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Introduction
Racism is one of the problems affecting the country in all its sector of the economy. The education sector is one of the key sectors impacted negatively by racism. In various schools across the country, racism takes different forms. Students, teachers, and other educational stakeholders participate in racist acts. Common racist acts across the country’s schools include bullying, microaggressions, and other biased thoughts against others (Leonardo& Grubb, 2018). Racism in schools also takes another dimension where the policies that govern educational institutions discriminate against other groups of people. Despite the improvement in educational policies, racism against Native Americans is still a problem in the education sector and has negatively impacted students from this ethnic group.
Black people, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans have all faced the wrath of racism. Because of discrimination, they have experienced the worst educational and health outcome since the arrival of Europeans in America more than 500 years ago. Some of the worst cases of racism against Native Americans include massive trauma, segregation, and discrimination, which have been the important cause of Native American and white educational disparities (Leonardo& Grubb, 2018). However, because of the difficulties in sampling, studies about modern experiences of racist acts such as discrimination and harassment in educational institutions have remained understudied in educational research.
Systematic racism has been one of the challenging problems for the country to solve. It has been exhibited in the education sector where the minority group, for instance, the Native Americans, have not been given equal opportunity as the majority of white Americans. This has resulted in a poor educational outcome for the Native American students due to unequal access to important resources. The racist systems have been in control of the placement of skilled teachers and quality educational resources, leaving the student from the minority group with limited resources and unqualified staff (Tourse, Hamilton-Mason & Wewiorski, 2018). From this dimension, it can be justified that the American educational system is a function of race and the unequal system in the developed world. Students in the country usually obtain dramatically different learning opportunities grounded on their race and social status.
Education inequality in America is not new; before the passage of civil rights legislation by congress in 1968, mostly African Americans, Latinas, and Native Americans were subjected to unequal educational setups where they were educated in wholly segregated schools that received funds at a lower proportion as compared to the funding that schools which were serving the white students received The racist acts against the Native Americans and the other minority group also led to the prevention of the members of these ethnic or racial group from accessing higher education.
Impacts of Racism on Native Americans
Institutional racism does not just affect adults in society; it also affects learners at all levels of learning. Most studies and discrimination lawsuits against institutions in the country indicate that Native Americans face school biases. They receive harsh treatment when it comes to indiscipline cases. Also, as mentioned earlier, they are not likely to be identified as gifted students to have access to qualified teachers and other educational resources. Racial discrimination in education setup has serious impacts on students. In some cases, schools used to racially abuse minority Native Americans as they have been used as a conduit for prisons to channel these students to prison.
Inequalities in School Suspensions
Racial discrimination in educational institutions such as schools has resulted in massive inequality in how students are treated. Native Americans in California public schools make up less than 1 percent of the total students in the K-12 school in the state (Kohli, Pizarro & Nevarez, 2017). According to Hong (2019), in a report Boarding School to Suspension board from San Diego State University and Native American Scholars, it was realized that the likelihood of suspending and expelling Native American students was higher than the state average. The researchers further realized that the Native American boys were the most affected by the expulsion and suspension. According to the study findings, the suspension rate for Native American boys was 9.6 percent, greater than the state average of 3.5 percent in 2017-2018; for Native American girls was 4.6 percent which was also higher than the state average (Hong, 2019). The boys from this minority group are most likely to be expelled from schools in the state, four times higher than the state average (Hong, 2019). The Native American boys and girls in the California public schools were highly suspended at a rate higher than the state average.
The researchers indicated a need for more culturally informed and less punitive ways of tackling students’ behaviors. The researchers further noted that racism plays a central role in punishing the students as most of the educators in these schools are not well prepared to engage and teach Native American students. They are not aware of their cultures and their lived socio-cultural experiences. This creates a woeful environment where students feel that they are not part of the educational institution where they go for learning. The suspension and expulsion have directly impacted the Native American students and community. The consequences of suspension and expulsion due to negative racial biases against the Native American students cause excessive absence of these students from the results classroom in restriction for the Native American students from receiving education of the same quality as students from the white communities. Suspension and expulsion are key factors contributing to the unadulterated achievement gap between these students and their white peers.
Some studies have indicated that suspension can cause students to fall behind academically and eventually drop out of school; pushing students out of school increases their likelihood of interacting with the country’s criminal justice system, which sometimes can be harsh. Research in 2016 which investigated the causes of children’s suicide showed that it was justifiable that punishment was among the main cause of death by suicide among black boys. This indicates that with increased harsh punishment against Native American students in schools, there is the likelihood of a rise in suicidal thoughts.
Low Representation in the Gifted Programs
Racial discrimination in the schools has contributed a lot to the low representation of Native Americans and poor students in the Gifted Programs in schools around the country. The state report regarding the Gifted Program in public schools in the country from 2000, 2012, 2014, and 2016 indicates that 42 percent of these schools that identify students with special gifts and talents did not identify a single student (Callahan, Moon & Oh, 2017). Based on race and ethnic disparities, the report indicated that black, Asian, Latina, and white students have the like-hood of being in the same school, which has been mandated to identify gifted students with most white students. Still, the Native Americans were less likely to attend these schools.
The Native American children and other poor children are less likely to be identified by their teachers as gifted and talented students. White teachers are more likely to identify them as students who require a special education service. This indicates that racial biases play a central role in selecting the students with gifts. This is because the white students chosen for the program are not more talented than their peers from the Native American minority. In schools with teachers who are Native American, there is a high likelihood that the Native American students would be identified as talented and gifted. This indicated that the white teachers were discriminating against Native Americans in the selection process of the students to join the program. Thus, they largely overlooked the students from the minority groups.
The realization that all students are gifted came into the limelight when a school in Florida changed its screening process to identify gifted students. The school realized that the number of students who they considered as gifted rose among all races. The school relied on a universal screening procedure where the second-grade students were required to take a nonverbal test to help in identifying the gifted students. Various researchers believe that a nonverbal test is one of the best and most objective methods of identifying gifted students from learners who are not good with English. The initial procedure used in the state depended on teachers and parents for referrals to identify a gifted child. Racial biases in the selection of students for the gifted program have led to limited opportunities for Native American students to showcase their talents and abilities, thus, missing out on opportunities to help them grow their talents.
Lower Quality Education
Several researchers have conducted studies on the level of funding of the public schools and the type of teachers a given group of schools receives. These researchers have concluded that the schools dominated by black people, Native Americans, and other minority groups are likely to receive education from the least qualified educator, according to the published study “assessing the teachers’ quality gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students ” (Goldhaber, Lavery & Theobald, 2015). It outlined in Washington DC the minority black students, Native Americans, Hispanics, and other minority groups were most likely to be taught by an inexperienced teacher who performed poorly in licensure exams and a teacher who is poor in recording and improving student test scores. This has greatly affected the future of these students negatively as other related research indicates that Native Americans, black and Hispanic, among other minority groups, students have limited opportunities to be placed in advanced classes than their white peers. These various studies pointed out that the Native Americans were less likely to be enrolled in courses that were specifically designed for students who have achieved high grades in mathematics and sciences and also limited their chances of enrolling in four-year course programs, which usually demand that before a student is enrolled in the program, they have to complete an advance level mathematics class.
Over-Policing and Segregation of Native American Students
Native Americans are not only likely to miss joining colleges and also to be identified as gifted students, but they are also most likely to be admitted to schools that are highly monitored by police officers and with greater police presence. The presence of the officers in the schools increases the likelihood of these students entering the criminal justice system due to racial discrimination. The presence of the police officers in the schools where the Native American students go has been racialized, just like in their communities.
According to the Civil Right Data Collection, between 2015 to 2016, as analyzed by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the organization found that students of color, including Native Americans, are more likely to go to schools with a high presence of police officers. These students are also more likely to be referred to law enforcement, where they can easily be arrested by the officers protecting the schools. According to the ACLU, during the 2015 to 2016 school year, nearly 1.6 million students were enrolled and attended schools with sworn law enforcement officers with no counselors. The report further indicates that students with disability and who are also are of color were at a higher risk of being arrested by the police officers; for instance, on Rhodes Island, the rate at which the Native Americans are referred to the police officers are five times higher than the national average. Over-policing within the institution has negatively affected the Native American students’ performance in school. The students are sometimes subjected to unwarranted searches by the police, causing trauma and other mental health issues on the students, which potentially affect their well-being. On some occasions Native, American students have been accused of drugs abuse and other immoral acts within the school thus, exposing them to the criminal justice system.
Conclusion
Racism is one of the problems affecting the educational system of the United States of America and its other sector of the economy. The education sector is one of the key sectors impacted negatively by racism. In various schools across the country, racism takes different forms. Students, teachers, and other educational stakeholders participate in racist acts. Common racist acts that occur across the schools are bullying, microaggressions, and other biased thought against others. The potential impacts of racism in school that the ethnic minority faces include lower quality education, discriminative suspensions, over-policing, and discriminative selection in gifted programs.
Racial discrimination in education setup has serious impacts on students. The study shows that Native Americans and other minority groups face school biases from teachers and fellow students. They receive harsh treatment when it comes to indiscipline cases. Also, they are not likely to be identified as gifted students to have access to qualified teachers and other educational resources. In some cases, schools have been used to racially abuse minority Native Americans as they have been used as a conduit to channel these students to prison. The paper also found that Native Americans and other minority groups are likely to receive education from the least qualified educator, which negatively affects these students’ future. Over-policing, on the hand, has also contributed to the increased dropout of the Native Americans from school as they are exposed to prejudice which leads to their exposure to law enforcement officers, which sometimes results in the jailing of the students.
References
Callahan, C. M., Moon, T. R., & Oh, S. (2017). Describing the status of programs for the gifted: A call for action. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 40(1), 20-49.
Goldhaber, D., Lavery, L., & Theobald, R. (2015). Uneven playing field? Assessing the teacher quality gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Educational researcher, 44(5), 293-307.
Hong, J. (2019). Study: California’s Native American students suspended, expelled at higher rates. KPBS Public Media.
Kohli, R., Pizarro, M., & Nevárez, A. (2017). The “new racism” of K–12 schools: Centering critical research on racism. Review of research in education, 41(1), 182-202.
Leonardo, Z., & Grubb, W. N. (2018). Education and racism: A primer on issues and dilemmas. Routledge.
Tourse, R. W., Hamilton-Mason, J., & Wewiorski, N. J. (2018). Systemic racism in the United States. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International.
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