Ethnicity and Race

The effects of race and ethnicity are complex and multidimensional and have institutional and social causes. This entry provides definitions for race and ethnicity in the United States as researchers, scholars, and institutional agencies currently use the terms. Although there are both biologically derived definitions and socially constructed definitions, the biologically derived definitions are being debunked, and a more complex definition, related to racialization (i.e., the categorization of people by race, which leads to racial discrimination) is more widely accepted. There are still many weaknesses in how researchers collect information on race and ethnicity, specifically when relying on definitions provided by the U.S. census and assuming that these definitions are consistent. However, it may be that understanding the fluidity of these definitions can allow researchers to improve data collection and data interpretation.

Race, ethnicity, and national origin have a significant impact on the life chances or life opportunities of individuals in the United States, and in the United States, education has become the means by which it is believed people gain social mobility—not solely by what they learn in the classroom but also by the social networks, prestige, and occupational credentials they gain by attending institutions of learning. Therefore, the intersections of race, ethnicity, and national origin are more profound when the disparities in educational [Page 363]achievements by race, ethnicity, and national origin are considered.

The debate over the racial and ethnic disproportion in educational achievement has traditionally been explained by Linda Darling-Hammond as a process of biological fact. Due in part to the civil rights movement, a growing number of researchers of color, and a greater focus on institutional inequalities and their effects, biologically derived explanations for disparities in educational achievement have given way to cultural deficiencies explanations. Such perspectives have been articulated by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray and by Dinesh D'souza. The most infamous of all these works has been the discredited Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve. Most of these works ignore the historical and systemic social and institutional barriers that are still in place today.