the struggle for racial justice; they worry that their classrooms remain largely segregated. These young women and men are, indeed, ambassadors for a campaign for racial justice but are at a loss for how to make it real. Many feel betrayed by a nation that has abandoned multiracial democracy. And then, within the broad-based cohort support for desegregation, on every measure, we see a marbleized race/ethnicity effect: African American, Caribbean American, and Latino youth are significantly more troubled by the ripples of injustice that flow through their schools than are White American and Asian American youth.

On Academic Aspirations

As a group, the young women and men we surveyed are dedicated to attending college, with more than 90% of the respondents from each racial/ethnic group indicating that “college” is important to their future. However, African American and Latino students, particularly those who are not in AP or honors level courses, worry significantly more that high-stakes testing and finances could obstruct their academic pursuits.

On Civic Engagement

We created a Civic Engagement Index, which measures students’ desires to help those less fortunate, to work against racial injustice and to work for change in community and nation. The results indicated that students from desegregated high schools, overall, endorse high levels of civic commitments. Across all groups, more than 40% of the youth indicated that civic engagement was important to their future. Additionally, significant race/ethnicity and gender differences emerge. On individual items and the Civic Engagement Index, African American and Latina girls scored significantly higher than all other groups (x² = 122.71, df = 9, p < .001). When asked how important “ending racism” is for future well-being, more than half of African American, Caribbean American, and Latino students, compared to only one third of White American students, selected “very important.”

In parallel, more than 60% of all students indicated strong agreement with “It is very important to help my country,” with little cross-race variation. Yet, in response to the item “We need to create change in the nation,” White Americans were significantly less likely to agree (32%) than Asian Americans (43%), Latinos (52%), African Caribbeans (60%), and African Americans (61%). Again we see overall endorsement of strong civic commitments, but also a strong belief among students of color (African American, Asian American, Caribbean American, and Latino) that the nation has to change to be true to its democratic principles.

On Racial Equity in Schools

Turning to our Attitudes Toward School Desegregation measure, these students, as a cohort, are strong advocates for desegregation. A full 76% of the entire sample “agrees/strongly agrees” that “attending a school that is ‘mixed’ or integ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The Critical Social Thought Series
• Series Editor’s Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Compositional Studies In Four Parts: Critical Theorizing and Analysis On Social (In)Justice
• Section 1: Full Composition and Initial Fracturing
• Section 2: Deep Work Within a Fracture
• Section 3: Designs for Historic Analysis
• Section 4: Designs to Document Sites of Possibility
• Epilogue
• Endnotes
• References