READING RESPONSE

Directions: Each student will be responsible for responding to prompts for a particular set of readings.  This response must be a 1-2 page response, typed, double-spaced.  Students will come prepared to class to discuss their prompts, and will help provide discussion and conversation over the prompts.  Directed Reading Responses will count toward 15% of the total grade.

The questions below correspond to Chapter seven of Race in America.

Please respond to one of the questions below:

 1.  Desmond and Emirbayer provide a good discussion of how early American educational systems were essentially an indoctrination into “whiteness” and white supremacy. Write a response that discusses one of the examples they provide as evidence of early American education as indoctrination into “whiteness.”

2.  Desmond and Emirbayer also discuss several ways that “whiteness” finds its way into  educational curriculums and onto college campuses. Write a response that discusses one way in which Desmond and Emirbayer explain how “whiteness” informs educational curricula.

3. Desmond and Emirbayer also discuss the reasons behind the education gap among different communities (white/asian and black/latino). They also find that the gap is greater at the collegiate level than high school. Write a response that explains Desmond and Emirbayer’s research into the education gap between these groups. Why such a gap? Why is the gap higher at the college level?

4. Desmond and Emirbayer have several good discussion about “culture” (cultural capital; Social capital; oppositional culture). Write a response that discusses one of these examinations of culture and its influence on educational success or educational resistance.