Race in the Schoolyard takes us to a place most of us seldom get to see in action¾our children's classrooms¾ and reveals the lessons about race that are communicated there. Amanda E. Lewis spent a year observing classes at three elementary schools, two multiracial urban and one white suburban. While race of course is not officially taught like multiplication and punctuation, she finds that it nonetheless insinuates itself into everyday life in schools.

Lewis explains how the curriculum, both expressed and hidden, conveys many racial lessons. While teachers and other school community members verbally deny the salience of race, she illustrates how it does influence the way they understand the world, interact with each other, and teach children. This eye-opening text is important reading for educators, parents, and scholars alike.

Amanda Lewis provides new insights into how race gets constructed by schools. She examines how school as an institution produces racial meanings, in formal and informal ways, that have lasting consequences for students, especially students of color.

Amanda Lewis'work--which was quoted in the University of Michigan affirmative action case--will surely raise controversy and fuel substantial debates. She wrestles with the relative roles of culture and merit in the book. She uses Bourdieu to understand cultural gaps between minority students and the school. She argues that such gaps put minority students at a disadvantage as they are judged, not in terms of "ability or potential," but by "white middle class styles of interaction." In other words, while acknowledging cultural differences, she points out that these differences are not treated neutrally; rather, those of white students tend to be rewarded, and those of students of color are more often treated as illegitimate.

Amanda Lewis' studies of schools is also part of the larger theoretical project of understanding race relations in America. She argues, in the manner of Bobo, Feagin, and Bonilla-Silva, that racism in America has not disappeared but has assumed new, more subtle forms.
Fecha: 2003-07-08

Extraordinary book on race and contemporary schooling
This book is truly amazing. It deals with a controversial topic in a careful but thought-provoking manner. Having taught in urban and suburban schools for twenty years I can relate to many of the stories that she tells about the inability of teachers, school administrators, and parents to deal effectively with the elephant in the room, race. As she points out in her conclusion we as teachers and Americans cannot "merely close our eyes and try by sheer force of imagination to will ourselves into a color-blind world." In this very readable and well-written book the author reminds us that as teachers we owe it to our students (not just our black and hispanic students) to help them understand how race matters. It is only through direct and honest dialogue that our students will be better prepared to make sure race matters less in the future.
Fecha: 2003-06-24