Looking Into: “What About Poor White People?” an article by Ricky Lee Allen

The struggle within the white race and its class divisions seems to rationalize the actions of nonpoor Whites while attempting to de-racialize poor whites, who are obviously part and parcel the collateral damage of centralized white wealth. “in more recent years Rickey Allen has come to believe that this one particular semantic move is categorically different from the others that nonpoor Whites employ in that its rhetoric is as much intraracial as interracial.” (209) The question that thereby arises is no longer interracial relationships, say between black and white, but rather intraracial relationships such as a White CEO and his blue -collar mechanic.  “What about poor white people?’ does not more than express a desire for an individualistic notion of racism. It also signifies that poor and nonpoor Whites share a close bond: nonpoor Whites stand up for poor Whites when poor Whites are not around to represent themselves.” (210)

Thus the stratification of class within the White race is important to understand when attempting to dismantle White supremacy from all different directions. “the signification of poor Whites by nonpoor Whites provides a window into the internal political organization of the White race, which has yet to be adequately theorized in race-based terms.” (210)

Rickey Lee Allen states that “Understanding how the White race is held together is the first step toward the ultimate goal of breaking it apart so as to disassemble the political alliances that keep White supremacy in place.” (210) She believes that at the outset the relationship between poor and nonpoor Whites glosses over the obvious class difference.  “The inherent, teleological assumption being made is that poor and nonpoor Whites should be aligned, and class conflict divert attention from the racial agreements that hold them together.” (211)

And what is even more ridiculous is that poor Whites, by not problematizing class divisions within the White race, become the object of their own racism. This complacency is one of the pillars of White supremacy and without it, may deteriorate into propaganda nonsense. “White race requires an internal hierarchy in order for it to exist, meaning that those at the bottom of this hierarchy must be willing to submit to the authority of those on the top.” (211) If one were to question how and why do certain Whites get admitted to certain Universities because of their legacy, much of the unwarranted racism thwarted at “affirmative action” students could be re-directed against a population that rarely answers questions about their wealth. “Avoiding the reality of poor Whites’ lower status relative to nonpoor Whites ultimately weakens the overall effort to create cross-racial solidarity and end White supremacy because an opportunity to expose and disrupt the troubling racial alliance between poor and nonpoor Whites is lost. In the Whiteness studies approach, it is the avoidance of discussing poor Whites, both on the part of the educator and the students, that gives ‘What about poor White people?’ much of its power.” (212)

Allen suggests that to understand the dynamics of the poor and nonpoor White relationship one must apply Critical Race Theory. “To move beyond the limited analytical vision of undifferentiated- White privilege versus Marxist-analysis-to-the-rescue, what I suggest is a critical race exegesis of ‘What about poor White people? It’s more recent growth can be traced to legal studies, its roots go back at least to the work of W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963) and Franz Fanon (1925- 1961).” (212)

“At the top of the White supremacist hierarchy, the White racial polity is invested in its dominant status and will only give political concessions to people of color when they are pressured from multiple sides to do so and, most importantly, stand to benefit the most from what appears to many as racial progress for people of color. Bell (1980, 1992) calls this White supremacist phenomenon the ‘interest convergence principle.” (213) In other words poor Whites many times do the dirty work of nonpoor Whites, and create a mythological boogie man that takes the form of people of color. When these courses of actions are deconstructed one can clearly identify the origin of bigotry and hatred. All fingers point to the hegemonic, white, rich oppressors who act behind close doors. And poor Whites, who may have advantageous access to nonpoor Whites, become key actors in the movement to dismantle the systems of racism, classicism, and sexism. 

Although it may be hard to believe “Poor Whites are in a relational sense oppressed people who do face institutional and everyday forms of dehumanization.” (214) And the forms of dehumanization take on many shapes and sizes. “One of the ways that poor Whites are dehumanized is through stereotypes. Many of the prevalent slurs used against them directly communicate their lower status in the White group.” (214)

Luckily Allen doesn’t confuse the racism that people of color endure with the racism of poor Whites.  “Although I agree that poor Whites are not the victims of racism, I disagree with the notion that their denigration stems primarily from class exploitation.” (214) What Allen is trying to say is that it is difficult to highlight forms of poor White dehumanization but it does exist, and will most likely be more appearrant within Critical Race Theory. With this apparatus a layman can identify stereotypes geared at those who are often times defenseless. “Moreover, stereotypes of poor Whites are often rooted in racial notions. For example, negative images of poor Southern Whites’ racism, backwardness, and biological corruption are often juxtaposed against images of the educated, genteel White Southerner who supposedly embodies civility and protects seemingly defenseless Blacks from the violent racism of poor Whites (Smith, 2004). (215)

What becomes problematic is not the stereotype itself but its generalization, and the fact that poor Whites have to get past a preconceived notion of where they are from and how they act. And in the attempt to debunk these stereotypes they may get frustrated from pressures within the White race and sling a racial slur. Which often times is said to be a mark of their ignorance.  “While some poor White Southerners do in fact live out the stereotype of the uneducated, virulent racist, the problem is that portrayals of poor White Southerners by seemingly antiracist filmmakers leave nonpoor White Southerners looking as thought they are the only members of the White group who work for racial progress.” (215)

And even knowing that this pressure is coming from nonpoor Whites to throw away the shackles of the hillbilly, poor Whites still show love and admiration to their true oppressors. “Given that nonpoor Whites are the main group that distorts the image of poor Whites, one would think that poor Whites would harbor a lot of animosity toward nonpoor Whties. Such is not the case. It is an if poor Whites do not care if they are depicted as crazed racists.” (215)“nonpoor White perceptions of and interactions with poor Whites, particularly with members of subgroups like White Appalachians, are largely guided by a combination of fear (of retaliation) and revulsion (toward their genetic inferiority).” (216)

And “Although poor Whites experience systemic dehumanization, they are as much oppressors as they are the oppressed.” (216) Which means that yes, poor Whites can be just as racist as nonpoor whites, while the former prefer interpersonal racism and the latter a more institutional tilt, both play the troubling role of possum.

Allen argues that this racism device is one that has historical roots, dating back to the days of slavery where homeowners and slave-owners feared slave rebellion. Allen believes that European immigrants were brought to this country to serve as a buffer between nonpoor Whites and blacks. And up to today, this paradigm still exists. “Whites must have perceived a threat to the normative order of White supremacy, such as the possibility of a slave revolt, and were therefore willing to open up the ranks of the White racial polity in order to preserve White domination.” (217) Thus the influx of European immigrants to America, a white social order needed to be maintained. “In our contemporary context, I see ‘What about poor White people?’ as a coded representation of the long-standing hierarchical and hegemonic alliance within the White racial polity.” (218) Poor White people have been used for quite some time, and Allen argues, to the benefit of generational White wealth.

Allen suggests that there are benefits to being white. “The benefit that dutiful poor Whites receive for playing the role of decoy is the current manifestation of the public and psychological wages of Whiteness. They receive race-based benefits that people of color do not receive for allowing themselves to be the distraction that is necessary for nonpoor Whites to evade a high level of scrutiny.” (218)

However, “Higher status, nonpoor Whites will never want all Whites to be economically equal because there would be no device left to divert attention away from the racism and White racial privilege of nonpoor Whites.” (219)

Allen believes that part of the responsibility in fighting racism lays in the hands of White people. “Rather than having people of color do all of the anti-racist work, we poor Whites need to be the ones who challenge nonpoor Whites during discussions about race when they ask, ‘What about poor White people?’ I have seen too many poor Whites remain silent and let nonpoor Whites do the dirty work of the White hegemonic alliance, but we poor Whites join them in this semantic move and support more actively the White racial clause.” (219)

She also believes that there should be academic pedagogy that recognizes hegemonic power the accurately explains: racism, sexism, and classicism. “Absent a curriculum that provides poor White students with an opportunity to unlearn their submission to nonpoor Whites, investment in Whiteness, and learned superiority relative to people of color, the future of poor Whites will most likely resemble their past since they will not be able to forge meaningful and transformative political alliances with people of color.” (220) “The white hegemonic alliance overdetermines the educational experiences of poor White students.” (220)

“Without a critical discourse to reveal a myth of the achievement ideology, a good many White Appalachians will experience self-hate and blame themselves or others of their group for their predicament.” (221)

“Despite the educational woes of poor Whites, it would be a mistake to suggest that poor Whites, such as White Appalachians, are in the same social and educational situation as students of color.” (221) Which may answer the question to the debate over affirmative action and white privilege.

“The benefits of being White and Appalachian are highly evident when looking at educational attainment.” (222) Meaning even though many blacks and white people share the same economic bracket they are more likely to get admitted into a four year university. “If the struggles of poor Whites are hidden then it is due to their situatedness within the White hegemonic alliance.” (222) And this alliance has every reason to deny their involvement in the detrimental gap of wealth in the country.

“Poor Whites’ learned sense of inferiority relative to nonpoor Whites is only half of the story. For the other half, we need to think about the benefits that poor Whites receive for not engaging in an antiracist social movement to change the dehumanizing education that they are offered.” (222)

“It is also important for the maintenance of White supremacy that poor Whites leave school believing that their worldviews and knowledge systems are superior to those people of color (Mills, 1997)” (223) So it would seem that along with entertainment (minstrel shows) and propaganda (skewed political ads),  nonpoor Whites also use education (public education) to teach poor Whites that they are superior to their brethren who may have mellonin. This is not only problematic for those poor White youth but also educators seeking to teach a transformative text. Educators must recognize this slant in the public education system and do something to ameliorate its negative effects.

“We also need to avoid class-based approaches that see race as an empty ideology (Leonardo, 2005) and stop imagining poor Whites primarily, if not solely, as victims of capitalist exploitation.” (222-223)

This article was taken from The Handbook of Social Justice in Education, edited by William Ayers, Therese Quinn, and David Stovall. Published by Routledge New York, NY 2009   

Diversity and Development, Piaget and Higher Education

Learning happens in the form of development where lower level cognitive skills are transformed into higher order thinking. In gaining a greater awareness and consciousness of the world around us, the child, in becoming an adult, must devalue the ego. “Indeed, when the little child ceases to relate everything to his states and to his own action, and begins to substitute for a world of fluctuating tableaux without spatial- temporal displacements and according to an objectified and spatialized causality, then his affectivity will also be attached to these localizable permanent objects and sources of external causality which persons come to be.” (26) the child begins to interact with the world rather than at the world.

As the child develops this awareness, he or she identifies with his/her peers no matter what the skin color. And in fact, in diverse environments, the child may become aware of people whom represent a makeup that is more in touch with our global landscape, rather than the confines of local neighborhoods. This awareness allows students to develop heightened forms of critical thinking and tools that may easily dismantle such social ills as racism. Piaget calls this awareness perception.

“Perception constitutes a special case of sensori-motor activity. But its special character consists in the fact that it pictures reality in its figurative aspect whereas an action as a whole (and even sensori- motor action) is essentially operative and transforms the real. It is important, therefore, to determine the relative roles of perceptions and action (and later operations) in the intellectual development of the child.” (29) How the child sees the world then becomes the object of developmental intellect, again reiterating the departure from the ego to the conscious.

It would follow that the more diverse the environment the broader the students awareness. And that the most appropriate setting for rigorous dialogue and debate is within this environment. College, or higher education, must in some way shape or form have an apparatus to create this environment, and the tool to get there, as of present, is affirmative action.

Case for diversity: “The decentering of cognitive constructions necessary for the development of the operations is inseparable from the decentering of affective and social constructions. But the term ‘social’ must not be thought of in the narrow sense of educational, cultural, or moral transmission alone; rather, it covers interpersonal process of socialization which is at once cognitive, affective, and moral. This process may be traced in a broad outline—but we must not forget that the optimal conditions are in fact unattainable and that this evolution is subject to considerable fluctuation, teaching both its cognitive and its affective aspects.” (96)    

Affirmative action is a justified means to an admiral end!

The Psychology of the Child, By Jean Piaget and Barbel Inhelder, published by Basic Books 1969

Race to the Top (RTTT)

When discussing education reform, No Child Left Behind is cited as the beginning of the end of a movement towards a more democratic public education institution. Unfortunately, regardless of the shift in executive partisan leadership, Obama and his educational initiative Race to the Top have been accused of continuing the standardized machine the leaves teachers, students, and communities on the margins. Without addressing the root cause such epidemics as the achievement gap, Race to the Top hastily favors a start from zero approach. What is seriously wrong with this approach is the appearance of a staggered start that eventually evens out. However as time goes on certain runners are asked to run more laps than others, and according to the legislation that this process still establishes a process towards democracy.

“No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, which involve high levels of solely quantitative measures of “success”; and frequent tests for preservice teachers that may or may not evaluate their abilities to teach effectively.” (Porfilio xiv) These measures are not indicative of many of the challenges students and teachers face on a day- to- day basis, due to societal issues and lack of resources respectively. Therefore an irrelevant test is manifested for a population who, to put it plainly, couldn’t care any less. 

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education “wishes to create a system to measure the Value Added scores for graduates of teacher preparation programs and reward programs that yield high- scoring teachers and punish those who fail to make the grade.” (Duncan 2012, Porfilio 58) This may seem like a great idea, keeping teachers accountable, however Duncan himself has never taught in a traditional classroom, his credentials lie in school administration, and even though this may be great preparation for formally holding teachers accountable, it is a spit in the face of teachers who have little representation via unions, to express their countless attempts to “improve test scores”. If you are not in the class everyday, or have some frame of reference, no matter how vague, of classroom culture, it is hard to determine what exactly are suitable measures of competence in such an array of diverse class environments. All students are intelligent, yes, so therefore the objective is just a matter of identifying that intelligence, and nurturing it until the student becomes able to form a healthy self-esteem and positive self-identity. 

What gets in the way of determining these intelligences are standardized tests.

“Standardized testing is at the center of No Child Left Behind and its blueprint for reauthorization, Race the Top, the push for value added assessment, the creation of database tracking projects to longitudinally measure teacher ‘performance’ on students’ standardized tests, the linkage of teacher evaluation and pay to such standardized test-based measures, the imposition of ‘urban portfolio districts,’ legislative moves to stifle the power of teachers unions, the unbridled entry of corporate managers into school reform bypassing professional educators and educational scholarship, and the use of corporate media to frame educational problems as solutions. Standardized testing has also been at the center of the push for charter school expansion and the expansion of for profit management companies running schools.” (Porfilio 75) In addition to holding teachers accountable for things they cannot control, Race to the Top also rewards exclusive charter schools who have little proven difference in test scores then public schools, and for the ones that do better, they have very restrictive de facto regulations that closes the door on ELL and special needs students. What this may be is a resurgence of eugenic philosophies of race-based intelligence and the futile approach to equalize an inherently unequal genetic paradigm. Race to the Top therefore needs to be more inclusive and democratic, welcoming voices in and outside of the traditional and unorthodox school systems.

Left Behind in the Race to the Top: Realities of School Reform edited by Julie Gorlewski and Brad Porfilio published by Information Age Publishing Charlotte, North Carolina 2013

They Schools by Dead Prez

No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

The results of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) will soon be measured, and speaks volumes to the new direction we may need to face if we want to improve public education. As  of 2014, NCLB will be up for re-authorization and in its wake will stand a new strategy and policy known as Race to the Top.

As we have already established in our analysis of San Antonio versus Rodriguez poor communities are getting the shaft in terms of funding public education. Even though they may demonstrate more effort in paying a disproportionate amount of taxes, the gap between poor schools and wealthy ones show no sign of narrowing. “In poor communities, local taxation cannot support minimally acceptable schooling. State and federal equalization formulas rarely cover the cost differences between poor districts and wealthy districts.” (xix) A new system is in dire need “wealthier families have access to schools with more robust funding than do their poorer neighbors. Segregation by social class is the rule, not the exception.” (xix)

So the question remains, do we continue testing as outlined by NCLB to determine progress in our public schools. “While worthy standardized tests do provide teachers with much good data, they hardly provide either enough information or the balance of information necessary to assess accurately either a student’s mastery or a district’s or school’s effort. NCLB narrows, and thus profoundly distorts the problem.” (xxi) What are the other elements outside of standardized testing that show evidence of school progress. Do we need to improve resources such as technology? Do we need to get parents involved in their children’s education? Do we need to find better teachers and implement a more effective curriculum?

The main objective is “to keep alive an educational debate that can lead us toward a system of schooling which is worthy of Americans and the democracy of which its people for generations have dreamed.” (xxii)

Scholars from “The Harvard Civil Rights Project, along with other advocacy groups, has warned that the law threatens to increase the growing dropout and pushout rates of students of color, ultimately reducing access to education for these students, rather than enhancing it.” (4) Many students, especially ELL and Developmentally delayed do not have a fighting chance against the overly complicated state-standardized tests necessary for graduation. As a result many of these afflicted students will drop out. The question remains, could these students be included in our national plan if a better distribution of funds was mounted and resources available specifically to enhance education for ELLs and those that are developmentally delayed. Is the current system destined to fail due to its narrow focus on “mainstream” populations?

NCLB “will lead to reductions in federal funding to already underresourced schools and it will sidetrack funds needed for improvement to underwrite transfers for students to other schools.” (5) This spells disaster for those on the low end of the totem pole (ELLs and Developmentally Delayed)

“Although the hope is that such carrots and sticks will force schools to improve, this does not necessarily occur.”

NCLB “boosted test scores in part by keeping many students out of the testing count and making tens of thousands disappear from school altogether. The disappeared are mostly students of color.” (21) So the solution of a past policy was to simply discard those underneath the bar, and leave them to fend for themselves. This is not a strategy that ameliorates the already well known achievement gap between racial and social classes. If anything this policy will further the chasm between the haves and the have nots.

Those with little political representation and lack of resources “are forced to attend underresourced schools where they lack the texts, materials, qualified teachers, computers, and other necessities for learning.” (22) How they will thrive in such an environment is unknown to many who advocate for a better public education system.

“Determinations of school progress should be constructed to reflect a better grounded analysis of schools’ actual performance and progress rather than a statistical gauntlet that penalizes schools serving the most diverse populations.” (25)

“Accountability must be a two- way state and federal support.” (26)

“It is not hard to find urban and poor rural schools where one-third or more of the teachers are working without training, certification, or mentoring. In schools with the highest minority enrollments, students have less than a 50 percent chance of getting a mathematics or science teacher with a license and a degree in the field that they teach.” (27)

“Imagine a federal law that declared that 100 percent of all citizens must have adequate health care in twelve years or sanctions will be imposed on doctors and hospitals.” (60)

conservative Boston Think Tank: Pioneer Institute

Jackie McKenzie, former superintendent states: “NCLB is actually a cynical effort to shift public school funding to a host of private schools, religious schools, and free-market diploma mills or corporate experiments in education.” (84)

“Apart from the obvious bonanza for the giant companies that design and score standardized tests, hundreds of supplemental service providers’ have already lined up to offer tutoring, including Sylvan, Kaplan Inc. and Princeton Review Inc… Kaplan says revenue for its elementary—and secondary—school division has doubled since No Child Left Behind has passed.” (87)

conservative foundations such as the Heritage Foundation endorse vouchers and believe in the free-market. Not to forget the Hoover Institution in California, Manhattan Institute in New York, Education Reform in Washington, and many others.

Walt Haney from Boston College, progressive

Many Children Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act Is Damaging Our Children and Our Schools by Edited By Deborah Meier and George Wood published by Beacon Press, Boston 2004