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

by Karolyn Tyson (Editor)

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.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Race, Sociology, Politics, History

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2011

Reviews

[Sarah Jane Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of two texts I had to read for Sociology of Education, and it was the more bearable of the two. The writing is straightforward, and the author draws some clear and insightful conclusions about the utter failure of integration in predominantly white U.S. schools.

I have concluded, however, that sociologists could not write a concise book if it would save the freakin' world. I think redundancy is just built into sociological writing (ASA, for instance). Being someone who primarily reads neuroscience and psychology articles, I cannot stand the rambling nature of ASA. Integration Interrupted was no exception.

[Leil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for understanding inequality in outcomes across race in American schools despite integration efforts. Explains that integration alone is not enough to boost minority students, specifically Black students, educational outcomes. Integration alone combined with racialized tracking systems tends to increase segregation through honors and advanced school curricula rather than promote integration. Importantly, this is not because of the lower educational ability of students of color or their ineligibility for placement into honors or advanced classes. In schools with white minority populations or white majority populations, as opposed to schools that are almost overwhelmingly Black, the opportunity to be placed into advanced or honors courses (because spots in such courses are limited) is often granted by school administrators and teachers to white students rather than Black students. This creates a self fulfilling prophecy where Black students believe they are underprepared for such courses and correspondingly do not take them for fear of “acting white” while white students take it as a given that they should be placed into such courses, and are more willing to take them because more of their friends are in those courses.

[RYAN PHAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laminated cover

This book gave me a lot to think about. In a world where the elite honors societies, AP and Honors classes, and higher academic echelons are overwhelmingly filled with white people, Black students have choices to make. Do you take the classes with lower of ăn academic challenge and get a more diverse student body with more numerous examples of Black students or do they strive academically and take on a white habitus to succeed in a white world, in the process getting labeled a sellout by their Black compatriots. The secure ones with parents who already made it or who come from ăn immigrant backgrounds mấy have the choice automatically made for them. For everyone else, it’s a more complicated decision tô make

[Mehri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read for those interested in sociology of education and inequalities.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and readable

[Elizabeth Higginbotham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid research on important issue in education. Dense writing at times, but a good introduction to how we have integrated schools, but still have many segregated classroom.