The Benefits Of Institutional Racism In The Education System

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Before the 1960’s segregation was allowed by the law but as I stated earlier Chicago schools are massively segregated. How is this possible when segregation has been ruled out by law? If it is not the law holding the segregation in place then what is? It is reasonable to assume that our education system is what upholds the racism. The education system, much like our prison institutions, are deeply entrenched in our society. As a result overt racism is not very common. What is concerning is institutional racism because it is built into the system and is operated on large scales. Even when good people want to make changes institutional racism operates like a machine, grinding relentlessly. One common practice of Institutional racism is our tests. …show more content…

If the system undoubtedly favors one race over another then it should be easy to point out the privileges. Paula S. Rothenberg mentions in her book “White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism” that we cannot avoid this problem, “As for the concern that looking at whiteness and white privilege will deflect our attention from racism, this could not be further from the truth” (Rothenberg 2). Failure to observe things from the side of the privileges overlooks many of the benefits of the institutional racism. By examining the benefactors of the system two things can be learned: who benefits from the system and how they do it. It is quite easy to shame racism and call it deplorable but it is much harder to realize that white privilege is other side of racism. However, failure to recognize this allows racism in our education systems to exist and flourish. Only when people in privileged positions fight for the equality of others will the institutional racism be defeated. One simple way to the privilege in the school system is when you compare how minorities learned about race and how white people learned about race. Often time minorities learn about race through a painful experience or a realization that they are different. In contrast many white people were probably unaware of their whiteness because it was the norm an everywhere. Robin …show more content…

When a person begins to connect all of the dots they see how the system degrades education of minorities and promotes education of whites. The only way to stop this racism and provide equality for all is to first recognize it is a problem. Unfortunately in our time society views racism as remarkably taboo that often times it is viewed as individual cases rather than a mechanism to institute ideas and promote social order. Policies like No Child Left Behind are clear examples of how our government promotes inequality by relying on the system to weed out the students who don’t perform well on high stakes test. These students don’t receive the best resources and teachers so they are not able to succeed in the classroom and test setting when compared to their peers. Coincidentally school funding is based off of property taxes. Richer neighborhoods have higher property taxes and thus have more funding. While investigating the demographic of people who have wealth it comes as no surprise that the majority of the demographic is white. With all this information it is almost impossible to deny that our education system manages and upholds racism. The larger problem comes when people fail to see the institutional racism behind it all. If as a society we fail to recognize the downfalls of our education then racism will persist and allow more students to fall through the

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