articles about race and education

Exploring Equity: Race and Ethnicity

• Posted February 18, 2021
• By Gianna Cacciatore
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Inequality and Education Gaps
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education
• Teachers and Teaching

The history of education in the United States is rife with instances of violence and oppression along lines of race and ethnicity. For educators, leading conversations about race and racism is a challenging, but necessary, part of their work.

“Schools operate within larger contexts: systems of race, racism, and white supremacy; systems of migration and ethnic identity formation; patterns of socialization; the changing realities of capitalism and politics,” explains historian and Harvard lecturer Timothy Patrick McCarthy , co-faculty lead of Race and Ethnicity in Context, a new module offered at the Harvard Graduate School of Education this January as part of a pilot of HGSE’s Equity and Opportunity Foundations course. “How do we understand the role that racial and ethnic identity play with respect to equity and opportunity within an educational context?”

>> Learn more about Equity and Opportunity and HGSE’s other foundational learning experiences.

For educators exploring question in their own homes, schools, and communities, McCarthy and co-faculty lead Ashley Ison, an HGSE doctoral student, offer five ways to get started.

1.    Begin with the self.

Practitioners enter conversations about race and racism from different backgrounds, with different lived experiences, personal and professional perspectives, and funds of knowledge in their grasps. Given diverse contexts and realities, it is important that leaders encourage personal transformation and growth. Educators should consider how race and racism, as well as racial and ethnic identity formation, impact their lives as educational professionals, as parents, and as policymakers – whatever roles they hold in society. “This is personal work, but that personal work is also political work,” says Ison.

2.    Model vulnerability.

Entering into discussions of race and racism can be challenging, even for those with experience in this work. A key part of enabling participants to lean into the challenge is being vulnerable. “You have trust your students,” explains McCarthy. “Part of that is modeling authentic vulnerability and proximity to the work.” This can be done by modeling discussion skills, like sharing the space and engaging directly with the comments of other participants, as well as by opening up personally to participants.  

“Fear can impact how people feel talking about race and ethnicity in an inter-group space,” says Ison. Courage, openness, and trust are key to overcoming that fear and enabling listening, which ultimately allows for critical thinking and change.

3.    Be transparent.

Part of being vulnerable is being fully transparent with your students from day one. “Intentions are important,” explains McCarthy. “The gap between intention and impact is often rooted in a lack of transparency about where you’re coming from or where you are hoping to go.”

4.    Center voices of color.

Voice and story are powerful tools in this work. Leaders must consider whose voices and stories take precedence on the syllabus. “Consider highlighting authors of color, in particular, who are thinking and writing about these issues,” says Ison. Becoming familiar with a variety of perspectives can help practitioners understand the voices and ideas that exist, she explains.

“Voice and storytelling can bear witness to the various kinds of systematic injustices and inequities we are looking at, but they also function as sources of power for imagining and reimagining the world we are trying to build, all while providing a deeper knowledge of the world as it has existed historically,” adds McCarthy.

5.    Prioritize discussion and reflection.

Since this work is as much about critical thinking as it is about content, it is important for educators to make space for discussion and reflection, at the whole-class, small-group, and individual levels. Ison and McCarthy encourage educators to allow students to generate and guide the discussion of predetermined course materials. They also recommend facilitating small group reflections that may spark conversation that can extend into other spaces outside of the classroom.

Selected Resources:

• Poor, but Privileged
• NPR: "The Importance of Diversity in Teaching Staff”
• TED Talk with Clint Smith: "The Danger of Silence"

More Stories from the Series:

• Exploring Equity: Citizenship and Nationality
• Exploring Equity: Gender and Sexuality
• Exploring Equity: Dis/ability
• Exploring Equity: Class

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Related Articles

Navigating Tensions Over Teaching Race and Racism

Disrupting Whiteness in the Classroom

Combatting Anti-Asian Racism

Equipping educators with restorative justice techniques to upend discrimination and stereotype

A future we can all live with: How education can address and eradicate racism

by  Cecilia Barbieri & Martha K. Ferede

Today, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic that has exposed stark socio-economic inequalities and exacerbated hate speech, the world is also witnessing a global uprising against systemic, institutionalized and structural racism and discrimination.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible

These words spoken by Maya Angelou more than 30 years ago echo the injustices of the past, add gravitas to our turbulent present and show clearly that prejudice runs counter to what is needed, at the core, for us to become global citizens who promote and develop just and peaceful futures.

Today, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic that has exposed stark socio-economic inequalities and exacerbated hate speech, the world is also witnessing a global uprising against systemic, institutionalized and structural racism and discrimination. Protests are unfolding in nearly every continent – from North and South America to Europe and Australia. This is not only about yet one more senseless killing of an unarmed African-American man. It is about the senseless killing of millions over many centuries, the unequal and unjust treatment, the different forms of violence, the economic and social inequality, the lack of opportunity, the racial profiling, the marginalization, the micro-agressions and the countless daily indignities. 

Systemic racism and discrimination are rooted in the structure of society itself, in governments, the workplace, courts, police and education institutions. Racism can be explicit but often exists in implicit, subtle and insidious forms that can be hard to pin down. 

Global data on education points to the malignancy of racism:  

School disciplinary policies disproportionately impact Black students . In some settings, starting as early as preschool, Black children are 3.6 times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than White children, increasing to 4 times as likely in grades K-12. Black students are also more than twice as likely to face school-related arrests and be referred to law enforcement ( US Department Office for Civil Rights, 2016 ;  Fabello et al., 2011 ). 

Teachers’ expectations differ by students’ race . Many studies have found a correlation between teachers’ expectations and students’ educational outcomes including academic achievement and completion of higher education ( Boser et al., 2014 ). However, teachers’ expectations differ by students’ race, economic status and national origin. For instance, Eastern European students have experienced various forms of racism and low expectations in the UK school system ( Tereschenko et al., 2018 ).

Students from ethnic and racial minority groups are more likely to be labelled ‘at risk’ . For example, in Quebec, Canada, students with Caribbean backgrounds are three times more likely to be identified as SHSMLD (students with handicaps, social maladjustments, or learning difficulties) and placed in separate classes for “at-risk” students ( Maynard, 2017 ).

Education attendance and attainment correlate with race . According to the  2020 Global Education Monitoring Report , although there have been advances towards increasing access in recent decades,  enduring racial inequality remains in educational attendance and attainment in Latin American countries. For example, compared to their non-Afrodescendant peers, attendance rates are lower for Afrodescendants aged 12-17 ( ECLAC, 2019 ). Based on World Bank data ( 2018 ), Afrodescendants in Uruguay and Peru are also reported as less likely to complete secondary school than non-Afrodescendants. 

Racial discrimination takes place among students . In Australia, a study of primary and secondary Anglo-Celtic/European, East or Southeast Asian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander and African students’ backgrounds, found that one in three reported being the victim of racial discrimination by their peers ( Priest et al., 2019 ).

The returns to education differ by race .  In post-Apartheid South Africa, although opportunities for education have improved, there has been a divergence in the valuation of that education. In 2004, differences in the returns to education accounted for about 40% of the White-African wage differential ( Keswell, 2010 ). By 2018, the average Black South African earned five times less than the average White South-African ( Syed & Ozbilgin, 2019 ).

Racism is a violation of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights  (1948) and it goes against UNESCO’s  Convention Against Discrimination in Education  (1960), the  International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination  (1965), the  International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights  (1966) and the  Convention on the Rights of the Child  (1989).

Systemic racism and discrimination are rooted in the structure of society itself, in governments, workplaces, courts, police and education institutions.

Education systems and educational institutions have an important role and responsibility in addressing and eliminating racism through: 

Supporting schools to implement education policies that support racially integrated schools . Such schools have been found to promote greater social cohesion and cross-race relationships ( Eaton & Chirichigno, 2011 ).  

Training and recruiting teachers that reflect the diversity of students . Studies show that when teachers reflect the student body, there are improved learning outcomes, higher expectations and fewer disciplinary actions ( Egamit et al. 2015 ). 

Examining the curriculum from multiple vantage points . First, schools should give history, social memory and human rights – as well as indigenous forms of knowledge – a place at the core of teaching.  This helps us to fully understand the past and its relation to the present and to break the perpetuation of stereotypes. Second, educators should reexamine and revise curriculum, and textbooks in particular, to eliminate racist depictions, misrepresentation, and historical exclusions. 

Addressing implicit bias .  All actors in education institutions from policy-makers, leaders, teachers, staff and students should receive training to become aware of their implicit bias – their unconscious bias and beliefs. Reflective teaching, fair discipline policies based on data and use of external feedback are some strategies schools can use to reduce implicit bias ( Staats, 2015 ). 

The injustice of systemic racism is a significant barrier to the type of education that is needed for preferred alternative futures for all - for a world where people are able to live together peacefully as global citizens in strong and just societies that value diversity. As educators, citizens and as a global community, we have much work to do to ensure that the solutions proposed to defeat systemic racism do not remain mired in the system that is being critiqued, so that the roots of oppression and inequality can be removed. 

And for that, a frank and bold approach is needed as affirmed in the recent message from the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, “The position of the United Nations on racism is crystal clear: this scourge violates the United Nations Charter and debases our core values. Every day, in our work across the world, we strive to do our part to promote inclusion, justice, dignity and combat racism in all its manifestations.” 

It is time for essential conversations and inspired and informed action. 

Our future depends on it. 

The ideas expressed here are those of the authors; they are not necessarily the official position of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

Cecilia Barbieri is the Chief of Section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education at UNESCO, coming from the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, where she was in charge of the Education 2030 Section. She has worked as an Education Specialist with UNESCO since 1999, mainly in Africa and Asia.

Martha K. Ferede is a Project Officer in the section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education at UNESCO. She is a former school teacher, researcher at Harvard University and lecturer at Sciences-po.

Futures of Education

Find out more about our work on the Futures of Education

Related items

• Future of education

More on this subject

Other recent idea

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

The U.S. student population is more diverse, but schools are still highly segregated

Sequoia Carrillo

Pooja Salhotra

The U.S. student body is more diverse than ever before. Nevertheless, public schools remain highly segregated along racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

That's according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). More than a third of students (about 18.5 million of them) attended a predominantly same-race/ethnicity school during the 2020-21 school year, the report finds. And 14% of students attended schools where almost all of the student body was of a single race/ethnicity.

The report is a follow up to a 2016 GAO investigation on racial disparity in K-12 schools. That initial report painted a slightly worse picture, but findings from the new report are still concerning, says Jackie Nowicki, the director of K-12 education at the GAO and lead author of the report.

Why White School Districts Have So Much More Money

"There is clearly still racial division in schools," says Nowicki. She adds that schools with large proportions of Hispanic, Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students – minority groups with higher rates of poverty than white and Asian American students – are also increasing. "What that means is you have large portions of minority children not only attending essentially segregated schools, but schools that have less resources available to them."

"There are layers of factors here," she says. "They paint a rather dire picture of the state of schooling for a segment of the school-age population that federal laws were designed to protect."

School segregation happens across the country

Segregation has historically been associated with the Jim Crow laws of the South. But the report finds that, in the 2020-21 school year, the highest percentage of schools serving a predominantly single-race/ethnicity student population – whether mostly white, mostly Hispanic or mostly Black etc. – were in the Northeast and the Midwest.

School segregation has "always been a whole-country issue," says U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who heads the House education and labor committee. He commissioned both the 2016 and 2022 reports. "The details of the strategies may be different, but during the '60s and '70s, when the desegregation cases were at their height, cases were all over the country."

How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By 'Individual Choices'

The GAO analysis also found school segregation across all school types, including traditional public schools, charter schools and magnet schools. Across all charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, more than a third were predominantly same-race/ethnicity, serving mostly Black and Hispanic students.

There's history behind the report's findings

Nowicki and her team at the GAO say they were not surprised by any of the report's findings. They point to historical practices, like redlining , that created racially segregated neighborhoods.

And because 70% of U.S. students attend their neighborhood public schools, Nowicki says, racially segregated neighborhoods have historically made for racially segregated schools.

The 50 Most Segregating School Borders In America

"There are historical reasons why neighborhoods look the way they look," she explains. "And some portion of that is because of the way our country chose to encourage or limit where people could live."

Though the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed housing discrimination on the basis of race, the GAO says that in some states, current legislation reinforces racially isolated communities.

"Our analysis showed that predominantly same-race/ethnicity schools of different races/ethnicities exist in close proximity to one another within districts, but most commonly exist among neighboring districts," the report says.

School district secessions have made segregation worse

One cause for the lack of significant improvement, according to the GAO, is a practice known as district secession, where schools break away from an existing district – often citing a need for more local control – and form their own new district. The result, the report finds, is that segregation deepens.

"In the 10 years that we looked at district secessions, we found that, overwhelmingly, those new districts were generally whiter, wealthier than the remaining districts," Nowicki says.

Six of the 36 district secessions identified in the report happened in Memphis, Tenn., which experienced a historic district merger several years ago. Memphis City Schools, which served a majority non-white student body, dissolved in 2011 due to financial instability. It then merged with the neighboring district, Shelby County Schools, which served a wealthier, majority white population.

This Supreme Court Case Made School District Lines A Tool For Segregation

Joris Ray was a Memphis City Schools administrator at the time of the merger. He recalls that residents of Shelby County were not satisfied with the new consolidated district. They successfully splintered off into six separate districts.

As a result, the GAO report says, racial and socioeconomic segregation has grown in and around Memphis. All of the newly formed districts are whiter and wealthier than the one they left, which is now called Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Why Busing Didn't End School Segregation

"This brings negative implications for our students overall," says Ray, who has led Memphis-Shelby County Schools since 2019. "Research has shown that students in more diverse schools have lower levels of prejudice and stereotypes and are more prepared for top employers to hire an increasingly diverse workforce."

The GAO report finds that this pattern – of municipalities removing themselves from a larger district to form their own, smaller school district – almost always creates more racial and socioeconomic segregation. Overall, new districts tend to have larger shares of white and Asian American students, and lower shares of Black and Hispanic students, the report finds. New districts also have significantly fewer students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a common measure of poverty.

This is what the racial education gap in the US looks like right now

Racial achievement gaps in the United States has been slow and unsteady. Image:  Unsplash/Santi Vedrí

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} David Elliott

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Education, Gender and Work is affecting economies, industries and global issues

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, education, gender and work.

• Racial achievement gaps in the United States are narrowing, a Stanford University data project shows.
• But progress has been slow and unsteady – and gaps are still large across much of the country.
• COVID-19 could widen existing inequalities in education.
• The World Economic Forum will be exploring the issues around growing income inequality as part of The Jobs Reset Summit .

In the United States today, the average Black and Hispanic students are about three years ahead of where their parents were in maths skills.

They’re roughly two to three years ahead of them in reading, too.

And while white students’ test scores in these subjects have also improved, they’re not rising by as much. This means racial achievement gaps – a key way of monitoring whether all students have access to a good education – in the country are narrowing, research by Stanford University shows.

But while the trend suggests progress is being made in improving racial educational disparities, it doesn’t show the full picture. Progress, the university says, has been slow and uneven.

Have you read?

How can africa prepare its education system for the post-covid world, higher education: do we value degrees in completely the wrong way, this innovative solution is helping indian children get an education during the pandemic.

Standardized tests

Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Monitoring Project uses average standardized test scores for nine-, 13- and 17-year-olds to measure these achievement gaps.

It’s able to do this because the same tests have been used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress to observe maths and reading skills since the 1970s.

In the following decades, as the above chart shows, achievement gaps have significantly declined in all age groups and in both maths and reading. But it’s been something of a roller-coaster.

Substantial progress stalled at the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s and in some cases the gaps grew larger. Since then, they’ve been declining steadily and are now significantly smaller than they were in the 1970s.

But these gaps are still “very large”. In fact, the difference in standardized test scores between white and Black students currently amounts to roughly two years of education. And the gap between white and Hispanic students is almost as big.

Schools not to blame

This disparity exists across the US. Racial achievement gaps have narrowed in most states – although they’ve widened in a small number. In almost all of the country’s 100 largest school districts , though, there’s a big achievement gap between white and Black students.

So why is this? Stanford says its data doesn’t support the common argument that schools themselves are to blame for low average test scores, which is often made because white students tend to live in wealthier communities where schools are presumed to be better.

In fact, it says, the scores actually represent gaps in educational opportunity, which can be traced back to a child’s early experiences. These experiences are formed at home, in childcare and preschool, and in communities – and they provide opportunities to develop socioemotional and academic capacities.

Higher-income families are more likely to be able to provide these opportunities to their children, so a family’s socioeconomic resources are strongly related to educational outcomes , Stanford says. It notes that in the US, Black and Hispanic children’s parents typically have lower incomes and levels of educational attainment than those of white children.

Other factors, such as patterns of residential and school segregation and a state’s educational and social policies, could also have a role in the size of achievement gaps.

And discipline could play its part, too, according to another Stanford study. It linked the achievement gap between Black and white students to the fact that the former are punished more harshly for similar misbehaviour, for example being more likely to be suspended from school than the latter.

Long-term effects

Stanford says using data to map race and poverty could provide the insights needed to help improve educational opportunity for all children.

And this kind of insight is needed now more than ever. The school shutdowns forced by COVID-19 could have exacerbated existing achievement gaps , according to research from McKinsey. The consultancy says the resulting learning losses – predicted to be greater for low-income Black and Hispanic students – could have long-term effects on the economic well-being of the affected children.

Black and Hispanic families are less likely to have high-speed internet at home, making distance learning difficult. And students living in low-income neighbourhoods are less likely to have had decent home schooling, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Earlier in the pandemic, it said coronavirus would "explode" achievement gaps , suggesting it could expand them by the equivalent of another half a year of schooling.

The World Economic Forum’s Jobs Reset Summit brings together leaders from business, government, civil society, media and the broader public to shape a new agenda for growth, jobs, skills and equity.

The two-day virtual event, being held on 1-2 June 2021, will address the most critical areas of debate, articulate pathways for action, and mobilize the most influential leaders and organizations to work together to accelerate progress.

The Summit will develop new frameworks, shape innovative solutions and accelerate action on four thematic pillars: Economic Growth, Revival and Transformation; Work, Wages and Job Creation; Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning; and Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice.

The World Economic Forum will be exploring the issues around growing income inequality, and what to do about it, as part of The Jobs Reset Summit .

The summit will look at ways to shape more inclusive, fair and sustainable organizations, economies and societies as we emerge from the current crisis.

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Related topics:

The agenda .chakra .wef-n7bacu{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-weight:400;} weekly.

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Education and Skills .chakra .wef-17xejub{-webkit-flex:1;-ms-flex:1;flex:1;justify-self:stretch;-webkit-align-self:stretch;-ms-flex-item-align:stretch;align-self:stretch;} .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

AI is changing the shape of leadership – how can business leaders prepare?

Ana Paula Assis

May 10, 2024

From virtual tutors to accessible textbooks: 5 ways AI is transforming education

Andrea Willige

These are the top ranking universities in Asia for 2024

May 8, 2024

Globally young people are investing more than ever, but do they have the best tools to do so?

Hallie Spear

May 7, 2024

Reskilling Revolution: The Role of AI in Education 4.0

Why investing in people is essential to revive growth: Key quotes from leaders at the #SpecialMeeting24

Gayle Markovitz and Kate Whiting

May 2, 2024

February 1, 2022

Teaching about Racism Is Essential for Education

Lessons about racial injustice help students understand reality

By The Editors

Elected officials who campaigned against critical race theory (CRT), the study of how social structures perpetuate racial inequality and injustice, are being sworn into office all over the U.S. These candidates captured voters’ attention by vilifying CRT, which has become a catch-all to describe any teaching about racial injustice. Lessons about the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, segregation and systemic racism would harm children, these candidates argued. Calling its inclusion divisive, some states have enacted legislation banning CRT from school curricula altogether.

This regressive agenda threatens children’s education by propagating a falsified view of reality in which American history and culture are outcomes of white virtue. It is part of a larger program of avoiding any truths that make some people uncomfortable, which sometimes allows in active disinformation, such as creationism. Children are especially susceptible to misinformation, as Melinda Wenner Moyer writes in “Schooled in Lies.”

It is crucial for young people to learn about equity and social justice so they can thrive in our increasingly global, multilingual and multicultural society. When students become aware of the structural origins of inequality, they better understand the foundations of American society. They are also better equipped to comprehend, interpret and integrate into their worldviews the science they learn in their classrooms and experience in their lives.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Pondering racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities helps students understand, for example, why COVID death rates among Black, Latino and Native American people were much higher than those of white people as the pandemic began. They can better comprehend why people of color are far more likely to be subjected to the ravages of pollution and climate change or how a legacy of U.S. science that experimented on Black and Indigenous Americans may have led to distrust of doctors and health care.

Removing conversations around race and society removes truth and reality from education. This political interference is nothing new—political and cultural ideologues have fought for years to remove subjects such as evolution, Earth history and sex education from classrooms and textbooks, despite the evidence that sex ed helps to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, that evolution explains all life on Earth and that the world is older than a few thousand years.

Many of the school districts that brought in anti-CRT board members are the same ones that refuse to mandate masks, despite the evidence that masks can prevent the spread of COVID. These school officials also rail against vaccine mandates as a violation of personal choice. It is the same prioritization of individuals over community and a discomfort with hard truths that characterize the movement against the teaching of true history.

Fortunately, efforts to limit children’s education face stark opposition. The American Civil Liberties Union describes initiatives to quash discussions of racism in classrooms as “anathema to free speech.” And the U.S. Department of Education is debating a series of American History and Civics standards that include introducing “racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning.” Caught in the middle are teachers who are trying to educate children during a pandemic.

While many parents of school-aged children supported anti-CRT campaigns, voters with no connection to the classroom helped significantly to tip these elections. Parents and educators must bring the conversation back to teaching children about reality. EdAllies, a Minnesota-based educational-support nonprofit, is encouraging teachers to reach out to parents and administrators to explain the necessity of antiracist content in their lessons, as a way to build community support.

All over the U.S., school board meetings are being taken over by fear of the inclusion bogeyman. And after our recent elections, more board members have the power to act against lessons they dislike. Today, tomorrow and for as long as these elected officials are in office, it is the children and the teachers who will pay the price for an incomplete education. We must work toward a school experience that includes narratives of discrimination, social justice and inequality as truths we can learn from so that history might not repeat itself.

Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education

Higher education in the United States (not-for-profit two-year and four-year colleges and universities) serves a diversifying society. By 2036, more than 50 percent of US high school graduates will be people of color, 1 Peace Bransberger and Colleen Falkenstern, Knocking at the college door: Projections of high school graduates through 2037 – Executive summary , Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), December 2020. and McKinsey analysis shows that highly research-intensive (R1) institutions (131 as of 2020 2 Institutions with very high research activity as assessed by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. ) have publicly shared plans or aspirations regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Ninety-five percent of R1 institutions also have a senior DEI executive, and diversity leaders in the sector have formed their own consortiums to share expertise. 3 Two examples are the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and the Liberal Arts Diversity Consortium.

Despite ongoing efforts, our analysis suggests that historically marginalized racial and ethnic populations—Black, Hispanic and Latino, and Native American and Pacific Islander—are still underrepresented in higher education among undergraduates and faculty and in leadership. Students from these groups also have worse academic outcomes as measured by graduation rates. Only 8 percent of institutions have at least equitable student representation while also helping students from underrepresented populations graduate at the same rate as the general US undergraduate population. 4 For a closer look at the data behind the racial and ethnic representation among students and faculty in higher education, see Diana Ellsworth, Erin Harding, Jonathan Law, and Duwain Pinder, “ Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education: Students and faculty ,” McKinsey, July 14, 2022. Not included in this discussion are Asian Americans, who face a distinct set of challenges in higher education. These issues deserve a separate discussion.

These finding are not novel, but what is significant is the slow rate of progress. Current rates of change suggest that it would take about 70 years for all not-for-profit institutions to reflect underrepresented students fully in their incoming student population, primarily driven by recent increases in Hispanic and Latino student attendance. For Black and Native American students and for faculty from all underrepresented populations, there was effectively no progress from 2013 to 2020. 5 For a closer look at college completion rates, see Diana Ellsworth, Erin Harding, Jonathan Law, and Duwain Pinder, “ Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education: Completion rates ,” McKinsey, July 14, 2022.

Intensified calls for racial and ethnic equity in every part of society have made the issue particularly salient. In this article, we outline some of the key insights from our report on racial and ethnic equity in higher education in the United States. We report our analysis of racial and ethnic representation in student and faculty bodies and of outcomes for underrepresented populations. Then we discuss how institutions can meet goals around racial and ethnic equity.

A mirror of wider systemic inequities

Colleges and universities are places of teaching and learning, research and creative expression, and impact on surrounding communities. As the data and analysis in this report illustrate, these institutions have been reflections of existing racial and socioeconomic inequities across society.

These hierarchies include chronic disparities in outcomes throughout the education system. Consider that students from underrepresented populations still graduate from high school at lower rates compared to White and Asian students and tend to be less prepared for college. 6 “Public high school graduation rates,” National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), US Department of Education, May 2021; “Secondary school completion: College and career readiness benchmarks,” American Council on Education (ACE), 2020; “Secondary school completion: Participation in advanced placement,” ACE, 2020. Evidence suggests that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are exacerbating these high school inequities, 7 For more, see Emma Dorn, Bryan Hancock, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and Ellen Viruleg, “ COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning ,” McKinsey, July 27, 2021. which heavily influence the makeup of higher education’s student population. Forty-one percent of all 18- to 21-year-olds were enrolled in undergraduate studies in 2018 compared to 37 percent of Black students, 36 percent of Hispanic students, and 24 percent of American Indian students. 8 “College enrollment rates,” NCES, US Department of Education, May 2022.

Our analysis suggests that higher education has opportunities to address many of these gaps. However, our analysis of student representation over time also suggests that progress has been uneven. In 2013, 38 percent of all not-for-profit institutions had a more diverse population than would be expected given the racial and ethnic makeup of the traditional college-going population—that is, 18- to 24-year-olds, our proxy for equitable racial representation—within a given home state. By 2020, that number was 44 percent. At this rate, the student bodies of not-for-profit institutions overall will reach representational parity in about 70 years, but that growth would be driven entirely by increases in the share of Hispanic and Latino students.

Many institutions have indicated that in addition to increasing student-body diversity, they also seek to improve graduation rates for students from underrepresented populations. A positive finding from our analysis is that nearly two-thirds of all students attend not-for-profit institutions with higher-than-average graduation rates for students from underrepresented populations. However, when we overlay institution representativeness with graduation rates, only 8 percent of students attend four-year institutions that have student bodies that reflect their students’ home states’ traditional college population and that help students from underrepresented populations graduate within six years at an above-average rate (Exhibit 1). 9 For institution-specific completion data, see Diana Ellsworth, Erin Harding, Jonathan Law, and Duwain Pinder, “ Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education: Completion rates ,” McKinsey, July 14, 2022.

In addition, our analysis shows that from 2013 to 2020, only one-third of four-year institutions had improved both racial and ethnic representation and completion rates for students from underrepresented populations at a higher rate than underrepresented populations’ natural growth rate in that period (2 percent). If we look at improvements in racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic representation among students, only 7 percent of four-year institutions have progressed.

Among faculty, complex reasons including the changing structure of academia and patterns of racial inequity in society mean that faculty members from underrepresented populations are less likely to be represented and to ascend the ranks than their White counterparts. 10 Colleen Flaherty, “The souls of Black professors,” Inside Higher Ed, October 21, 2020; Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez, “Race on campus: Anti-CRT laws take aim at colleges,” email, The Chronicle of Higher Education , April 26, 2022; Mike Lauer, “Trends in diversity within the NIH-funded workforce,” National Institutes of Health (NIH), August 7, 2018. Additionally, representational disparity among faculty is more acute in R1 institutions. When we analyzed the full-time faculty population relative to the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher (given that most faculty positions require at least a bachelor’s degree), in 2020, approximately 75 percent of not-for-profit institutions were less diverse than the broader bachelor’s degree–attaining population, and 95 percent of institutions defined as R1 were less diverse. Additionally, the pace of change is slow: it would take nearly 300 years to reach parity for all not-for-profit institutions at the current pace and 450 years for R1 institutions.

Higher education’s collective aspirations for parity of faculty diversity could arguably be even greater. Faculty diversity could be compared to the total population (rather than just the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher) for several reasons. First, comparing faculty diversity to bachelor’s degree recipients incorporates existing inequities in higher-education access and completion across races and ethnicities (which have been highlighted above). Second, the impact of faculty (especially from the curriculum they create and teach, as well as the research, scholarship, and creative expression they produce) often has repercussions across the total US population.

Therefore, in this research, we compared faculty diversity to the total population. Our analysis shows that 88 percent of not-for-profit colleges and universities have full-time faculties that are less diverse than the US population as of 2020. That number rises to 99 percent for institutions defined as R1. Progress in diversifying full-time faculty ranks to match the total population over the past decade has been negligible; it would take more than 1,000 years at the current pace to reach parity for all not-for-profit institutions. (R1 institutions will never reach parity at current rates.) When looking at both faculty and students, few institutions are racially representative of the country; only 11 percent of not-for-profit institutions and 1 percent of R1 institutions are (Exhibit 2).

With faculty representativeness as the goal, it is important to highlight multiple opportunities to improve across the pipeline. From 2018 to 2019, there was a four-percentage-point gap between the percent of individuals from underrepresented populations with a bachelor’s degree and the percent of the total population with a bachelor’s degree. In the same period, there was a 12-percentage-point gap between the groups in regard to doctorate degrees, whose holders are a significant source for new full-time faculty. 11 “Degrees conferred by race/ethnicity and sex,” NCES, US Department of Education, accessed June 22, 2022. Therefore, addressing the lack of advanced-degree holders is one near-term priority for moving toward parity. Additionally, multiple studies have highlighted that faculty from underrepresented populations have less success receiving funding, getting published, or having their recommendations adopted, despite high scientific novelty, which could be driving the increased gaps at R1 institutions. 12 See the full report for more details.

Finally, colleges and universities are often prominent employers in their communities. University workforces reflect societal patterns of racialized occupational segregation, with employees of color disproportionately in low-salary, nonleadership roles. Our analysis suggests that these roles also shrunk by 2 to 3 percent from 2013 to 2020.

A webinar on ‘Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education’

Institutional reflection and progress.

Eighty-four percent of presidents in higher education who responded to a 2021 survey said issues of race and ethnicity have become more important for their institutions. 13 Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman, 2021 Survey of College and University Presidents , Inside Higher Ed, 2021. However, sectorwide challenges such as declining enrollment, greater public scrutiny—accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—and stagnating completion rates can make institutional progress on racial and ethnic equity more complicated. 14 Richard Vedder, “Why is public support for state universities declining?,” Forbes , May 24, 2018; Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Colleges lost 465,000 students this fall. The continued erosion of enrollment is raising alarm.,” Washington Post , January 13, 2022; Emma Dorn, Andre Dua, and Jonathan Law, “ Rising costs and stagnating completion rates: Who is bucking the trend? ,” McKinsey, April 2022. In this context, institutions looking to advance their goals around racial equity could consider five broad actions learned from their peers who are further along in their efforts:

• realignment

Institutions looking to advance their goals around racial equity could consider five broad actions learned from their peers who are further along in their efforts.

While none of these strategies is a magic bullet, some or all of them may be useful for decision makers throughout higher education.

To start, decision makers and stakeholders at individual institutions could understand and reflect on their institution’s role in ongoing racial inequities before applying those insights in a review of its current systems. The initial reflection can create an environment of intellectual and psychological honesty and make conversations about each institution’s commitment to rectifying racial inequities feel more natural and productive.

After a comprehensive historical review , institutions could identify the ways in which their processes, systems, and norms contribute to the marginalization of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. For instance, universities could incorporate processes designed to boost racial equity in their administration of research and grant activities. Such processes would consider factors from researcher diversity to how the execution of the research may affect racial and ethnic groups differently.

Each institution could then realign its resources based on its stakeholders’ shared aspirations for racial equity. Decision makers could consider areas of initial focus, the breadth of impact they wish to have, and the institutional capabilities they can use to realize their goals.

Leaders may respond by embedding their new racial-equity priorities into their institution’s culture. This work involves incorporating racial equity as part of the strategic plan, dedicating sufficient resources to the effort, and assigning a senior leader and staff to support the president in implementing ideas and tracking progress. Clear and frequent communication to each institution’s stakeholders—including alumni, staff, and donors—at each stage of this work will ensure that people in every part of the institution and its extended community are progressing together toward a shared goal.

To be sure, many institutions have begun to explore measures that address some of the inequities embedded in higher education. Some of these actions may light the path for collective action by all institutions to achieve sectorwide reform . For instance, colleges and universities can provide learning opportunities more equitably if they eliminate race- and wealth-based advantages in admissions, such as legacy and donor admissions. Johns Hopkins University is one institution that has eliminated legacy admissions, which helped to increase the share of Federal Pell Grant–eligible students from 9 percent to 19 percent over the past decade. 15 Pell Grants are awarded by the US Department of Education to low-income students seeking postsecondary education. For more, see “Federal Pell Grants are usually awarded only to undergraduate students,” US Department of Education, accessed June 29, 2022. Sara Weissman, “Johns Hopkins ditched legacy admissions to boost diversity – and it worked,” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education , February 5, 2020. Significantly, the change has made no meaningful difference in alumni giving. 16 Scott Simon, “Johns Hopkins sees jump in low-income students after ending legacy admissions,” National Public Radio (NPR), January 25, 2020.

As centers of research and creative expression, higher-education institutions could also consider targeted programs that support the work and progression of researchers from underrepresented populations. For example, the University of Massachusetts Boston allocates at least 20 percent of its faculty-hiring budget for pairing a specialized hire with a complementary hire from a historically marginalized group.

Finally, universities could ensure that their financial success is translated into positive outcomes for the surrounding communities. Action from the higher-education sector could result in institutions—especially ones with significant endowments—committing to investing in their surrounding communities.

By pursuing racial-equity goals, the higher-education sector may achieve gains in core areas of impact. If sustained, these investments in institutional action could benefit students, faculty, community members, and society.

Diana Ellsworth is a partner in McKinsey’s Atlanta office, Erin Harding is an associate partner in the Chicago office, Jonathan Law is a senior partner in the Southern California office and leader of the global higher education practice, and Duwain Pinder is a partner in the Ohio office and leader in the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility.

The authors wish to thank Arthur Bianchi, Avery Cambridge, Elisia Ceballo-Countryman, Judy D’Agostino, Ayebea Darko, Maclaine Fields, Kyle Hutzler, Charmaine Lester, and Sadie Pate for their contributions.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education: Completion rates

Racial and ethnic equity in US higher education: Students and faculty

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Understanding the Influence of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class on Inequalities in Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes among Eighth-Grade Students: Findings from an Intersectionality Approach

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, Department of Social Statistics, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Affiliation Australian National University, Acton, Australia

• Laia Bécares, 
• Naomi Priest

• Published: October 27, 2015
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363
• Reader Comments

Socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender inequalities in academic achievement have been widely reported in the US, but how these three axes of inequality intersect to determine academic and non-academic outcomes among school-aged children is not well understood. Using data from the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten (ECLS-K; N = 10,115), we apply an intersectionality approach to examine inequalities across eighth-grade outcomes at the intersection of six racial/ethnic and gender groups (Latino girls and boys, Black girls and boys, and White girls and boys) and four classes of socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage. Results of mixture models show large inequalities in socioemotional outcomes (internalizing behavior, locus of control, and self-concept) across classes of advantage/disadvantage. Within classes of advantage/disadvantage, racial/ethnic and gender inequalities are predominantly found in the most advantaged class, where Black boys and girls, and Latina girls, underperform White boys in academic assessments, but not in socioemotional outcomes. In these latter outcomes, Black boys and girls perform better than White boys. Latino boys show small differences as compared to White boys, mainly in science assessments. The contrasting outcomes between racial/ethnic and gender minorities in self-assessment and socioemotional outcomes, as compared to standardized assessments, highlight the detrimental effect that intersecting racial/ethnic and gender discrimination have in patterning academic outcomes that predict success in adult life. Interventions to eliminate achievement gaps cannot fully succeed as long as social stratification caused by gender and racial discrimination is not addressed.

Citation: Bécares L, Priest N (2015) Understanding the Influence of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class on Inequalities in Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes among Eighth-Grade Students: Findings from an Intersectionality Approach. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141363. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363

Editor: Emmanuel Manalo, Kyoto University, JAPAN

Received: June 10, 2015; Accepted: October 6, 2015; Published: October 27, 2015

Copyright: © 2015 Bécares, Priest. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Data Availability: All ECLS-K Kindergarten-Eighth Grade Public-use File are available from the National Center for Education Statistics website ( https://nces.ed.gov/ecls/dataproducts.asp#K-8 ).

Funding: This work was funded by an ESRC grant (ES/K001582/1) and a Hallsworth Research Fellowship to LB.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The US racial/ethnic academic achievement gap is a well-documented social inequality [ 1 ]. National assessments for science, mathematics, and reading show that White students score higher on average than all other racial/ethnic groups, particularly when compared to Black and Hispanic students [ 2 , 3 ]. Explanations for these gaps tend to focus on the influence of socioeconomic resources, neighborhood and school characteristics, and family composition in patterning socioeconomic inequalities, and on the racialized nature of socioeconomic inequalities as key drivers of racial/ethnic academic achievement gaps [ 4 – 10 ]. Substantial evidence documents that indicators of socioeconomic status, such as free or reduced-price school lunch, are highly predictive of academic outcomes [ 2 , 3 ]. However, the relative contribution of family, neighborhood and school level socioeconomic inequalities to racial/ethnic academic inequalities continues to be debated, with evidence suggesting none of these factors fully explain racial/ethnic academic achievement gaps, particularly as students move through elementary school [ 11 ]. Attitudinal outcomes have been proposed by some as one explanatory factor for racial/ethnic inequalities in academic achievement [ 12 ], but differences in educational attitudes and aspirations across groups do not fully reflect inequalities in academic assessment. For example, while students of poorer socioeconomic status have lower educational aspirations than more advantaged students [ 13 ], racial/ethnic minority students report higher educational aspirations than White students, particularly after accounting for socioeconomic characteristics [ 14 – 16 ]. Similarly, while socio-emotional development is considered highly predictive of academic achievement in school students, some racial/ethnic minority children report better socio-emotional outcomes than their White peers on some indicators, although findings are inconsistent [ 17 – 22 ].

In addition to inequalities in academic achievement, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities also exist across measures of socio-emotional development [ 23 – 26 ]. And as with academic achievement, although socioeconomic factors are highly predictive of socio-emotional outcomes, they do not completely explain racial/ethnic inequalities in school-related outcomes not focused on standardized assessments [ 11 ].

Further complexity in understanding how academic and non-academic outcomes are patterned by socioeconomic factors, and how this contributes to racial/ethnic inequalities, is added by the multi-dimensional nature of socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status is widely recognized as comprising diverse factors that operate across different levels (e.g. individual, household, neighborhood), and influence outcomes through different causal pathways [ 27 ]. The lack of interchangeability between measures of socioeconomic status within and between levels (e.g. income, education, occupation, wealth, neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, or past socioeconomic circumstances) is also well established, as is the non-equivalence of measures between racial/ethnic groups [ 27 ]. For example, large inequalities have been reported across racial/ethnic groups within the same educational level, and inequalities in wealth have been shown across racial/ethnic that have similar income. It is therefore imperative that studies consider these multiple dimensions of socioeconomic status so that critical social gradients across the entire socioeconomic spectrum are not missed [ 27 ], and racial/ethnic inequalities within levels of socioeconomic status are adequately documented. It is also important that differences in school outcomes are considered across levels of socioeconomic status within and between racial/ethnic groups, so that the influence of specific socioeconomic factors on outcomes within specific racial/ethnic groups can be studied [ 28 ]. However, while these analytic approaches have been identified as research priorities in order to enhance our understanding of the complex ways in which socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity intersect to influence school outcomes, research that operationalizes these recommendations across academic and non-academic outcomes of school children is scant.

In addition to the complexity that arises from race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and intersections between them, different patterns in academic and non-academic outcomes by gender have also received longstanding attention. Comparisons across gender show that, on average, boys have higher scores in mathematics and science, whereas girls have higher scores in reading [ 2 , 3 , 29 ]. In contrast to explanations for socioeconomic inequalities, gender differences have been mainly attributed to social conditioning and stereotyping within families, schools, communities, and the wider society [ 30 – 35 ]. These socialization and stereotyping processes are also highly relevant determining factors in explaining racial/ethnic academic and non-academic inequalities [ 35 , 36 ], as are processes of racial discrimination and stigmatization [ 37 , 38 ]. Gender differences in academic outcomes have been documented as differently patterned across racial/ethnic groups and across levels of socioeconomic status. For example, gender inequalities in math and science are largest among White and Latino students, and smallest among Asian American and African American students [ 39 – 43 ], while gender gaps in test scores are more pronounced among socioeconomically disadvantaged children [ 44 , 45 ]. In terms of attitudes towards math and sciences, gender differences in attitudes towards math are largest among Latino students, but gender differences in attitudes towards science are largest among White students [ 39 , 40 ]. Gender differences in socio-developmental outcomes and in non-cognitive academic outcomes, across race/ethnicity and socio-economic status, have received far less attention; studies that consider multiple academic and non-academic outcomes among school aged children across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender are limited in the US and internationally.

Understanding how different academic and non-academic outcomes are differently patterned by race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and gender, including within and between group differences, is an important research area that may assist in understanding the potential causal pathways and explanations for observed inequalities, and in identifying key population groups and points at which interventions should be targeted to address inequalities in particular outcomes [ 28 , 46 ]. Not only is such knowledge critical for population level policy and/or local level action within affected communities, but failing to detect potential factors for interventions and potential solutions is argued as reinforcing perceptions of the unmodifiable nature of inequality and injustice [ 46 ].

Notwithstanding the importance of documenting patterns of inequality in relation to a particular social identity (e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, class), there is increasing acknowledgement within both theoretical and empirical research of the need to move beyond analyzing single categories to consider simultaneous interactions between different aspects of social identity, and the impact of systems and processes of oppression and domination (e.g., racism, classism, sexism) that operate at the micro and macro level [ 47 , 48 ]. Such intersectional approaches challenge practices that isolate and prioritize a single social position, and emphasize the potential of varied inter-relationships of social identities and interacting social processes in the production of inequities [ 49 – 51 ]. To date, exploration of how social identities interact in an intersectional way to influence outcomes has largely been theoretical and qualitative in nature. Explanations offered for interactions between privileged and marginalized identities, and associated outcomes, include family and teacher socialization of gender performance (e.g. math and science as male domains, verbal and emotional skills as female), as well as racialized stereotypes and expectations from teachers and wider society regarding racial/ethnic minorities that are also gendered (e.g. Black males as violent prone and aggressive, Asian females as submissive) [ 52 – 57 ]. That is, social processes that socialize and pattern opportunities and outcomes are both racialized and gendered, with racism and sexism operating in intersecting ways to influence the development and achievements of children and youth [ 58 – 60 ]. Socioeconomic status adds a third important dimension to these processes, with individuals of the same race/ethnicity and gender having access to vastly different resources and opportunities across levels of socioeconomic status. Moreover, access to resources as well as socialization experiences and expectations differ considerably by race and gender within the same level of socio-economic status. Thus, neither gender nor race nor socio-economic status alone can fully explain the interacting social processes influencing outcomes for youth [ 27 , 28 ]. Disentangling such interactions is therefore an important research priority in order to inform intervention to address inequalities at a population level and within local communities.

In the realm of quantitative approaches to the study of inequality, studies often examine separate social identities independently to assess which of these axes of stratification is most prominent, and for the most part do not consider claims that the varied dimensions of social stratification are often juxtaposed [ 56 , 61 ]. A pressing need remains for quantitative research to consider how multiple forms of social stratification are interrelated, and how they combine interactively, not just additively, to influence outcomes [ 46 ]. Doing so enables analyses that consider in greater detail the representation of the embodied positions of individuals, particularly issues of multiple marginalization as well as the co-occurrence of some form of privilege with marginalization [ 46 ]. It is important to note that the languages of statistical interaction and of intersectionality need to be carefully distinguished (e.g. intersectional additivity or additive assumptions, versus additive scale and cross-product interaction terms) to avoid misinterpretation of findings, and to ensure appropriate application of statistical interaction to enable the description of outcome measures for groups of individuals at each cross-stratified intersection [ 46 ]. Ultimately this will provide more nuanced and realistic understandings of the determinants of inequality in order to inform intervention strategies.

This study fills these gaps in the literature by examining inequalities across several eighth grade academic and non-academic outcomes at the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. It aims to do this by: identifying classes of socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage from kindergarten to eighth grade; then ascertaining whether membership into classes of socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage differ for racial/ethnic and gender groups; and finally, by contrasting academic and non-academic outcomes at the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage. Intersecting identities of race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic characteristics are compared to the reference group of White boys in the most advantaged socioeconomic category, as these are the three identities (male, White, socioeconomically privileged) that experience the least marginalization when compared to racial/ethnic and gender minority groups in disadvantaged socioeconomic positions.

This study used data on singleton children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten (ECLS-K). The ECLS-K employed a multistage probability sample design to select a nationally representative sample of children attending kindergarten in 1998–99. In the base year the primary sampling units (PSUs) were geographic areas consisting of counties or groups of counties. The second-stage units were schools within sampled PSUs. The third- and final-stage units were children within schools [ 62 ]. Analyses were conducted on data collected from direct child assessments, as well as information provided by parents and school administrators.

Ethics Statement

This article is based on the secondary analysis of anonymized and de-identified Public-Use Data Files available to researchers via the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Human participants were not directly involved in the research reported in this article; therefore, no institutional review board approval was sought.

Outcome Variables.

Eight outcome variables, all assessed in eighth grade, were selected to examine the study aims: two measures relating to non-cognitive academic skills (perceived interest/competence in reading, and in math); three measures capturing socioemotional development (internalizing behavior, locus of control, self-concept); and three measures of cognitive skills (math, reading and science assessment scores).

For the eighth-grade data collection, children completed the 16-item Self Description Questionnaire (SDQ) II [ 63 ], where they provided self-assessments of their academic skills by rating their perceived competence and interest in English and mathematics. The SDQ also asked children to report on problem behaviors with which they might struggle. Three subscales were produced from the SDQ items: The SDQ Perceived Interest/Competence in Reading, including four items on grades in English and the child’s interest in and enjoyment of reading. The SDQ Perceived Interest/Competence in Math, including four items on mathematics grades and the child’s interest in and enjoyment of mathematics. And the SDQ Internalizing Behavior subscale, which includes eight items on internalizing problem behaviors such as feeling sad, lonely, ashamed of mistakes, frustrated, and worrying about school and friendships [ 62 ].

The Self-Concept and Locus of Control scales ask children about their self-perceptions and the amount of control they have over their own lives. These scales, adopted from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, asked children to indicate the degree to which they agreed with 13 statements (seven items in the Self-Concept scale, and six items in the Locus of Control Scale) about themselves, including “I feel good about myself,” “I don’t have enough control over the direction my life is taking,” and “At times I think I am no good at all.” Responses ranged from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Some items were reversed coded so that higher scores indicate more positive self-concept and a greater perception of control over one’s own life. The seven items in the Self-Concept scale, and the six items in the Locus of Control were standardized separately to a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1. The scores of each scale are an average of the standardized scores [ 62 ].

Academic achievement in reading, mathematics and science was measured with the eighth-grade direct cognitive assessment battery [ 62 ].

Children were given separate routing assessment forms to determine the level (high/low) of their reading, mathematics, and science assessments. The two-stage cognitive assessment approach was used to maximize the accuracy of measurement and reduce administration time by using the child’s responses from a brief first-stage routing form to select the appropriate second-stage level form. First, children read items in a booklet and recorded their responses on an answer form. These answer forms were then scored by the test administrator. Based on the score of the respective routing forms, the test administrator then assigned a high or low second-stage level form of the reading and mathematics assessments. For the second-stage level tests, children read items in the assessment booklet and recorded their responses in the same assessment booklet. The routing tests and the second-stage tests were timed for 80 minutes [ 62 ]. The present analyses use the standardized scores (T-scores), allowing relative comparisons of children against their peers.

Individual and Contextual Disadvantage Variables.

Latent Class Analysis, described in greater detail below, was used to classify students into classes of individual and contextual advantage or disadvantage. Nine constructs, measuring characteristics at the individual-, school-, and neighborhood-level, were captured using 42 dichotomous variables measured across the different waves of the ECLS-K.

Individual-level variables captured household composition, material disadvantage, and parental expectations of the children’s success. Measures included whether the child lived in a single-parent household at kindergarten, first, third, fifth and eighth grades; whether the household was below the poverty threshold level at kindergarten, fifth and eighth grades; food insecurity at kindergarten, first, second and third grades; and parental expectations of the child’s academic achievement (categorized as up to high school and more than high school) at kindergarten, first, third, fifth and eighth grades. An indicator of whether parents had moved since the previous interview (measured at kindergarten, first, third, fifth and eighth grades) was included to capture stability in the children’s life. A household-level composite index of socioeconomic status, derived by the National Center for Education Statistics, was also included at kindergarten, first, third, fifth and eighth grades. This measure captured the father/male guardian’s education and occupation, the mother/female guardian’s education and occupation, and the household income. Higher scores reflect higher levels of educational attainment, occupational prestige, and income. In the present analyses, the socioeconomic composite index was categorized into quintiles and further divided into the lowest first and second quintiles, versus the third, fourth and fifth quintiles.

Two variables measured the school-level environment: percentage of students eligible for free school meals, and percentage of students from a racial/ethnic background other than White non-Hispanic. These two variables were dichotomized as more than or equal to 50% of students belonging to each category. Both variables were measured in the kindergarten, first, third, fifth and eighth grade data collections.

To capture the neighborhood environment, a variable was included which measured the level of safety of the neighborhood in kindergarten, first, third, fifth and eighth grades. Parents were asked “How safe is it for children to play outside during the day in your neighborhood?” with responses ranging from 1, not at all safe, to 3, very safe. For the present analyses, response categories were recoded into 1 “not at all and somewhat safe,” and 0 “very safe.”

Predictor Variables.

The race/ethnicity and gender of the children were assessed during the parent interview. In order to empirically measure the intersection between race/ethnicity and gender in the classes of disadvantage, a set of six dummy variables were created that combined racial/ethnic and gender categories into White boys, White girls, Black boys, Black girls, Latino boys, and Latina girls.

Statistical Analyses

This study used the manual 3-step approach in mixture modeling with auxiliary variables [ 64 , 65 ] to independently evaluate the relationship between the predictor auxiliary variables (the combined race/ethnicity and gender groups), the latent class variable of advantage/disadvantage, and the outcome (non-cognitive skills, socioemotional development, cognitive assessments). This is a data-driven, mixture modelling technique which uses indicator variables (in this case the variables described under Individual and Contextual Disadvantage Variables section) to identify a number of latent classes. It also includes auxiliary information in the form of covariates (the race/ethnicity and gender combinations described under Predictor Variables) and distal outcomes (the eight outcome variables), to better explore the relationships between the characteristics that make up the latent classes, the predictors of class membership, and the associated consequences of membership into each class.

The first step in the 3-step procedure is to estimate the measurement part of the joint model (i.e., the latent class model) by creating the latent classes without adding covariates. Latent class analyses first evaluated the fit of a 2-class model, and systematically increased the number of classes in subsequent models until the addition of latent classes did not further improve model fit. For each model, replication of the best log-likelihood was verified to avoid local maxima. To determine the optimal number of classes, models were compared across several model fit criteria. First, the sample-size adjusted Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) [ 66 ] was evaluated; lower relative BIC values indicate improved model fit. Given that the BIC criterion tends to favor models with fewer latent classes [ 67 ], the Lo, Mendell, and Rubin likelihood ratio test (LMR-LRT) statistic [ 68 ] was also considered. The LMR-LRT can be used in mixture modeling to compare the fit of the specified class solution ( k -class model) to a model with fewer classes ( k -1 class model). A non-significant chi-square value suggests that a model with one fewer class is preferred. Entropy statistics, which measure the separation of the classes based on the posterior class membership probabilities, were also examined; entropy values approaching 1 indicate clear separation between classes [ 69 ].

After determining the latent class model in step 1, the second step of the analyses used the latent class posterior distribution to generate a nominal variable N , which represented the most likely class [ 64 ]. During the third step, the measurement error for N was accounted for while the model was estimated with the outcomes and predictor auxiliary variables [ 64 ]. The last step of the analysis examined whether race/ethnic and gender categories predict class membership, and whether class membership predicts the outcomes of interest.

All analyses were conducted using MPlus v. 7.11 [ 70 ], and used longitudinal weights to account for differential probabilities of selection at each sampling stage and to adjust for the effects of non-response. A robust standard error estimator was used in MPlus to account for the clustering of observations in the ECLS-K.

Four distinct classes of advantage/disadvantage were identified in the latent class analysis (see Table 1 ).

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363.t001

Class characteristics are shown in Table A in S1 File . Trajectories of advantage and disadvantage were stable across ECLS-K waves, so that none of the classes identified changed in individual and contextual characteristics across time. The largest proportion of the sample (47%; Class 3: Individually and Contextually Wealthy) lived in individual and contextual privilege, with very low proportions of children in socioeconomic deprived contexts. A class representing the opposite characteristics (children living in individually- and contextually-deprived circumstances) was also identified in the analyses (19%; Class 1: Individually and Contextually Disadvantaged). Class 1 had the highest proportion of children living in socioeconomic deprivation, attending schools with more than 50% racial/ethnic minority students, and living in unsafe neighborhoods, but did not have a high proportion of children with the lowest parental expectations. Class 4 (19%; Individually Disadvantaged, Contextually Wealthy) had the highest proportion of children with the lowest parental expectations (parents reporting across waves that they expected children to achieve up to a high school education). Class 4 (Individually Disadvantaged, Contextually Wealthy) also had high proportions of children living in individual-level socioeconomic deprivation, but had low proportions of children attending a school with over 50% of children eligible for free school meals. It also had relatively low proportions of children living in unsafe neighborhoods and low proportions of children attending diverse schools, forming a class with a mixture of individual-level deprivation, and contextual-level advantage. The last class was composed of children who lived in individually-wealthy environments, but who also lived in unsafe neighborhoods and attended diverse schools where more than 50% of pupils were eligible for free school meals (13%; Class 2: Individually Wealthy, Contextually Disadvantaged; see Table A in S1 File ).

The combined intersecting racial/ethnic and gender characteristics yielded six groups consisting of White boys (n = 2998), White girls (n = 2899), Black boys (n = 553), Black girls (n = 560), Latino boys (n = 961), and Latina girls (n = 949). All pairs containing at least one minority status of either race/ethnicity or gender (e.g., Black boys, Black girls, Latino boys, Latina girls) were more likely than White boys to be assigned to the more disadvantaged classes, as compared to being assigned to Class 3, the least disadvantaged (see Table B in S1 File ).

Racial/Ethnic and Gender Differences in Eighth-Grade Academic Outcomes

Table 2 shows broad patterns of intersecting racial/ethnic and gender inequalities in academic outcomes, although interesting differences emerge across racial/ethnic and gender groups. Whereas Black boys achieved lower scores than White boys across all classes on the math, reading and science assessments, this was not the case for Latino boys, who only underperformed White boys on the science assessment within the most privileged class (Class 3: Individually and Contextually Wealthy). Latina girls, in contrast, outperformed White boys on reading scores within Class 4 (Individually Disadvantaged, Contextually Wealthy), but scored lower than White boys on science and math assessments, although only when in the two most privileged classes (Class 3 and 4). For Black girls the effect of class membership was not as pronounced, and they had lower science and math scores than White boys across all but one instance.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363.t002

In general, the largest inequalities in academic outcomes across racial/ethnic and gender groups appeared in the most privileged classes. For example, results show no differences in math scores across racial/ethnic and gender categories within Class 4, the most disadvantaged class, but in all other classes that contain an element of advantage, and particularly in Class 3 (Individually and Contextually Wealthy), there are large gaps in math scores across racial/ethnic and gender groups, when compared to White boys. These patterns of heightened inequality in the most advantaged classes are similar for reading and science scores (see Table 2 ).

Racial/Ethnic and Gender Differences in Eighth-Grade Non-Academic Outcomes

Interestingly, racialized and gendered patterns of inequality observed in academic outcomes were not as stark in non-cognitive academic outcomes (see Table 3 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363.t003

Racial/ethnic and gender differences were small across socioemotional outcomes, and in fact, White boys were outperformed on several outcomes. Black boys scored lower than White boys on internalizing behavior and higher on self-concept within Classes 2 (Individually Wealthy, Contextually Disadvantaged) and 4 (Individually Disadvantaged, Contextually Wealthy), and Black girls scored higher than White boys on self-concept within Classes 2 and 3 (Individually Wealthy, Contextually Disadvantaged, and Individually and Contextually Wealthy, respectively). White and Latina girls, but not Black girls, scored higher than White boys on internalizing behavior (within Classes 3 and 4 for White girls, and within Classes 1 and 3 for Latina girls; see Table 3 ).

As with academic outcomes, most racial/ethnic and gender differences also emerged within the most privileged classes, and particularly in Class 3 (Individually and Contextually Wealthy), although in the case of perceived interest/competence in reading, White and Latina girls performed better than White boys. White girls also reported higher perceived interest/competence in reading than White boys in Class 4: Individually Disadvantaged, Contextually Wealthy.

This study set out to examine inequalities across several eighth grade academic and non-academic outcomes at the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. It first identified four classes of longstanding individual- and contextual-level disadvantage; then determined membership to these classes depending on racial/ethnic and gender groups; and finally compared non-cognitive skills, academic assessment scores, and socioemotional outcomes across intersecting gender, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic social positions.

Results show the clear influence of race/ethnicity in determining membership to the most disadvantaged classes. Across gender dichotomies, Black students were more likely than White boys to be assigned to all classes of disadvantage as compared to the most advantaged class, and this was particularly strong for the most disadvantaged class, which included elements of both individual- and contextual-level disadvantage. Latino boys and girls were also more likely than White boys to be assigned to all the disadvantaged classes, but the strength of the association was much smaller than for Black students. Whereas membership into classes of disadvantage appears to be more a result of structural inequalities strongly driven by race/ethnicity, the salience of gender is apparent in the distribution of academic assessment outcomes within classes of disadvantage. Results show a gendered pattern of math, reading and science assessments, particularly in the most privileged class, where girls from all ethnic/racial groups (although mostly from Black and Latino racial/ethnic groups) underperform White boys in math and science, and where Black boys score lower, and White girls higher, than White boys in reading.

With the exception of educational assessments, gender and racial/ethnic inequalities within classes are either not very pronounced or in the opposite direction (e.g. racial/ethnic and gender minorities outperform White males), but differences in outcomes across classes are stark. The strength of the association between race/ethnicity and class membership, and the reduced racial/ethnic and gender inequalities within classes of advantage and disadvantage, attest to the importance of socioeconomic status and wealth in explaining racial/ethnic inequalities; should individual and contextual disadvantage be comparable across racial/ethnic groups, racial/ethnic inequalities would be substantially reduced. This being said, most within-class differences were observed in the most privileged classes, showing that benefits brought about by affluence and advantage are not equal across racial/ethnic and gender groups. The measures of advantage and disadvantage captured in this study relate to characteristics afforded by parental resources, implying an intergenerational transmission of disadvantage, regardless of the presence of absolute adversity in childhood. This pattern of differential returns of affluence has been shown in other studies, which report that White teenagers benefit more from the presence of affluent neighbors than do Black teenagers [ 71 ]. Among adult populations, studies show that across several health outcomes, highly educated Black adults fare worse than White adults with the lowest education [ 72 ]. Intersectional approaches such as the one applied in this study reveal how power within gendered and racialized institutional settings operates to undermine access to and use of resources that would otherwise be available to individuals of advantaged classes [ 72 ]. The present study further contributes to this literature by documenting how, in a key stage of the life course, similar levels of advantage, but not disadvantage, lead to different academic outcomes across racial/ethnic and gender groups. These findings suggest that, should socioeconomic inequalities be addressed, and levels of advantage were similar across racial/ethnic and gender groups, systems of oppression that pattern the racialization and socialization of children into racial/ethnic and gender roles in society would still ensure that inequalities in academic outcomes existed across racial/ethnic and gender categories. In other words, racism and sexism have a direct effect on academic and non-academic outcomes among 8 th graders, independent of the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on these outcomes. An important limitation of the current study is that although it uses a comprehensive measure of advantage/disadvantage, including elements of deprivation and affluence at the family, school and neighborhood levels through time, it failed to capture these two key causal determinants of racial/ethnic and gender inequality: experiences of racial and gender discrimination.

Despite this limitation, it is important to note that socioeconomic inequalities in the US are driven by racial and gender bias and discrimination at structural and individual levels, with race and gender discrimination exerting a strong influence on academic and non-academic inequalities. Racial discrimination, prevalent in the US and in other industrialized nations [ 38 , 73 ] determines differential life opportunities and resources across racial/ethnic groups, and is a crucial determinant of racial/ethnic inequalities in health and development throughout life and across generations [ 37 , 38 ]. In the context of this study’s primary outcomes within school settings, racism and racial discrimination experienced by both the parents and the children are likely to contribute towards explaining observed racial/ethnic inequalities in outcomes within classes of disadvantage. Gender discrimination—another system of oppression—is apparent in this study in relation to academic subjects socially considered as typically male or female orientated. For example, results show no difference between Black girls and White boys from the most advantaged class in terms of perceived interest and competence in math but, in this same class, Black girls score much lower than White boys in the math assessment. This difference, not explained by intrinsic or socioeconomic differences, can be contextualized as a consequence of experienced intersecting racial and gender discrimination. The consequences of the intersection between two marginalized identities are found throughout the results of this study when comparing across broad categorizations of race/ethnicity and gender, and in more detailed conceptualizations of minority status. Growing up Black, Latino or White in the US is not the same for boys and girls, and growing up as a boy or a girl in America does not lead to the same outcomes and opportunities for Black, Latino and White children as they become adults. With this study’s approach of intersectionality one can observe the complexity of how gender and race/ethnicity intersect to create unique academic and non-academic outcomes. This includes the contrasting results found for Black and Latino boys, when compared to White boys, which show very few examples of poorer outcomes among Latino boys, but several instances among Black boys. Results also show different racialization for Black and Latina girls. Latina girls, but not Black girls, report higher internalizing behavior than White boys, whereas Black girls, but not Latina girls, report higher self-concept than White boys. Black boys also report higher self-concept and lower internalizing behavior than White boys, findings that mirror research on self-esteem among Black adolescents [ 74 , 75 ]. In cognitive assessments, intersecting racial/ethnic and gender differences emerge across classes of disadvantage. For example, Black girls in all four classes score lower on science scores than White boys, but only Latina girls in the most advantaged class score lower than White boys. Although one can observe differences in the racialization of Black and Latino boys and girls across classes of disadvantage, findings about broad differences across Latino children compared to Black and White children should be interpreted with caution. The Latino ethnic group is a large, heterogeneous group, representing 16.7% of the total US population [ 76 ]. The Latino population is composed of a variety of different sub-groups with diverse national origins and migration histories [ 77 ], which has led to differences in sociodemographic characteristics and lived experiences of ethnicity and minority status among the various groups. Differences across Latino sub-groups are widely documented, and pooled analyses such as those reported here are masking differences across Latino sub-groups, and providing biased comparisons between Latino children, and Black and White children.

Poorer performance of girls and racial/ethnic minority students in science and math assessments (but not in self-perceived competence and interest) might result from stereotype threat, whereby negative stereotypes of a group influence their member’s performance [ 78 ]. Stereotype threat posits that awareness of a social stereotype that reflects negatively on one's social group can negatively affect the performance of group members [ 35 ]. Reduced performance only occurs in a threatening situation (e.g., a test) where individuals are aware of the stereotype. Studies show that early adolescence is a time when youth become aware of and begin to endorse traditional gender and racial/ethnic stereotypes [ 79 ]. Findings among youth parallel findings among adult populations, which show that adult men are generally perceived to be more competent than women, but that these perceptions do not necessarily hold for Black men [ 80 ]. These stereotypes have strong implications for interpersonal interactions and for the wider structuring of systemic racial/ethnic and gender inequalities. An example of the consequences of negative racial/ethnic and gender stereotypes as children grow up is the well-documented racial/ethnic and gender pay gap: women earn less than men [ 81 ], and racial/ethnic minority women and men earn less than White men [ 82 ].

In addition to the focus on intersectionality, a strength of this study is its person-centered methodological approach, which incorporates measures of advantage and disadvantage across individual and contextual levels through nine years of children’s socialization. Children live within multiple contexts, with risk factors at the family, school, and neighborhood level contributing to their development and wellbeing. Individual risk factors seldom operate in isolation [ 83 ], and they are often strongly associated both within and across levels [ 84 ]. All risk factors captured in the latent class analyses have been independently associated with increased risk for academic problems [ 10 , 71 , 85 , 86 ], and given that combinations of risk factors that cut across multiple domains explain the association between early risk and later outcomes better than any isolated risk factor [ 83 , 84 ], the incorporation of person-centered and intersectionality approaches to the study of racial/ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities across school outcomes provides new insight into how children in marginalized social groups are socialized in the early life course.

Conclusions

The contrasting outcomes between racial/ethnic and gender minorities in self-assessment and socioemotional outcomes, as compared to standardized assessments, provide support for the detrimental effect that intersecting racial/ethnic and gender discrimination have in patterning academic outcomes that predict success in adult life. Interventions to eliminate achievement gaps cannot fully succeed as long as social stratification caused by gender and racial discrimination is not addressed [ 87 , 88 ].

Supporting Information

S1 file. supporting tables..

Table A: Class characteristics. Table B: Associations between race/ethnicity and gender groups and assigned class membership (membership to Classes 1, 2 or 4 as compared to Class 3: Individually and Contextually Wealthy).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363.s001

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by an ESRC grant (ES/K001582/1) and a Hallsworth Research Fellowship to LB. Most of this work was conducted while LB was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. She would like to thank them for hosting her visit and for the support provided.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: LB. Performed the experiments: LB. Analyzed the data: LB. Wrote the paper: LB NP.

• 1. Jencks C, Phillips M. The Black-White Test Score Gap. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press; 1998.
• 2. (NCES) NCfES. The Nation’s Report Card: Science 2011(NCES 2012–465). Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2012.
• 3. (NCES) NCfES. The Nation’s Report Card: A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading (NCES 2014–451). Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2013.
• View Article
• Google Scholar
• PubMed/NCBI
• 12. Ogbu J. Low performance as an adaptation: The case of blacks in Stockton, California. In: Gibson M, Ogbu J, editors. Minority Status and Schooling. New York: Grand Publishing; 1991.
• 41. Coley R. Differences in the gender gap: Comparisons across racial/ethnic groups in education and work. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 2001.
• 47. Hankivsky O, Cormier R. Intersectionality: Moving women’s health research and policy forward. Vancouver: Women’s Health Research Network; 2009.
• 48. Dhamoon K, Hankivsky O. Why the theory and practice of intersectionality matter to health research and policy. In: Hankivsky O, editor. Health Inequities in Canada: Intersectional Frameworks and Practices. Vancouver: UBC Press; 2011. p. 16–50.
• 50. Crenshaw K. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum. 1989:139–67.
• 62. Tourangeau K, Nord C, Lê T, Sorongon A, Najarian M. Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K), Combined User’s Manual for the ECLS-K Eighth-Grade and K–8 Full Sample Data Files and Electronic Codebooks (NCES 2009–004). Washington, DC.: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education., 2009.
• 63. Marsh HW. Self Description Questionnaire (SDQ) II: A theoretical and empirical basis for the measurement of multiple dimensions of adolescent self-concept. An interim test manual and a research monograph. Sydney: University of Western Sydney: 1992.
• 64. Asparouhov T, Muthén B. Auxiliary Variables in Mixture Modeling: 3-Step Approaches Using Mplus. Mplus Web Notes [Internet]. 2013 April 2014. Available from: www.statmodel.com/examples/webnotes/webnote15.pdf ‎.
• 67. Dayton C. Latent class scaling analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.
• 70. Muthén L, Muthén B. Mplus User's Guide. Seventh Edition. Los Angeles, CA.: 2012.
• 72. Jackson P, Williams D. The intersection of race, gender, and SES: Health paradoxes. In: Schulz A, Mullings L, editors. Gender, Race, Class, & Health: Intersectional Approaches. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; 2006. p. 131–62.
• 76. Ennis S, Rios-Vargas M, Albert N. The Hispanic Population: 2010. United Census Bureau, 2011.
• 88. Rouse C, Brooks-Gunn J, McLanahan S. School Readiness: Closing racial and ethnic gaps. Washington, DC: Brookings Press, 2005.

Race, ethnicity and education : Journals

• Diverse issues in higher education Covers issues & events affecting diverse groups in higher education.
• Race, ethnicity and education "Race Ethnicity and Education is the leading peer-reviewed journal on racism and race inequality in education. The journal provides a focal point for international scholarship, research and debate by publishing original and challenging research that explores the dynamics of race, racism and ethnicity in education policy, theory and practice. "
• Learning for Justice "Our work has evolved in the last 30 years, from reducing prejudice to tackling systemic injustice."
• Whiteness and education " Whiteness and Education publishes outstanding and original manuscripts that advance critical understandings of the construction and deployment of Whiteness in educational contexts. This includes, but is not limited to, critical discussions of White racism, White identity, privilege, power and intersectionality."
• << Previous: Recent print books
• Next: Databases >>
• Background information
• Recent e-books
• Recent print books
• Connect to Stanford e-resources
• Last Updated: Apr 2, 2024 9:45 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.stanford.edu/race_and_ed

What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

• Share article

Education Week is the #1 source of high-quality news and insights on K-12 education. Sign up for our EdWeek Update newsletter to get stories like this delivered to your inbox daily.

Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement.

The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban its use in the classroom.

In truth, the divides are not nearly as neat as they may seem. The events of the last decade have increased public awareness about things like housing segregation, the impacts of criminal justice policy in the 1990s, and the legacy of enslavement on Black Americans. But there is much less consensus on what the government’s role should be in righting these past wrongs. Add children and schooling into the mix and the debate becomes especially volatile.

School boards, superintendents, even principals and teachers are already facing questions about critical race theory, and there are significant disagreements even among experts about its precise definition as well as how its tenets should inform K-12 policy and practice. This explainer is meant only as a starting point to help educators grasp core aspects of the current debate.

Just what is critical race theory anyway?

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

Today, those same patterns of discrimination live on through facially race-blind policies, like single-family zoning that prevents the building of affordable housing in advantaged, majority-white neighborhoods and, thus, stymies racial desegregation efforts.

CRT also has ties to other intellectual currents, including the work of sociologists and literary theorists who studied links between political power, social organization, and language. And its ideas have since informed other fields, like the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education.

This academic understanding of critical race theory differs from representation in recent popular books and, especially, from its portrayal by critics—often, though not exclusively, conservative Republicans. Critics charge that the theory leads to negative dynamics, such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups; and urges intolerance.

Thus, there is a good deal of confusion over what CRT means, as well as its relationship to other terms, like “anti-racism” and “social justice,” with which it is often conflated.

To an extent, the term “critical race theory” is now cited as the basis of all diversity and inclusion efforts regardless of how much it’s actually informed those programs.

One conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT , including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California’s recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline—such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based,” the organization claimed.

(A good parallel here is how popular ideas of the common core learning standards grew to encompass far more than what those standards said on paper.)

Does critical race theory say all white people are racist? Isn’t that racist, too?

The theory says that racism is part of everyday life, so people—white or nonwhite—who don’t intend to be racist can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism.

Some critics claim that the theory advocates discriminating against white people in order to achieve equity. They mainly aim those accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that explicitly take race into account. (The writer Ibram X. Kendi, whose recent popular book How to Be An Antiracist suggests that discrimination that creates equity can be considered anti-racist, is often cited in this context.)

Fundamentally, though, the disagreement springs from different conceptions of racism. CRT puts an emphasis on outcomes, not merely on individuals’ own beliefs, and it calls on these outcomes to be examined and rectified. Among lawyers, teachers, policymakers, and the general public, there are many disagreements about how precisely to do those things, and to what extent race should be explicitly appealed to or referred to in the process.

Here’s a helpful illustration to keep in mind in understanding this complex idea. In a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court school-assignment case on whether race could be a factor in maintaining diversity in K-12 schools, Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion famously concluded: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” But during oral arguments, then-justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: “It’s very hard for me to see how you can have a racial objective but a nonracial means to get there.”

All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.

What does any of this have to do with K-12 education?

Scholars who study critical race theory in education look at how policies and practices in K-12 education contribute to persistent racial inequalities in education, and advocate for ways to change them. Among the topics they’ve studied: racially segregated schools, the underfunding of majority-Black and Latino school districts, disproportionate disciplining of Black students, barriers to gifted programs and selective-admission high schools, and curricula that reinforce racist ideas.

Critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally relevant teaching, which emerged in the 1990s. This teaching approach seeks to affirm students’ ethnic and racial backgrounds and is intellectually rigorous. But it’s related in that one of its aims is to help students identify and critique the causes of social inequality in their own lives.

Many educators support, to one degree or another, culturally relevant teaching and other strategies to make schools feel safe and supportive for Black students and other underserved populations. (Students of color make up the majority of school-aged children.) But they don’t necessarily identify these activities as CRT-related.

As one teacher-educator put it: “The way we usually see any of this in a classroom is: ‘Have I thought about how my Black kids feel? And made a space for them, so that they can be successful?’ That is the level I think it stays at, for most teachers.” Like others interviewed for this explainer, the teacher-educator did not want to be named out of fear of online harassment.

An emerging subtext among some critics is that curricular excellence can’t coexist alongside culturally responsive teaching or anti-racist work. Their argument goes that efforts to change grading practice s or make the curriculum less Eurocentric will ultimately harm Black students, or hold them to a less high standard.

As with CRT in general, its popular representation in schools has been far less nuanced. A recent poll by the advocacy group Parents Defending Education claimed some schools were teaching that “white people are inherently privileged, while Black and other people of color are inherently oppressed and victimized”; that “achieving racial justice and equality between racial groups requires discriminating against people based on their whiteness”; and that “the United States was founded on racism.”

Thus much of the current debate appears to spring not from the academic texts, but from fear among critics that students—especially white students—will be exposed to supposedly damaging or self-demoralizing ideas.

While some district officials have issued mission statements, resolutions, or spoken about changes in their policies using some of the discourse of CRT, it’s not clear to what degree educators are explicitly teaching the concepts, or even using curriculum materials or other methods that implicitly draw on them. For one thing, scholars say, much scholarship on CRT is written in academic language or published in journals not easily accessible to K-12 teachers.

What is going on with these proposals to ban critical race theory in schools?

As of mid-May, legislation purporting to outlaw CRT in schools has passed in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and have been proposed in various other statehouses.

The bills are so vaguely written that it’s unclear what they will affirmatively cover.

Could a teacher who wants to talk about a factual instance of state-sponsored racism—like the establishment of Jim Crow, the series of laws that prevented Black Americans from voting or holding office and separated them from white people in public spaces—be considered in violation of these laws?

It’s also unclear whether these new bills are constitutional, or whether they impermissibly restrict free speech.

It would be extremely difficult, in any case, to police what goes on inside hundreds of thousands of classrooms. But social studies educators fear that such laws could have a chilling effect on teachers who might self-censor their own lessons out of concern for parent or administrator complaints.

As English teacher Mike Stein told Chalkbeat Tennessee about the new law : “History teachers can not adequately teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. English teachers will have to avoid teaching almost any text by an African American author because many of them mention racism to various extents.”

The laws could also become a tool to attack other pieces of the curriculum, including ethnic studies and “action civics”—an approach to civics education that asks students to research local civic problems and propose solutions.

How is this related to other debates over what’s taught in the classroom amid K-12 culture wars?

The charge that schools are indoctrinating students in a harmful theory or political mindset is a longstanding one, historians note. CRT appears to be the latest salvo in this ongoing debate.

In the early and mid-20th century, the concern was about socialism or Marxism . The conservative American Legion, beginning in the 1930s, sought to rid schools of progressive-minded textbooks that encouraged students to consider economic inequality; two decades later the John Birch Society raised similar criticisms about school materials. As with CRT criticisms, the fear was that students would be somehow harmed by exposure to these ideas.

As the school-aged population became more diverse, these debates have been inflected through the lens of race and ethnic representation, including disagreements over multiculturalism and ethnic studies, the ongoing “canon wars” over which texts should make up the English curriculum, and the so-called “ebonics” debates over the status of Black vernacular English in schools.

In history, the debates have focused on the balance among patriotism and American exceptionalism, on one hand, and the country’s history of exclusion and violence towards Indigenous people and the enslavement of African Americans on the other—between its ideals and its practices. Those tensions led to the implosion of a 1994 attempt to set national history standards.

A current example that has fueled much of the recent round of CRT criticism is the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which sought to put the history and effects of enslavement—as well as Black Americans’ contributions to democratic reforms—at the center of American history.

The culture wars are always, at some level, battled out within schools, historians say.

“It’s because they’re nervous about broad social things, but they’re talking in the language of school and school curriculum,” said one historian of education. “That’s the vocabulary, but the actual grammar is anxiety about shifting social power relations.”

Education Issues, Explained

The literature on critical race theory is vast. Here are some starting points to learn more about it, culturally relevant teaching, and the conservative backlash to CRT.

Brittany Aronson & Judson Laughter. “The Theory and Practice of Culturally Relevant Education: A Synthesis of Research Across Content Areas.” Review of Educational Research March 2016, Vol. 86 No. 1. (2016); Kimberlé Crenshaw, ed. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. The New Press. (1996); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal Vol. 32 No. 3. (1995); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education Vol 11. No. 1. (1998); Jonathan Butcher and Mike Gonzalez. “Critical Race Theory, the New Intolerance, and Its Grip on America.” Heritage Foundation. (2020); Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York, NY: New York University Press. (2017); Shelly Brown-Jeffy & Jewell E. Cooper, “Toward a Conceptual Framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: An Overview of the Conceptual and Theoretical Literature.” Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2011.

A version of this article appeared in the June 02, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

Sign Up for The Savvy Principal

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Racial Disparities in Education and the Role of Government

The death of George Floyd and other Black men and women has prompted demonstrations across the country and brought more attention to the issues of racial inequality. Over the past several years, GAO has been asked to examine various racial inequalities in public programs and we have made recommendations to address them.

Today is the first of 3 blog posts in which we will address these reports. The first deals with equality in education.

School Discipline

Unequal treatment can start at a young age. In  2018 , we reported that starting in pre-school, children as young as 3 and 4 have been suspended and expelled from school—a pattern that can continue throughout a child’s education. In K-12 public schools, Black students, boys, and students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined (e.g., suspended or expelled), according to our review of the Department of Education’s national civil rights data.

These disparities were widespread and persisted regardless of the type of disciplinary action, level of school poverty, or type of public school attended. For example, while only 15.5% of public school students were Black, about 39% of students suspended from school were Black—an overrepresentation of about 23 percentage points (see figure).

Students Suspended from School Compared to Student Population, by Race, Sex, and Disability Status, School Year 2013-14

Note: Disparities in student discipline such as those presented in this figure may support a finding of discrimination, but taken alone, do not establish whether unlawful discrimination has occurred .

Minority students may also be more likely to attend alternative public schools because of issues like poor grades and disruptive behavior. In  2019 , we found that Black boys transferred to alternative schools at rates higher than any other group for disciplinary reasons, and that they, along with Hispanic boys and boys with disabilities, attended alternative schools in greater proportions than they did regular public schools attended by the majority of U.S. public school students.  For example, Black boys accounted for 16 percent of students at alternative schools, but only 8 percent of students at regular public schools in 2015-16.

Education Quality and Access

The link between racial and ethnic minorities and poverty is long-standing. Studies have noted concerns about this segment of the population that falls at the intersection of poverty and minority status in schools and how this affects their access to quality education. In  2018 , we reported that during high school, students in high-poverty areas had less access to college-prep courses.  Schools in high-poverty areas were also less likely to offer math and science courses than most public 4-year colleges expected students to take in high school. The racial composition of the highest poverty schools was also 80% Black or Hispanic.

The Department of Education has several initiatives to help students prepare for college. For example, GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) seeks to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. In 2016, Education awarded about $323 million in grants through GEAR UP.

In our 2018 report, we described  an investigation the Department of Education conducted in 2014 looking at  whether Black students in a Virginia school district had the same access to educational opportunities as other students. It found a significant disparity between the numbers of Black and White high school students who take AP, advanced courses, and dual-credit programs.

Addressing Disparity in Schools

So, what can be done to identify and address racial disparities in K-12 public schools? In  2016 , we recommended that the Department of Education, which is to ensure equal access to education and promote educational excellence through vigorous enforcement of civil rights in our nation’s schools, routinely analyze its Civil Rights dataset, which could help it identify issues and patterns of disparities. Our recommendation was implemented in 2018.

The Department of Justice also plays a role in enforcing federal civil rights laws in the context of K-12 education. For example, it monitors and enforces open federal school desegregation orders where Justice is a party to the litigation.  At the time of our study, many of these desegregation orders had been in place for 30 and 40 years.   For example, in a 2014 opinion in a long-standing desegregation case, the court described a long period of dormancy in the case and stated that lack of activity had taken its toll, noting, that the district had not submitted the annual reports required under the consent order to the court for the past 20 years. In 2016, we recommended that the Department of Justice systematically track key summary information across its portfolio of open desegregation cases to help inform its monitoring. Our recommendation was implemented in 2019.

To learn more about GAO’s work on education, visit our key issues pages on  Ensuring Access to Safe, Quality K-12 Education  and  Postsecondary Education Access and Affordability .

Comments on GAO’s WatchBlog? Contact  [email protected] .

GAO Contacts

Related Posts

Growing Disparities in Retirement Account Savings

Back to School—Obstacles to Educating K-12 Students Persist

What Financial Aid Offers Don’t Tell You About the Cost of College

Related products, k-12 education: discipline disparities for black students, boys, and students with disabilities, product number, k-12 education: certain groups of students attend alternative schools in greater proportions than they do other schools, k-12 education: public high schools with more students in poverty and smaller schools provide fewer academic offerings to prepare for college.

GAO's mission is to provide Congress with fact-based, nonpartisan information that can help improve federal government performance and ensure accountability for the benefit of the American people. GAO launched its WatchBlog in January, 2014, as part of its continuing effort to reach its audiences—Congress and the American people—where they are currently looking for information.

The blog format allows GAO to provide a little more context about its work than it can offer on its other social media platforms. Posts will tie GAO work to current events and the news; show how GAO’s work is affecting agencies or legislation; highlight reports, testimonies, and issue areas where GAO does work; and provide information about GAO itself, among other things.

Please send any feedback on GAO's WatchBlog to [email protected] .

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Civil CONVERSATION CHALLENGE

What Students Are Saying About Race and Racism in America

We invited teenagers to join a moderated discussion about racial equity and justice. Here is a summary of the 2,000-plus thoughtful, passionate comments.

By Nicole Daniels

Note: We have a lesson plan for teaching with this collection of student comments.

This past fall, we held a Civil Conversation Challenge for students, inviting young people to engage in respectful, productive discussions about some of the most divisive issues of the 2020 presidential election. In a series of online forums hosted by The Learning Network, they reflected on their experiences of the coronavirus pandemic and debated education, voting and other issues they cared about. Across forums, they told us that “ 2020 has been a wake-up call .”

But the discussion that perhaps challenged students the most was our forum on the fight for racial justice , in which we asked them to share their opinions on protests, policing, systemic racism and more.

By the end, the conversation had generated over 2,000 comments, and if you read even a few of the highlights we feature below, we think you’ll see why we thought it merited its own roundup. Though we were impressed by student posts on all of the topics in our challenge, this forum was special.

Some students shared heartbreaking stories of discrimination. Several told us what it’s like to have a family member who is a police officer. And many wrote about becoming deeply aware of racism for the first time after the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed. Throughout, the teenage participants showed a willingness to write candidly about their own experiences as well as to stretch to understand the experiences of others.

But this discussion is also a microcosm of a conversation happening across American society, and it mirrored its sharp divisions, too. Students engaged passionately on core issues like the existence of white privilege, the extent of systemic racism, the legacy of slavery, the effectiveness of protests and the role of the police.

Though the roundup below doesn’t feature conversations so much as individual posts, it is still easy to see how students handled these difficult topics thoughtfully and respectfully. We have published responses in thematic groups so that you can easily navigate the various points of view, but clicking on each student’s name will take you back to the original conversation so you can read it in that context if you like.

Thank you to all who participated and to the teachers who brought their classes to the discussion. As always, but especially for a forum as important as this one, we are grateful to be a place students can share their voices.

Please note: All student comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity, but we did not change individual words. Therefore, while it is Times style to capitalize “Black” when describing people and cultures of African origin , student uses of the word remain rendered the way they were originally submitted.

“As a black girl, I have experienced a lot of pain because of my skin color.”

As a black girl, I have dealt with a lot of comments from others over the years pertaining my skin color and other features that make me a person of color. I still remember girls telling me my hair looked “normal” after straightening it, or girls petting my curly hair calling it “different,” treating me not like a person, but an exotic object. During the summer, when moments like the Black Lives Matter protests took place, I realized how many of my “friends” weren’t willing to say anything. It made me feel sad knowing they decided to stay silent. I also couldn’t believe the city I was born in would later be known as the city where the life of Floyd was taken.

— Naomi, Georgia

As a black young man in America, I feel every day is a new worry. I’d like to be able to go out and not be afraid of something happening to me, my friends, my family or other people of color. When the death of George Floyd occurred, something definitely changed. People became more aware of the fear that people of color go through in everyday life situations. I’d love to one day see a country where skin color doesn’t contribute to how a human being is treated.

— Q, New York

As a young black girl, I’ve experienced racism numerous times. I’ve been called the N-word, been told that it should’ve been you instead of Breonna, etc. All things that hurt me. People wonder why these protests get so violent and so intense. It’s because racial inequality and all these problems aren’t being addressed.

— Camryn, New York

As a black girl, I have experienced a lot of pain because of my skin color. A lot of my childhood friends were nonblack, and I often was made to feel like an outsider with them. Once I was told by a white classmate, “Wow, your hair is finally normal!” upon having my hair straightened for picture day. Suddenly, I felt as though my natural curls were abnormal, and I never wanted to be abnormal again. So, the internalized racism began to grow and flourish within me. I was so ashamed to be black, so desperate to not be seen as “hood” or “ghetto” that I demeaned my own people in order to raise myself up …

Today, I am very pro-black; I love my hair, and I love my skin. But it’s still hard to find beauty in the mirror when I go to look. Sometimes it hurts knowing that lighter girls will always be seen as being prettier than me, that I don’t fit most people’s idea of being the “acceptable version” of blackness. But I have to remind myself that it’s OK, things will change. I’m still young enough to help create a future where no other black girl will suffer like I did, or how I sometimes still do.

— KJ, Texas

“This summer was really the first time that I was actually aware of the impact racism had.”

I am white, and I live in a predominately white suburban town. I have never been treated differently for the color of my skin because I am a product of white privilege. I was not very politically active until George Floyd was murdered and the Black Lives Matter protests began in May. Since then, I’ve tried to better understand the hardships that people of color endure as a result of racism. I think it is of the utmost importance to speak out against corrupt systems, especially if you are not affected by these systems. Because in my opinion, choosing not to speak up against something because it does not involve you is proof that the system is working. Turning a blind eye with the thinly veiled excuse “politics isn’t for me” can no longer mask selfish ignorance. This is not the time to be anti-political because silence is contributing to the blatant discrimination of black Americans. Hiding behind privilege instead of utilizing that very privilege to initiate change can no longer be justified.

— Annie, New Jersey

I think that this summer was really the first time that I was actually aware of the impact racism had. My parents have taught me, from a young age, that racism and injustice exist but I guess I did not understand to what extent. As a person who benefits from white privilege, I feel kind of guilty that I had not realized how it affected me before. Also, as a person who cannot yet vote, I am struggling to find ways that I can help make change. Do you have any suggestions?

— L, Pennsylvania

In ninth grade, before the pandemic and killing of George Floyd, I used to be thankful to the police officers who stood at our doors to prevent any school shooting. After hearing of the George Floyd incident, I remember suddenly feeling like the police hadn’t made our school safer at all.

To be honest, it infuriated me. I was raised in a bubble that taught me to think racism was extinct. To think that the police protected all of us as equals … George Floyd was a father, a son and a brother. Imagine seeing your son get murdered by the people that are supposed to protect you.

As a white person, I will never truly understand the horrors of being discriminated against for my skin color. I am privileged, not because of what I am, but because of what I’m not. The best thing I and other white people can do is listen and share. We will never completely know what racism will feel like, but we can listen and try to understand the pain of being harassed or attacked by the people who are supposed to protect you.

— Lindsay, North Carolina

As a kid with divorced parents, I have two sides of my family: My mom’s house, where we can have talks about racism and go to protests together; and my dad’s house, where the existence of white privilege is denied completely and even joked about. I’ve seen news, real and fake, about the police cases and the protests, and I’ve come to a few conclusions. The first is that people with privilege and power will do or deny anything to stay in that place, even when they have proof it’s hurting others. The second is that if it were only a few bad apples, those “bad apples” would be fired and arrested — but they’re not. The police system protects racists and always has, as a system born out of catching runaway slaves. Until we dismantle and rebuild every racist system in our country, racism will be a problem, and everyone will have the choice to educate themselves or stay ignorant

— Claire Elise, North Carolina

I am from France and I can tell that the death of George Floyd has touched everyone in the world and his death has awakened the spirits. Some demonstrations have been organized, and even though I couldn’t go, I have followed this history on the internet, on TV news and in magazines.

I believe that we can change the mentality at the moment. The new generation is respectful of each other and is able to change things. We are strong and determined to put an end to racism!

— Julie, Paris

“I never once thought in my life that the hatred for law enforcement would EVER go this far.”

As a daughter of a police officer and a granddaughter of a retired police chief, I never once thought in my life that the hatred for law enforcement would EVER go this far. I was raised to treat everyone equally no matter what. With that being said, I cannot speak for people of color. What I can say is that police officers are trained on how to handle situations like the one with George Floyd. Like both President Trump and Joe Biden said last night [at the debate], there are bad apples in every profession and more could be done to weed out the bad cops. The officer that killed George Floyd deserved to be put away. Did his actions deserve a protest? Maybe. Should the protest still be happening? Definitely not. Police officers provide safety in a community and have been a staple for ages. Law enforcement should never make you feel threatened unless you are doing the wrong thing. We should support everyone no matter their color or occupation. So I agree that all lives do matter and that we should not only back the blue but back all other first responders and essential workers.

— Kylie, California

In the case of George Floyd, I believe that what happened was a terrible tragedy and should forever be talked about when racism in this country is brought up. However, the cop that murdered George Floyd killed him on his own accord, showing an example of individual racism instead of systemic … How the murderers of George Floyd are tried will change my opinion of systemic racism and other cases the organization Black Lives Matter has brought to attention.

— Jason, New York

Systemically, the United States does not discriminate racially. Unfortunately, there are and always will be racist individuals in any and all countries. People of color disproportionately attend poorer schools because residents of a county must go to a school in that district, which is why many people generally leave poorer counties and move to richer ones …

I believe racism is a horrible issue at any given time, and legitimately racist individuals should be shamed. However, the word racism has lost meaning nowadays because of how commonly it’s thrown around. America is not a racist nation: it’s the world’s largest immigrant destination, but there certainly are racist individuals who need to change. So many people think that racism means stereotypes and saying “offensive” words, when legitimate racism (hate crimes and actual discrimination) is actually quite rare.

— Kai, California

I am a white male and am right leaning. I feel that there should be a change in our police forces and our opinions toward other people. At the same time there is different way to go about the situations than what the people of the Black Lives Matter movement are trying to accomplish. The Black Lives Matter movement is trying to defund the police, which is the opposite of what you want do. With less money, the less officers we can have to keep us as a people safe. I believe that we should fund the police forces more so the police can get more training, have therapists they can go to, and so we can keep the police in the correct state of mind. In turn there will be change and less police brutality. I also feel that it’s not just black lives that matter, it should be all lives matter. Having this mind-set you are able to bring everyone up to be equal, not just one race, so there is no “white privilege” or any other race getting more than another.

— Spencer, Utah

“The first time I began thinking about my racial identity was when my family and I moved into a predominantly white town.”

Being a Latina makes my perspective on the topic of racial inequalities quite sensitive. The first time I began thinking about my racial identity was when my family and I moved into a predominantly white town. I truly wish my parents had prepared me more for the environment that we were moving into, yet I believe that deep down they did not expect to encounter racism.

Witnessing and sometimes even experiencing all the issues and injustices around me has propelled my interest in history, in hopes of simply understanding and helping to educate others. As a little girl, I would witness racism against indigenous people in my home country, Ecuador. I began noticing it at about the age of 12. It was only after studying the age of exploration, the Incan empire and colonization that I began to make sense of such horrible actions.

With the death of George Floyd, I began wondering how racial injustices are manifesting during the Covid-19 pandemic. I began thinking about access to health care and unemployment benefits. According to The New York Times, 40 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic. How many of these people were minorities? How many of these minorities were able to receive relief from the government? Do all students have equal access to technology to facilitate their online learning?

After witnessing so many acts of racial injustice, I worry that little by little, humans are losing their empathy and love for one another.

— Paula, New Jersey

“Why are your eyes so small? Can you even see?” was my first experience with racial remarks. It was no big deal to me, thinking it was only fun teasing. I can vividly remember my first day of 6th grade, walking to my assigned seat and a girl laughs at me, pulling her eyes back to make them small. I didn’t know what to say and I thought I was being judged.

“So how does dog taste?” “Say hi to Uncle Kim Jong-un for me.” “Go back to North Korea.” When this was said, it created an image in my head that I wasn’t like anyone else, I didn’t fit into society …

While all my experiences were in the past, I considered the fact that society was changing and I wouldn’t receive any more racist comments but then Covid-19 hit. I no longer felt safe sneezing or coughing in public. Passing down aisles and places were frightening and my heart would race hoping I wouldn’t cough or sneeze. I would hold back the itch in my throat and the sniffle under my mask. People would back up against walls, trying their best not to touch me. This was my first experience with nonverbal racism. One step we can take to get closer to achieving racial justice is by starting in the household.

— Lauren, California

My race has been classified as the “model minority,” resulting in negative effects on the fight for equality.

The term model minority is based on the stereotype that Asian-American children are born “gifted.” It characterizes Asian-Americans as a “docile racial group that has achieved financial and educational success in the United States” …

It was only this year after discussing the protests occurring for George Floyd with other Asians that I had come to the realization that the ideas my family had perpetrated on me were the epitome of the “model minority.”

Putting Asian-Americans on a pedestal is destructive toward African Americans and the racial inequalities they face. It dismisses their struggles by using the Asian-American stories as testimonial representation to back up false claims against African Americans that classify them as “lazy” and “hostile.”

It is important to discuss these matters as the only true way to create change is through an open mind-set and discussion.

— Jay, New York

“The point of privilege is that you don’t feel that.”

So, I’m white, and I grew up in a town that I think is about 75 to 80 percent white. I grew up in an immense place of privilege — I never had to worry about being racially profiled, I’ve never experienced racial discrimination, and I don’t have relatives who have been unjustly shot or killed by police. And my guess is most white people, specifically white people in my community, haven’t. That’s why it was so frustrating over the summer, and especially after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to hear many of my peers try to justify their deaths. I think, especially when it comes to the topic of racial justice, we need to amplify the voices of black people and people of color, instead of silencing them because we, as white people haven’t experienced the same. I find it completely ironic when kids in my grade talk about not experiencing harassment or discrimination by the police or our security officers while being white. Like, of course we haven’t. The point of privilege is that you don’t feel that.

— Eleanor, Illinois

I grew up with white privilege in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Racism was not evident in my everyday life, and even in school I was not exposed enough to what happened and was happening in the United States. Yes, we learned about slavery and racism in the United States, especially racism during the time of Martin Luther King Jr., but we kind of just stopped there. We learned nothing of police brutality, white privilege, systematic racism, generational wealth, etc. Last year I was a part of a club called Community-Wide Dialogue that discussed racism issues that I had never heard of before. It was eye-opening. Every school should incorporate those extremely important topics into their curriculum, to help promote change, understanding and empathy.

— Sarah, New York

4.9 million fathers, daughters, sons, mothers; humans were brought to Brazil to suffer a fate worse than death: slavery. 4.9 million lives were ended because of the color of their skin. And still, after centuries of pain and fighting to make their voices heard, black lives do not matter for some. Being a child from an upper-middle class white family, I never experienced prejudice in my own skin. I grew accustomed to the bubble in which I was raised, and it wasn’t until I reached a considerably advanced age that I started to look at my surroundings and realize how messed up our society is. Why I am privileged because my skin is lighter than someone else’s? It doesn’t make ANY sense … Even though the fight to end racism has followed us until this very date, the need to make even more civil rights movements makes me think that we did not advance as a society. We will remain frozen in time until equality is reached.

— Maria, Recife, Brazil

“Racism does exist in people … but America and the system as a whole is not racist in any way.”

I think the term racism is thrown around a lot in today’s society. America, as a country, is not racist. Go to almost any other country in the world and you will have it significantly worse. Today, there is not a single law that gives opportunity or rights to one race that is not given to another. In other words, everyone in America is treated equally. That doesn’t mean there aren’t racist people, because there always will be. There are racist white, black and Asian people, etc., but the system, as a whole, is not racist. My overall point is that racism does exist in people, and it always will, but America and the system as a whole is not racist in any way.

— Nate, Ohio

First of all, I do not believe racism and systemic racism is a very big threat in America as compared to many other problems or even to other countries. As a Chinese immigrant minority, I have not experienced nor heard of any racism in my life in the United States. Instead, I think America is truly one of the most diverse nations made up of people of all different races, cultures and religions. The people here are all-encompassing, and the police are human too. As many police officers say, “No one hates a bad cop more than a good cop.”

— Jiayi, New York

Racism is a very strong topic and if I’m being completely honest, I hate talking about it. Me, personally, I think America is one of the most racially equal countries. A white man and a black man have the same opportunities to succeed and thrive. There has become a common stereotype that black people don’t have equal opportunity as white people. I love when I see black doctors, businessmen and other workers because I know how hard they have worked. Just as hard as a white man would have.

— Nicholas, North Carolina

Everybody knows America has had a troubled past with slavery, civil rights, racial discrimination, the whole nine yards. So in response to all that, “Does the United States owe the descendants of enslaved people an apology — or, as some argue, financial reparations?” No. Most, if not everyone, in the United States right now didn’t own slaves nor were they slaves. If somebody owed them an apology, it was owed a long time ago. It is irrelevant now. The United States especially does not owe them financial reparations. Why should today’s leaders pay back on something they never did, to people that were never slaves anyway? If the problem is trying to help people who came from a slavery background and has a poor family, well there are plenty of financial aid programs for them. They want equality, yet also wish to get special things because of actions our ancestors made, not us.

— Bella, Mississippi

“Police reform should most definitely be a priority.”

Police reform should most definitely be a priority. Personally, I think it should take a back seat to other issues such as equal opportunities and fixing our justice system, but it is still a top priority behind those issues. Although no one in my family is an officer, we know people that are officers. I do think that the police are necessary in our country, and without them our country could and would become a very dangerous place. However, there are still steps to be taken that would make our policing better.

For example, police need to be better trained in de-escalation techniques rather than resorting too quickly to force. Another important reform would be bringing a psychiatrist on 911 calls. There are times when tragedies could be avoided if a person was calmed down by a trained professional, rather than enraged by police threatening them. Police should also be more involved and engaged in their communities. In many places, police are simply there as law enforcement, and nothing else. However, if police were to get to know their community and be able to bond with them in certain ways, there would be much more trust on both sides. In my town, although I haven’t interacted with many officers in my life, I see things that the police do to support and engage with the community, and I think that’s one important reason why no one in my town really has an issue with our police force. With all these reforms, I think policing could be greatly improved.

— Jacob, Illinois

I personally don’t believe police reform should be a priority, police abolition should. There have been countless policies with the goal of reforming police departments and, clearly, reform movements have not stopped police brutality. This can especially be seen in the city of Minneapolis which had implemented many of the common reform policies before George Floyd’s murder. The first step to abolition would be defunding the police. A world without police or a defunded police department may be hard to imagine, but if you are like me and live in a predominantly white, wealthy suburban community, this is what that world would look like. The majority of resources are not going to criminalize members of the community, they are going to education and other ways of supporting the community.

— Mira, Illinois

I disagree with the idea that the police should be abolished. Unfortunately, humans are inherently selfish, and in a world without police or law enforcement to stop them, people of all races would steal things for their own gain and society would be a mess. I believe instead, that the police system should be completely redone from square one. This way, it actually has a good foundation to build upon, instead of it being a lost cause to try and fix.

— Devon, California

I feel that if law enforcement were defunded and there were a lot fewer cops, chaos would occur and nobody would be there to stop it. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely bad cops out there, but I feel as if the majority of cops are there to do good in the world, and to prevent chaos, not cause it … I do feel that cops are necessary and very important figures in everyday society because they keep order and try to make it fair for everyone. Although this isn’t always the case, most try the best that they can.

— Andrew, New Jersey

You have to keep in mind police budgets can be very large. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department has a budget of around $2 billion. Say you take only five percent of their budget and redirect it into funding schools, housing, health care, etc. That is $100 million, which barely affects their budget, yet it can make a large impact on the community. By creating a higher standard of living, in theory, the crime rate would drop. Now, there is no way to stop all crime, and yes, I believe police are important to stop the violence. However, another small fraction of their budget can go toward better training. Ultimately, the goal is to decrease the crime rate by putting more money into communities and having better trained police to handle issues in an appropriate manner.

— Lauren, Massachusetts

“I think systemic racism today is absolutely tied to slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination of the past.”

Related Article: What Is Owed

Racism is still widely present in the United States in 2020, and it is straight up deplorable. It is even worse that schools for the most part are not teaching about racism in their curriculum … Redlining is the practice of outlining areas where communities of people of color lived and refusing those people mortgages on homes. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 may have made redlining illegal, but that has not stopped race-based economic discrimination. According to statistics from 2017, African Americans get denied more than twice the percent of white people on mortgage applicants, with Hispanics being around twice the percent of white people, at 10.9%. There should not be a reason for those differences.

— Jordan, Arizona

Practices such as redlining, blockbusting, and higher mortgage and interest rates were used years after Jim Crow was made illegal, leading to incredibly segregated neighborhoods with less funding for education and infrastructure and more aggressive policing. This aggressive policing has led to police brutality toward Black Americans … Based on the continued dehumanization, criminalization, and discrimination Black people have continued to face, protests are more than reasonable responses. Even if property damage occurs, it does not carry the same weight as human lives.

— Aspen, New York

Racism is very much alive today. Even if you forget about racial prejudice within the justice system or the hiring process or policing, minorities are still at a disadvantage. Slavery, Jim Crow and redlining completely ruined black peoples’ chances of building generational wealth. Even when they were able to start businesses or own homes, they got that stripped away from them. Just look at the Tulsa Massacre (or Black Wall Street). This accounts for the racial wealth gap where white families have about 10 times the wealth of black ones. The neighborhoods that were redlined are still impoverished to this day, and when you’re born poor, there’s a 66% chance you’ll stay poor in America. Black people shouldn’t have to be truly exceptional or truly lucky just so they can be afforded the same chance at a good life as white people.

— Abraham, California

I think systemic racism today is absolutely tied to slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination of the past. Some people think slavery ended with the 13th Amendment, and while it may have ended in name, slavery-like practices and many discriminatory laws continued. The police system is built on a system of catching fugitive slaves. Many suburban neighborhoods, like the one I live in, are predominantly white because of redlining and racist practices that kept black families out of suburbs and restricted them to certain neighborhoods. Though racism and segregation may not be de jure anymore, it is certainly de facto and built into education, health care, policing, etc.

— Stefanie, Illinois

“I feel that there is no real definite solution to racism, but there are steps that can be taken to get closer to equality.”

As a young person, I have never really talked about racism due to the fact that many adults play it off or act as if there is no such thing. I am more privileged to be able not to hear about it. However, I really do disagree with the fact that adults and older figures try to avoid the topic. As a kid, I was taught to admire police forces as they protect me. But during times such as this, I have started to realize how unfair the police officers treat people due to race. So many kids are not taught such things because adults believe that kids should live a blissful life. I believe that the system should change as soon as possible, as informing others of racial injustice is so important … To be honest, I do not think racism will come to a complete end, unless humanity is gone. Yet, I still believe that there would be much less racism if people were educated and accepting of others.

— Natalie, California

I feel that there is no real definite solution to racism, but there are steps that can be taken to get closer to equality. Step 1 would be to teach your kids how to show compassion and how not to judge someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. By doing this, the next generation will grow up knowing how to not judge others by the way that they look but by the way they act and the decisions they make. Step 2 would be to educate this generation and the next about racism and the correct history behind it. It is mostly ignorance that causes people to make poor judgment on others and treat others unfairly and that is what I believe is one of the main causes of racism. Step 3 would be to enforce the change of history books and to encourage communities to work for each other not against each other.

— Aidan, Illinois

One of the relics of the racism that has been gaining more coverage recently is the lack of diverse narratives in our history curriculums. I am lucky enough to be a part of a new class in my district called Unites States History Perspectives, a class that focuses on the untold histories of oppressed peoples. I have already learned more about the culture of Indigenous people and the struggles of African Americans this year than I have in the other 11 years of my education combined.

— Isabela, Washington

I live in a mostly white town and before these seven months I knew about white privilege and police brutality, however I was ignorant to how large and deeply rooted the problem is. I think literature and stories are a great way of educating and learning about racism in our country. For example, during quarantine I got to read one of my new favorite books, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas. I really like how it made me sympathize with the main character and helped me understand a little better how unfairly people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were treated. I wish people in this country who still believe America is handling racism would educate themselves about the oppression of African Americans. If everyone worked toward understanding American flaws then we might be able to make progress toward a country with true equality.

— Zoe, New Jersey

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How We Talk With Kids About Prejudice Matters

At EmbraceRace, we believe that creating a society marked by authentic multiracial belonging must begin in our homes, schools, and communities with our children’s hearts and minds.

In our report Reflections on Children’s Racial Learning , we begin to chronicle the emergence of a field of learning and practice centered on children’s racial learning—how and what children learn about race, including but not limited to the deliberate efforts of adults to teach children about race (i.e., racial socialization).

“Children will ‘naturally’ grow up to be non-racist adults only when they live in a non-racist society,” writes educator Louise Derman-Sparks and her colleagues. “Until then, adults must guide children’s anti-racist development.” We have far to go before the U.S. can be considered a “non-racist society.” Centuries after our founding, U.S. family, community, and institutional life remain awash with racial biases, anxieties, and resentments.

For some time, researchers, educators, and parents alike have focused on pushing back against the emergence of racial bias in children. Increasingly, however, we’re paying attention to the subtleties of how we communicate to children about race and racism, more broadly—with recent research highlighting the real possibility that we can raise generations of children who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.

But how do we get children to engage with race-related topics rather than avoid them? How do we lay the foundation for positive, meaningful cross-race interactions? We reached out to social scientists to ask how we can engage children in positive racial learning—and here are the answers they provided for Reflections on Children’s Racial Learning .

1. Embrace “the talk” across ALL races

For almost half a century, studies have focused on measures of the frequency and content of parent-child conversations about race. Along with Dr. Howard Stevenson from the University of Pennsylvania, we have proposed new questions: How well are these families engaging in the talk with each other? And, perhaps more importantly, what does this phenomenon look like across race?

An interdisciplinary team of researchers and multiracial participants showed that, indeed, we can expand our understanding of racial socialization with a focus on families’ experiences and competency—their skills, confidence, and stress. Whether parents are talking to Black, Latina, Asian, or white children, they report similar patterns of competence.

This means that every parent can benefit from reducing their stress (breathing), improving their skills (utilizing resources), and enhancing their confidence (practice) when talking to their children, even parents who may already often discuss race or feel sure about what they have to say. This also means that there are more opportunities for organizations like EmbraceRace to help parents become more competent in caring for their children’s emotional wellness at a time of heightened sensitivity and stress with respect to race. — Riana Elyse Anderson and Shawn C. T. Jones

2. Hold brave, intentional, caring, children-led conversations

Recent years have seen more and more researchers hard at work trying to figure out how we can best support communities in having courageous conversations about race. The research is clear that parents provide youth with intentional and unintentional messages about race that influence youth’s racial understanding of themselves and others around them.

Greater Good in Spanish

Read this article in Spanish on La Red Hispana, the public-facing media outlet and distribution house of HCN , focused on educating, inspiring, and informing 40 million U.S. Hispanics.

What we know is that intentionality is necessary to ensure these conversations are productive, useful for youth, and lead to youth having a stronger sense of themselves—ready to handle racialized moments and be change agents in their environments.

But how we have these conversations is as important as having them in the first place. Observational studies with parents and youth shed light on the benefit of scaffolding to youth’s developmental stage, to being alert to youth’s emotional well-being in the conversations, to following the child’s lead by asking open-ended questions to understand youth perspectives, and to helping youth anticipate how they can manage these moments in the future.

The tone parents take in these conversations is also important: Warmth and support are the backbone of any effective conversation about race. — Stephanie Irby Coard, Lisa Kiang, Gabriela Livas Stein

3. Adopt a growth mindset in your conversations

We can shift the view of prejudice as fixed (“once a racist, always a racist”) to a view that it is malleable (“that seems prejudiced, but that can be changed”). This is what some researchers refer to as a “growth mindset.”

In research with eight to 13 year olds, we found that the more children believed prejudice is fixed, the less friendly they behaved toward a cross-race peer and the less they wanted to interact with that cross-race peer in the future. Children who believed that prejudice is an attribute that can change behaved quite differently: They were more friendly and they reported an increased desire to interact with their cross-race peers. We also measured children’s prejudice and what mattered was not how prejudiced children were, but whether they believed prejudice could change.

Anti-Racist Resources

A collection of Greater Good pieces that explore our potential to reduce prejudice in society and in ourselves

Our research suggests that the goal of creating a greater willingness to talk about race and more positive interracial interactions could be achieved through shifting the focus of our conversations with children away from identifying prejudiced people and toward emphasizing how prejudice itself can be changed. The research world is increasingly identifying opportunities to be more intentional in our caregiving practices and the messages we communicate to our children. — Kristin Pauker

4. Talk about structural racism

While talking with kids about the social forces that shape racial inequality may seem like a tall order, our work finds that it makes a difference.

In one study , for example, we found that children who believed that racial inequalities were caused by internal differences between people (“who people are on the inside”) developed more racial biases over time, whereas children who recognized the societal factors underlying racial inequalities (“things that happen in the world that make it harder for some people and easier for others”) developed more inclusive, egalitarian attitudes.

In related work , we’ve found that children’s understanding of these societal factors become especially important for promoting inclusive, anti-racist worldviews as children are exposed to more racial inequalities in their neighborhoods and in the media.

This research points toward teaching about structural racism as a way to promote more anti-racist worldviews in early childhood, and reflects the growing contributions and increasingly promising role of social science researchers in helping us navigate the practical challenge of raising anti-racist children. — Michael T. Rizzo

This essay was adapted from Reflections on Children’s Racial Learning 2023 , published by EmbraceRace , an organization that aims to help parents and educators raise a generation that is thoughtful, brave, and informed about race.

About the Authors

Kristin pauker.

Kristin Pauker, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at the University of Hawai‘i and director of the ISP lab.

Stephanie Irby Coard

Stephanie Irby Coard, Ph.D. , is currently a tenured associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and former Director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro (UNC-G).

Lisa Kiang, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University. Her research is in self and identity, family and social relationships, and culture.

Gabriela Livas Stein

Gabriela Livas Stein, Ph.D. , is a licensed psychologist and professor and Chair of Human Development and Family Sciences at UT Austin.

Michael T. Rizzo

Michael T. Rizzo, Ph.D. , is an assistant professor and director of the Developing Equitable Minds Lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Riana Elyse Anderson

University of michigan.

Riana Elyse Anderson, Ph.D., is the EMBRace Program Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.

Shawn C. T. Jones

Shawn C.T. Jones is an assistant professor in the Counseling Program in the Psychology Department at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Melissa Giraud

Melissa Giraud, M.A. (she/her), ​is co-founder and co-director of ​EmbraceRace, where she leads efforts to support parents, educators, and other caregivers to raise children who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.

Andrew Grant-Thomas

Andrew Grant-Thomas, Ph.D. (he/him), ​is co-founder and co-director of ​EmbraceRace, where he leads efforts to support parents, educators, and other caregivers to raise children who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.

You May Also Enjoy

How Talking About Race Can Bring Black Families Together

How Health Professionals Can Talk With Families About Race

Can Children’s Media Be Made to Look Like America?

Should We Talk to Young Children about Race?

Five Ways to Foster Interracial Friendship in Schools

Five Ways to Reduce Racial Bias in Your Children

The unexpected explanation for why school segregation spiked

On eve of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a study finds policy choices explain the rise in segregated schools.

It’s well documented that after falling for years, school segregation has risen again in the United States. But why? New research by academics at the University of Southern California and Stanford University concludes that some popular theories are not to blame.

Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, a study being released Monday shows a pronounced increase in school segregation since 1988, particularly in large school districts with significant numbers of Black students.

Overall, school segregation between Black and White students has increased by 25 percent since 1991 in the 533 large districts serving at least 2,500 Black students — a significant increase but nowhere near the decline that occurred in the aftermath of Brown , according to the study. (Of note: the paper makes clear that most of the school segregation in the United States is driven by demographic differences between districts , not within them.)

A school district that was entirely segregated would score 1.0 on the researchers’ segregation scale, whereas a perfectly integrated district, where every school perfectly matched the overall district’s demographics, would score 0.0.

Looking at the nation’s 100 largest districts, segregation was 0.45 in 1968. That fell to 0.17 by 1986 and then rose to 0.28 by 2019, researchers found. So while schools are nowhere near as segregated as they were before courts began enforcing the Brown decision, segregation has risen in recent decades.

Researchers offered the example of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools system in North Carolina, where segregation was absolute — a score of 1.0 — in 1950, before Brown . By 1968, it remained a still-high 0.66 — at that time, the average White student’s school was 10 percent Black, while the average Black student’s school was 76 percent Black (the difference between 10 and 76 produces the score of 0.66).

Then, in 1971, after the courts ordered a desegregation plan in another landmark court case, this one involving the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district , the segregation score there shrank to just 0.03. (The average White student’s school was 31 percent Black; the average Black student’s school was 34 percent Black.) By 1991, it was still low at 0.10 before rising again. In 2022, segregation had reached 0.44.

The study finds that the rise nationally was not driven by increasing housing segregation. Housing segregation certainly helps explain school segregation. But since 1991, housing has become less segregated.

The study also finds that rising school segregation is not driven by racial economic inequality because racial economic inequality also declined over this period.

Both of these trends “would have led to lower school segregation, had nothing else changed,” said the paper by Ann E. Owens, a sociologist at USC, and Sean F. Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford.

So what does explain the rise?

Rather than systemic forces that are difficult to change, these trends are driven by policy choices, they conclude. The researchers point to two specific policies: federal courts releasing school districts, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, from obligations to desegregate schools beginning in significant numbers in the late 1990s; and school-choice policies that let parents pick what school their children attend.

“It’s not these big structural factors that are outside the school districts’ control that are driving this,” Reardon said in an interview. “It’s things that are under the control of the educational system.”

Court-ordered desegregation plans implemented based on the Brown decision had reduced segregation. But then judges began lifting those orders. “If you switch from an active desegregation effort and go back to neighborhood schools, school segregation is going to go up a lot,” Reardon said.

Had those court orders not been lifted, the study estimates that school segregation would have grown 20 percent less than it did.

At the same time, choice systems such as the introduction of charter schools allowed parents more control — and many used that to choose schools with students like their own. The new study specifically looked at the growth of charter schools and found that if charter schools had not expanded, school segregation would have grown 14 percent less.

These two factors account for all of the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019, the paper found.

The rising segregation numbers “appear to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions,” the paper concludes. “They are not the inevitable result of demographic changes — and can be changed by alternative policy choices.”

• NAEYC Login
• Member Profile
• Hello Community
• Accreditation Portal
• Online Learning
• Online Store

Popular Searches:   DAP ;  Coping with COVID-19 ;  E-books ;  Anti-Bias Education ;  Online Store

Race and Ethnicity

You are here

Most recent.

Being Brave Advocates: Critical Ethnographic Action Research (CEAR) Project Approach for Social Justice and Advocacy in Early Childhood Education

Authored by.

Leading Toward Equity All Year Long

Welcoming Black Dads: Action Steps and Reflections on Becoming Culturally Competent

Creating Anti-Racist Early Childhood Spaces

Now Read This! Supporting Positive Racial Identity with Literacy-Based Math

Digital Stories in Palestinian and US Preschools: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry Project (Voices)

De nuestra presidenta. Las trayectorias que conducen a la profesión: Garantizar que las mujeres de color cumplan su sueño de una educación superior

From Our President. Pathways to the Profession: Ensuring Women of Color Achieve Their Higher Education Dreams

Toward Pro-Black Early Childhood Teacher Education

Black History and Early Childhood Education: Eight Resources to Explore for Black History Month

Transnational Lives of Asian Immigrant Children in Multicultural Picture Books

Viewpoint. Creating Anti-Racist Early Childhood Spaces

Agency and Power in Young Children’s Lives: Five Ways to Advocate for Social Justice as an Early Childhood Educator

What About the Children? Teachers Cultivating and Nurturing the Voice and Agency of Young Children

Journeying Together: How Our Program Addresses Race and Anti-Bias Education

Being an Equity Leader

Quality Includes Removing Bias from Early Childhood Education Environments

Why History? Educating the Early Childhood Workforce for Equity

Summer 2021

Modeling Curiosity and Acceptance: My Kindergarten Lunch Story

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

UK university courses on race and colonialism facing axe due to cuts

Academics warn loss of higher education arts and humanities courses will harm understanding of racism and imperial history

Cuts to arts and humanities subjects within higher education will have damaging implications for our understanding of race and colonialism, academics have warned.

Petitions have been launched to save anthropology at Kent University, where the subject has come under threat of closure, while Oxford Brookes confirmed the closure of its music programme earlier this year.

Last month, Booker prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo criticised the “amputation” of the Black British literature master’s course at Goldsmiths University in London, asking them to reconsider scrapping the “pioneering” subject. “The MA in Black British literature shouldn’t be seen as dispensable but as an essential course that is intellectually and culturally enriching for academia, the college and society,” she said.

Last year, the MRes on the history of Africa and the African diaspora at Chichester University was cut and the course leader, Prof Hakim Adi, lost his job . Adi, the first African-British historian to become a professor of history in the UK, was shortlisted for the Wolfson history prize in 2023.

“There’s not very much about race and colonialism on the curriculum to start with, and it sends a signal from those in power that these types of subjects are not desired,” he said. “[Race and colonialism] just won’t be taught in higher education, if this trend continues. Our course [at Chichester] was the only one in Europe that specialises in African history in this way. When I was made redundant, it also impacted the students whose PhDs I was supervising. They were left without an expert on race and colonialism to guide them in this research.”

The government has attempted to crack down on what the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has described as “ rip-off university courses ”, which critics have viewed as an attempt to cut arts and humanities degrees.

Recent guidance to the Office for Students issued by Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, places importance on Stem subjects and “higher education studies that enable [students] to progress into employment, thereby benefiting them as well as the wider economy”.

The letter, dated 4 April 2024, makes no mention of funding for arts and humanities subjects – something that scholars from the Defend the Arts campaign , a University and College Union-associated group ­calling to save the arts and humanities in higher education, described as an “attack on critical thought”.

University of the Arts London lecturer Kevin Biderman, a leading figure in the Defend the Arts movement, criticised the government’s argument that an arts and humanities education is not employable or beneficial to the economy. Data from January 2024 shows creative industries contribute about £126bn to the UK economy – more than oil and gas.

He added: “At the RCA [Royal College of Art], they got rid of critical and historical studies. What we’re starting to see now is institutions are keeping skills-based courses, under the argument of employability, but they’re cutting courses that require critical thinking about society. [Universities] also cite economic and money-saving reasons – but these courses are cheaper to run in many ways because they don’t need much equipment.”

Adi echoed Biderman: “Getting rid of me also didn’t save [Chichester University] very much money, because I wasn’t getting paid very much.”

Dr Cecilia Wee of the RCA emphasised that less teaching about race in higher education leads to less public awareness. She said: “Arts, culture, and humanities courses are really vital in terms of educating groups of people to make sure that understanding of these topics [such as race, colonialism and feminism] are alive.”

Wee said the “trickle-down impact” of these course closures will, in time, silence voices and narratives that are already underrepresented.

Kent University said its decision to “phase out” anthropology courses followed “an extensive consultation with staff, students and their representatives”.

Goldsmiths said: “We’re proud to have widened scholastic learning with the introduction of the MAs in Black British literature and queer history and are committed to both protecting and enhancing arts and humanities subjects in the best way we can.”

after newsletter promotion

A spokesperson for Chichester University said “despite extensive marketing” of the history of Africa and the African diaspora course, it had “always recruited a relatively small number of students”.

The spokesperson added: “Courses that fail to consistently recruit sufficient students are simply not viable for the university to continue to offer.”

A RCA spokesperson said that critical thinking, while no longer a separate unit, was now integral across its courses: “Critical and historical studies was a single module that formed part of the RCA’s overall studio-based Masters programmes. After extensive consultation with staff and students over the design of the new academic model, the delivery of this unit ended in the academic year 2021-22, due to feedback that a more integrated approach to theory and practice was needed.

“Our academic programmes now have research and critical thinking as an integral part of the curriculum, which means that critical and radical thinking is embedded in research, learning and teaching at all levels at the RCA. These decisions were taken for academic reasons, and we continue to strongly encourage critical and radical thinking in our students.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We recognise the immense value of the higher education sector, including arts and humanities courses.”

Adi said that his experience of teaching Black history and race-related studies in the classroom shows that there is a desire for these topics to be taught. He taught a first-year module about Africa and the African diaspora at Chichester University, where his hundreds-strong cohort was mostly white students. “They voted [it] ‘module of the year’,” he said.

“They said they’ve never heard this history before, they’d never heard it at school and that it was fascinating. Young people’s eyes are always open to new perspectives and ideas.

“We’re in the world of educating people to be enlightened citizens in the 21st century – but unfortunately higher education is run as a business.”

• The Observer
• Department for Education
• Higher education
• Universities
• Colonialism

Most viewed

• For Volunteers
• For Corporates
• Knowledge Center
• Research Center

Learning and professional development.

Conferences, virtual events, special programs, calendar of events, research center data, signature workforce surveys, special surveys, data on demand.

We help you find the most recent news and resources related to public policy issues.

New developments, ongoing efforts, about cupa-hr membership, manage your membership, make connections, get involved, higher ed hr awards.

Search CUPA-HR.

• Entire Site

The Higher Ed Workplace Blog

Department of education issues guidance on discrimination policies under title vi.

In its letter, OCR explains that it has received an increase in complaints alleging discrimination based on race, color, or national origin at colleges and universities, as well as public reports of such discrimination. While it does not explicitly state that the guidance is in response to reports of antisemitism on campuses and protests regarding the Israel-Hamas war, the department emphasizes in the letter that Title VI’s “protections extend to students and school community members who are or are perceived because of their shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu, Palestinian or any other faith or ancestry,” and that “Title VI’s protections against discrimination based on race, color and national origin encompass antisemitism.”

Additionally, the letter addresses First Amendment considerations, as well as two legal frameworks used by OCR and courts to assess whether schools have violated Title VI through discrimination: hostile environment and different treatment. The guidance illustrates nine examples that may prompt OCR to investigate an institution for possible Title VI violations within these two frameworks. Of particular importance for higher ed HR are the instances outlined in the letter when educators and other faculty members might engage in actions constituting harassment under Title VI, as well as schools’ obligations to address such incidents.

As OCR notes, the guidance lacks the authority of law and does not impose obligations on the public or establish new legal standards. Instead, its purpose is to provide clarity to institutions receiving federal financial assistance regarding their requirements under Title VI. CUPA-HR will continue to share resources regarding institutions’ obligations to address discrimination under federal law.

Share This Article:

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog Search

Search through our blog post archives.

• Classification and Compensation
• Compliance/Legal Issues
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Employment Relationship
• Higher Ed News
• Leadership and Strategy
• Recruitment and Selection
• Safety and Health
• Separation/Termination
• Training and Organizational Development

Our upgrade is complete, and we are bringing services back online. All users must create new login credentials for their CUPA-HR accounts.

This website uses cookies to understand your use of our website and to give you a better experience. By continuing to use our site or by closing this banner without changing your cookie settings, you agree to our use of cookies. To find out more about our use of cookies and how to change your settings, please go to our Privacy Policy .

In reversal, Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to 2 schools

WOODSTOCK, Va. (AP) — A Virginia school board voted Friday to restore the names of Confederate military leaders to a high school and an elementary school, four years after the names had been removed.

Shenandoah County's school board voted 5-1 to rename Mountain View High School as Stonewall Jackson High School, and Honey Run Elementary as Ashby Lee Elementary.

Friday’s vote reverses a decision by the school board in 2020, a time when school systems across the South were removing Confederate names from schools in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

School board members who voted to restore the Confederate names said the previous board ignored popular sentiment and due process when the names were stripped.

Advertisement

Elections in 2023 significantly changed the school board's makeup.

Board member Gloria Carlineo said during a six-hour meeting that began Thursday night that opponents of the Confederate names should “stop bringing racism and prejudice into everything” because it “detracts from true cases of racism.”

The lone board member to vote against restoring the Confederate names, Kyle Gutshall, said he respects both sides of the debate but believed that a majority of residents in his district wanted to leave the Mountain View and Honey Run names in place.

“I don't judge anybody or look down on anybody for the decision they're making,” he said. “It's a complex issue.”

Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was a Confederate general from Virginia who gained fame at the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas in 1861 and died in 1863 after he was shot in battle and had his arm amputated. Jackson's name was also removed from another high school in Virginia's Prince William County in 2020 that is now known as Unity Reed High School.

Turner Ashby was a Confederate cavalry officer who was killed in battle in 1862 near Harrisonburg, Virginia. A high school near Harrisonburg is also named for him. Robert E. Lee was a Virginia native who commanded Confederate forces.

The resolution approved Friday by the school board states that private donations will be used to pay for the name changes.

Shenandoah County is a largely rural jurisdiction with a population of about 45,000, roughly 100 miles west of the nation’s capital.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Caitlin Clark, much like Larry Bird, the focus of talks about race and double standards in sports

Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark (22) goes to the basket against Atlanta Dream’s Nia Coffey (12) and Aerial Powers (23) during the second half of a WNBA preseason basketball game Thursday, May 9, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

FILE - Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson holds up the championship trophy as she celebrates with her team their win in the WNBA basketball finals against the Connecticut Sun, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022, in Uncasville, Conn. The two-time defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces are favored to win the title again. They return their core four players to the roster from a team that became the first in more than 20 years to repeat as champions. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

CORRECTS TO CAITLIN CLARK NOT CAITLYN CLARK - LSU’s Angel Reese, left, and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, right, pose for a photo before the WNBA basketball draft, Monday, April 15, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) is introduced before the team’s preseason WNBA basketball game against the Atlanta Dream in Indianapolis, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

• Copy Link copied

For much of the past two years, Caitlin Clark has been the centerpiece of the college basketball world.

Now Clark, like NBA Hall of Famer Larry Bird was 45 years ago, is involuntarily the focus of discussions about race and her transition to professional basketball . Though Clark hasn’t said anything to fuel the Black-white narrative surrounding her meteoric rise, talks about a double standard are being had.

“I think it’s a huge thing. I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,” Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson said when asked about the race element in Clark’s popularity and before she recently signed two major endorsement deals . “It really is because you can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that’s something that people don’t want to see.

“They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”

To be clear, Clark is a skilled hardcourt savant from Iowa. Bird was a skilled hardcourt savant from Indiana State. And like Bird, Clark has captivated audiences and brought unmatched attention to women’s basketball with an ability to score from every corner of the court.

Neither Bird nor Clark were the first great white male or female pro basketball players. Jerry West is the actual NBA logo and before Clark, the long list of talented white WNBA players included Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart.

But sports can be elevated by a heated rivalry, particularly when race is involved.

Clark’s rise has come with an on-court bravado that made her must-watch TV as she led the Hawkeyes to back-to-back NCAA championship game appearances. When Bird led the Sycamores to the title game in 1979, he squared off against Magic Johnson in one of the most-watched games in NCAA tourney history.

At Iowa, Clark’s on-court rival in the NCAA Tournament was former LSU star Angel Reese . Then she took on women’s juggernaut South Carolina and coach Dawn Staley. The matchups created the kind of made-for-social media moments that captivated audiences, regardless of gender.

The matchups also led to ongoing discussions about how race plays a factor in the treatment afforded to Clark, a white woman from “America’s Heartland,” as compared to Black counterparts like Reese.

Clark has said she and Reese are just pieces of a larger movement.

“I would say me and Angel have always been great competitors,” Clark said prior to Iowa’s Elite Eight matchup with Reese and LSU in March. “I think Angel would say the same, like it’s not just us in women’s basketball. That’s not the only competitive thing about where our game is at, and that’s what makes it so good. We need multiple people to be really good.”

Still, the race-based debate over perceived slights to Black players or favoritism toward Clark is not going away as the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft prepares for her first regular-season game on Tuesday night when Indiana plays Connecticut.

“I think new fans, or maybe returning fans to women’s college basketball, have been drawn in. In part because of Clark. But also, you know, because of the LSU-Iowa rivalry,” said Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history at Arizona State University.

“There are basketball reasons,” Jackson said, “but also there are racial reasons for why Clark has been able to kind of break off into a completely different stratosphere from players that came before her.”

Because of the perceived double-standard, nearly everything involving Clark gets questioned:

— Clark’s first preseason game was streamed , but Reese’s was not.

— Clark gets an endorsement deal. Other established Black stars not so much.

— If Reese talks trash , it’s viewed as unsportsmanlike. If Clark does it, she’s being competitive.

— Reese received some backlash for going to the Met Gala before a game, raising questions would there have been same type of scrutiny if Clark had graced the red carpet.

Wilson, who signed with Gatorade last week and announced Saturday that she is getting a Nike signature shoe, and others have cited how companies are clamoring to be in business with Clark as an example of the disparity in how players are treated.

The deal Clark struck with Nike will reportedly pay her $28 million over eight years — making it the richest sponsorship contract for a women’s basketball player, and it includes a signature shoe. Before Wilson’s announcement Saturday, the only other active players in the WNBA with a signature shoe were Elena Delle Donne, Sabrina Ionescu and Stewart – who are all white.

The perception extends beyond endorsements.

While Clark’s preseason debut was available on the WNBA League Pass streaming app, a post on the X platform from the WNBA incorrectly stated that all games , including the debut of Reese and fellow rookie former South Carolina standout Kamilla Cardoso for the Chicago Sky, would also be available.

So, a fan in attendance at the Sky’s game livestreamed it. It received more than 620,000 views.

In an apology post explaining why the Sky’s game wasn’t also available, the WNBA said Clark’s game was available as part of a limited free preview of its streaming app.

There also have been racial components to how Clark is treated on social media as compared to others, most notably Reese.

Reese, who has previously spoken about the vitriol she received online, was recently attacked again after she missed a preseason practice to attend the Met Gala. Clark also has been the target of online criticism, but apparently not to the extent that Reese has been.

Online hate-speech accounts for approximately 1 percent of all social media posts in the context of sports, according to Daniel Kilvington, course director in Media & Cultural Studies at Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, England.

“Although this might sound quite low, consider how much traffic is online and how many posts are made every single day,” said Kilvington, whose work with the Tackling Online Hate in Football research group has looked at the issue through the sport of soccer. “One percent is therefore 1% too high as athletes are primary targets of hate-speech, harassment and death threats simply for playing a game they love.”

But as Clark’s popularity grows, so will the debate. Jackson believes it’s a good time to openly have discussions about it.

“I don’t know how many times I read and heard her described as generational talent,” the ASU professor said. “And whenever we’re making those cases, I immediately think, well, who are the other generational talents we’ve had? And, I think too often the athletes could be placed in that category who have been Black women have not had that sort of gushing attention. And especially the kind of general public, crossover saturation that Caitlin Clark has had.

“There are overlapping, intersecting reasons for why that is. But, I think we can’t not think about it if the goal here is to have equitable treatment of the athletes in the sport.”

AP Sports Writer Mark Anderson and AP reporter Corey Williams contributed.

WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

• Open access
• Published: 11 May 2024

Occupational tasks associated with shoulder pain and upper extremity disability: a cross-sectional study in the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project

• Elizabeth L. Yanik 1 ,
• Carolina Alvarez 2 ,
• Rebecca J. Cleveland 2 ,
• Amanda E. Nelson 2 &
• Yvonne M. Golightly 2 , 3  

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders volume  25 , Article number:  374 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

34 Accesses

Metrics details

Shoulder pain is a leading cause of disability. Occupations requiring high upper extremity demands may put workers at greater risk of shoulder injury and resulting pain. We examined associations of occupation with shoulder pain and upper extremity disability in the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project.

Work industry and occupational tasks for the longest job held were collected from participants. At follow-up ranging from 4–10 years later, participants were asked about shoulder symptoms (pain, aching, or stiffness occurring most days of 1 month in the last year) and given a 9-item, modified Disabilities Arm Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire to categorize disability from 0–4 (none-worst). Logistic regression and cumulative logit regression models were used to estimate associations with prevalent shoulder symptoms and with worse disability category, respectively. Models were adjusted for cohort, age, sex, race, education and time to follow-up. Sex- and race-stratified associations were evaluated.

Among 1560 included participants, mean age was 62 years (standard deviation ± 9 years); 32% were men, and 31% were Black. Compared to the managerial/professional industry, higher odds of both shoulder symptoms and worse upper extremity disability were seen for most industrial groups with physically demanding jobs, particularly the service industry. Work that often or always required lifting/moving > 10 lbs. was associated with higher odds of shoulder symptoms. Work that sometimes or always required heavy work while standing was associated with higher odds of shoulder symptoms, and this association was stronger among men and White workers.

Physically demanding occupations were associated with increased occurrence of shoulder pain and disability. Mitigating specific physical work demands may reduce shoulder-related disability.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Shoulder injury and resulting pain is a leading cause of disability, with shoulder osteoarthritis (OA) and rotator cuff disease being two of the most frequent causes of shoulder disability. In the US, over 90,000 occupational shoulder injuries occur annually, with shoulder injuries leading to a higher median number of days away from work than any other body part (2015 median = 23 days) ( 1 ). Occupations that require high upper extremity demands may put individuals at greater risk of mechanical stresses and may be a key risk factor for shoulder disability.

Studies in European populations have shown that occupational upper extremity loads are associated with shoulder symptoms and risk of shoulder disorders [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. A general population cohort of 883 people in Finland demonstrated associations of repetitive movements, lifting heavy loads, and working in awkward positions with chronic shoulder disorders [ 2 ]. In a study of over 30,000 people in Denmark, high occupational shoulder load was associated with significantly higher risk of surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome [ 3 ]. Few such studies have been conducted in the United States, where workers may be even more strongly impacted by physical work exposures due to weaker workplace protections as evidenced by higher rates of workplace accidents [ 6 ]. Additionally, some analyses have led to inconsistent findings across populations, such as the evaluation of differences in the effects of occupational exposures by sex [ 2 , 7 ].

We utilized data from the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project (JoCoOA), a community-based prospective cohort in a mostly rural county in North Carolina that collected data on occupational exposures and measures of shoulder symptoms and upper extremity disability. A prior cross-sectional analysis of JoCoOA demonstrated that 26% of participants reported shoulder symptoms, but associations with occupational demands were not investigated [ 8 ]. JoCoOA captures a racially diverse population, as the cohort was developed to have adequate sample sizes to allow evaluation of differences in osteoarthritis development and progression by race. In the United States, physically-demanding jobs are more likely to be done by non-white workers [ 9 ], making it imperative to demonstrate that the occupational risks identified in primarily white, European populations generalize to non-white workers.

In the current study, we aimed to determine if occupation industry or occupational tasks involving the upper extremities are associated with prevalent shoulder symptoms or upper extremity disability. We also aimed to determine whether associations differed by race or sex.

Materials and methods

Study population.

JoCoOA is a community-based prospective cohort originally established to study knee and hip OA among men and women who identified as Black or White. Participants were recruited from the noninstitutionalized population of adults 45 years of age and older residing in Johnston County, North Carolina. Further details on recruitment methods and sampling strategies have been reported previously [ 10 ]. An initial round of enrollment occurred between 1991 and 1997 during which baseline information was collected through home interviews. For these participants a first follow-up visit (T1) was conducted between 1999 and 2004 during which occupational information was collected (N = 1733). New participants were enrolled in the cohort in 2003–2004 with the same occupational information collected at enrollment (N = 1015). The second round of recruitment aimed to enrich the sample for individuals who were Black and younger. We refer to this second group of enrolled participants as the enrichment cohort. A second follow-up visit (T2) was conducted during 2006–2010 at which information on shoulder symptoms and upper extremity disability were collected (Fig. 1 ).

Timeline of enrollment and study visits in the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project

The study population for the present analysis included participants who completed both T1 and T2 follow-up visits (N = 1697). From this population, we excluded: 1) participants who did not respond to any of the questions about occupation at T1, 2) participants who did not respond to questions about shoulder symptoms or upper extremity disability, and 3) a small fraction of participants missing information on BMI or education (other demographic information was complete). With this population, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis of associations between occupational measures and shoulder disability measures.

Occupational exposures

Occupational information was self-reported via an interviewer-administered questionnaire [ 11 ]. Participants were only asked to provide occupational information if they reported having held a job outside of the home/farm for pay for more than one year. Participants were asked to report information about the longest job they had held during their life. For this job they were asked the job title and the frequency of performance of various tasks, including lifting/carrying/moving objects weighing > 10 lbs and heavy work while standing. Job titles were categorized into six industrial groups based on the 1990 Census of Population and Housing Alphabetical Index of Industries and Occupations: managerial and professional; technical, sales, and administrative support; service; farming, forestry, and fishing; precision production, craft, and repair; and operators, fabricators, and laborers [ 12 ]. In our analyses, jobs in the managerial and professional industry were used as the referent group. For occupational tasks, participants were asked to rate the frequency on a 5-point scale: 0 = never, 1 = seldom, 2 = sometimes, 3 = often, and 4 = always. In stratified analyses, occupational exposure categories were condensed due to decreased statistical power. Specifically, the frequency of lifting/carrying/moving tasks was condensed into three categories (never/seldom, sometimes, and often/always), the frequency of heavy work while standing was condensed into two categories (never/seldom and sometimes/often/always), and occupational industries were condensed into two categories: physical work (service; farming, forestry, and fishing; precision production, craft, and repair; and operators, fabricators, and laborers) and non-physical work (managerial and professional, and technical, sales, and administrative support).

At the T2 time point, several outcome measures relevant to shoulder disability were collected. Participants were asked whether they had pain, aching, or stiffness (PAS) in the left (or right) shoulder on most days of any one month in the last year. If a participant answered “Yes” to this question for either the left or right shoulder they were counted as someone with prevalent shoulder symptoms. Additionally, they were asked to rate their shoulder symptoms as mild, moderate, or severe. A modified 9-item Disabilities Arm Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire was administered to assess upper extremity disability on a scale from 0 (no disability) to 100 (worst disability) [ 13 ]. These scores were further classified into five categories of disability (0, 1–25, 26–50, 51–75, 76–100). Finally, a back scratch test was used to assess shoulder function [ 14 ]. Participants were asked to reach over the right shoulder with the right hand while reaching with the left hand up the middle of the back to attempt to touch their fingers together. This measure was categorized into six categories: fingers touching or overlapping, measurable distance between extended middle fingers (1-14 cm, 15-21 cm, 22-29 cm, 30 + cm) or unable to perform the test. This test was then repeated on the opposite side with the left hand reaching over the left shoulder. The worst measure from the two sides was used for analyses.

Other measurements

Other relevant variables collected by JoCoOA included self-reported sex (male/female), race (Black/White), and education (less than high school education/at least a high school education). Age was calculated based on self-reported birthdate. Height and weight were measured at both T1 and T2 follow-up visits allowing assessment of BMI and changes in BMI between follow-up time points. Data also included record of whether each participant was part of the original recruitment cohort, or the enrichment cohort.

Statistical analysis

Descriptive statistics were calculated for the study population including demographic characteristics, distribution of occupational industries, and frequency of upper extremity occupational tasks. For evaluating associations of occupation industry and occupational tasks with prevalent shoulder symptoms, logistic regression models were used to calculate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals as measures of association. For evaluating associations of occupation industry and occupational tasks with upper extremity disability, cumulative logit regression models, under the proportional odds (PO) assumption, were used to estimate associations with worse modified-DASH category and worse back scratch test category [ 15 , 16 ]. The assumption of PO for these two polytomous outcomes was assessed using the Score test and, if significant at a 0.05 level, a partial PO model was assessed by testing for unequal slopes or effects across the number of levels of outcome, for each of the explanatory variables. If any of the contrast tests for a given variable was significant at 0.05, then that variable produced unequal slopes or effects for each level of outcome, otherwise the variable produced a proportional effect for worse outcome. For modified-DASH category a multinomial, partial PO model with cumulative logit regression was used, accounting for unequal slopes for covariates when indicated. For the back scratch test no evidence of violation of the PO assumption was found with the score test and a PO model was used with cumulative logit regression. All models were adjusted for age, sex, race, education, enrollment cohort, and time between follow-up visits T1 and T2. Primary analyses did not adjust for BMI as occupation may indirectly influence musculoskeletal problems through effects on obesity. Sensitivity analyses were run with adjustment for BMI to evaluate associations of occupational exposures independent of obesity. Associations stratified by sex and race, and corresponding interaction terms, were also calculated to evaluate effect measure modification. Interaction terms with a p-value < 0.10 were considered evidence of effect measure modification. For analyses of interaction terms, sensitivity analyses were run in which models additionally adjusted for length of time participants reported being employed in their ‘longest job held’, as differences in length of employment by sex or race might drive differences in associations.

Ethics approval and informed consent

All participants completed informed consent forms. The Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has continuously approved JoCoOA.

Population selection and descriptive statistics

Out of 1625 JoCoOA participants that attended both T1 and T2 follow-up visits, 38 (2.3%) did not have data available on shoulder symptoms or the modified-DASH measure (Fig.  2 ). An additional 15 participants did not report any occupational information, and 12 were missing information on either BMI or education. After all exclusions, 1560 participants (96% of participants with T1 and T2 visits) remained for inclusion in the final analytic population with an average of 6.5 years between T1 and T2 visits (range = 4–10 years).

Flow chart of exclusion criteria applied to Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project participants to identify the analytic study population

In this population, 32% were men, 31% were Black, and the mean age at T1 visit was 62 years (standard deviation = 9 years) (Table  1 ). Among the 1487 people with information on occupational industry, 48% were in physical work industries (service; farming, forestry, and fishing; precision production, craft, and repair; and operators, fabricators, and laborers) (Table  1 ). Among the 1555 people reporting job requirements for lifting, carrying, or moving objects weighing > 10 lbs, 28% reported jobs that often required these tasks and 15% reported jobs that always required these tasks. Among the 1446 participants reporting job requirements for heavy work while standing, 7% reported jobs that often required these tasks and 3% reported jobs that always required these tasks.

At the T2 follow-up visit, 24% of people reported shoulder PAS on most days for at least one month during the last year (Table  2 ). Among these 379 people, 3% reported severe symptoms, 11% reported moderate symptoms, and 10% reported mild symptoms. The median modified-DASH score was 2.78, representing minimal upper extremity disability. When DASH scores were categorized into five levels of disability, 1% of people reported the worst category of disability (unable to perform tasks, scores > 75), 6% reported severe difficulty performing tasks (scores > 50 and ≤ 75), and 15% reported moderate difficulty performing tasks (scores > 25 and ≤ 50). For the back scratch test, 5% of people had fingers touching or overlapping on at least one side, while 14% of people were unable to perform the test (Table  2 ). Among the 1350 people able to perform the back scratch test, the mean distance between fingers was 22 cm (standard deviation = 11.7 cm).

Occupational exposure associations with measures of shoulder disability

Compared to workers in the managerial and professional industry, workers in both the operators/fabricators/laborers industry and service industry had statistically significantly worse outcomes for all measures of shoulder disability. Operators, fabricators, and laborers had 68% higher odds of reporting shoulder PAS, 71% higher odds of having a worse category of upper extremity disability as measured by the modified DASH score, and 137% higher odds of having a back scratch test measure in a worse category (Table  3 ). Service industry workers had 96% higher odds of reporting shoulder PAS, 123% higher odds of having a worse category of upper extremity disability as measured by the modified DASH score, and 127% higher odds of having a back scratch test measure in a worse category. Shoulder disability measures were also consistently worse in workers in the precision, production, craft, and repair industry, though the only statistically significant association was with worse back scratch test category (odds ratio [OR] = 1.68, 95%CI = 1.20–2.34).

People with jobs that often or always required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects had significantly higher odds of reporting shoulder PAS compared to people with jobs that never required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects (ORs of 1.83 for ‘Always’ and 1.86 for ‘Often’, Table  3 ). People with jobs that often or always required listing/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects also had worse modified-DASH scores and worse performance on the back scratch test, though these associations did not reach statistical significance. Jobs that seldom required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects were not associated with any increases in shoulder disability outcomes.

People with jobs that sometimes or always required heavy work while standing had significantly higher odds of reporting shoulder PAS compared to people with jobs that never required heavy work while standing (ORs of 2.86 for ‘Always’ and 1.80 for ‘Sometimes’ Table  3 ). People with jobs that ‘Sometimes’ required heavy work while standing also had significantly worse modified-DASH scores and worse performance on the back scratch test compared to people with jobs that never required heavy work while standing (modified-DASH OR = 1.39, 95%CI = 1.03–1.89; back scratch test OR = 1.37, 95%CI = 1.03–1.81). Jobs that ‘Always’ required heavy work while standing were associated with even higher odds of worse modified-DASH scores and back scratch test performance, but these associations were not statistically significant as these estimates were less precise (modified-DASH OR = 1.49, 95%CI = 0.79–2.81; back scratch test OR = 1.74, 95%CI = 0.97–3.11). Jobs that seldom required heavy work while standing were not associated with any increases in shoulder disability outcomes.

Results were similar in sensitivity analysis that additionally adjusted for BMI at the T1 time point and for change in BMI from the T1 to T2 time points (Table  4 ).

Associations stratified by sex and race

Employment in a physical work industry was associated with worse shoulder disability for both men and women across all outcome measures (Table  5 ). Interaction terms between sex and occupational industry did not indicate effect measure modification. Jobs that ‘often/always’ required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects and jobs that sometimes/often/always required heavy work while standing were significantly associated with higher odds of shoulder PAS in both men and women. While the magnitude of the associations was larger in men, interaction terms did not indicate effect modification. Jobs that often/always required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects and jobs that sometimes/often/always required heavy work while standing were significantly associated with higher odds of worse modified-DASH score category among men, but not women. This corresponded with a significant interaction between sex and frequency of heavy work while standing (interaction p-value = 0.06). However, the interaction term for sex and frequency of lifting/carrying/moving was not significant (interaction p-value = 0.34). For the back scratch test, no interactions with sex were identified.

Employment in a physical work industry was associated with worse shoulder disability for both Black and White participants across all outcome measures (Table  6 ), and interaction terms did not indicate effect measure modification. Similarly, no significant interactions were observed between race and job requirements for lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects, but the magnitude of associations did differ. For instance, among White participants, jobs that ‘sometimes’ or ‘often/always’ required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects were associated with 52% higher odds and 96% higher odds of shoulder PAS, respectively, when compared to people in jobs that ‘never/rarely’ required those tasks. Among Black participants, no association was observed with jobs that ‘sometimes’ required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects (OR = 0.99), while jobs that ‘often/always’ required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects were only associated with 61% higher odds of shoulder PAS. Conversely, for the modified-DASH measure, jobs that ‘often/always’ required lifting/carrying/moving > 10 lb. objects had a stronger association with higher odds among Black participants than White participants (Table  6 ). Jobs that sometimes/often/always required heavy work while standing were significantly associated with higher odds of shoulder PAS in White participants, but not among Black participants. This corresponded with a significant interaction between race and frequency of heavy work while standing (interaction p-value = 0.05). For the back scratch test, no interactions with race were identified.

Results were similar in sensitivity analyses that additionally adjusted for the length of employment for “longest job held” with the same statistically significant interaction terms identified.

Function of the upper extremities, and specifically the shoulder, is essential to daily activities in both the home and the workplace. Occupational burdens are likely key contributors to the development of shoulder injuries and pathology that leads to pain and disability. In the JoCoOA, we found that compared to people employed in the managerial/professional industry, people in industries with physically demanding jobs had higher odds of both shoulder symptoms and worse upper extremity disability, particularly the service industry and operators, fabricators, and laborers. When examining specific occupational requirements, jobs that often or always required lifting/moving > 10 lb. objects and jobs that required heavy work while standing were associated with higher odds of shoulder symptoms. The association between heavy work while standing and shoulder symptoms was stronger among men and White workers. But overall, physically demanding occupations were associated with higher prevalence of shoulder pain and disability across populations, regardless of race or sex.

Consistent with our results, several European studies have shown that occupational upper extremity loads are associated with risk of shoulder pain and shoulder disorders broadly [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Recently, studies have started to identify occupational risk factors for specific shoulder disorders [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. This includes work from our research team showing a doubling of risk for rotator cuff disease surgery with long-term exposure to physical work exposures in the UK [ 20 ]. In Denmark, an investigation of the relationships between cumulative occupational shoulder exposures and different diagnoses related to shoulder impingement surgery found particularly strong associations for patients with osteoarthritis diagnoses, including a doubling of risk for workers for long-term exposure to tasks requiring upper arm-elevation or repetitive shoulder movements [ 22 ]. A couple US studies have also provided preliminary evidence of associations between physical work exposures and shoulder disorders, though these studies had limited statistical power due to small sample sizes (case Ns of 55 and 18) [ 23 , 24 ].

Some studies have also evaluated sex-specific associations with mixed results. Another study by the Danish research group reported no differences in sex-specific associations of occupational exposures on subacromial impingement surgery [ 7 ]. But an earlier Finnish study demonstrated differences by sex in the associations of specific occupational tasks with chronic shoulder disorders [ 2 ]. For instance, lifting heavy loads had a stronger association with shoulder disorders among women, while repetitive movements had a stronger association with shoulder disorders among men [ 2 ]. In our study, the only significant difference in sex-stratified results was the association of heavy work while standing with shoulder function, which was significantly stronger in men. Differences in these associations may be due to the limited specificity of this measure. While we accounted for differences in length of time employed in the jobs reported, there may also be differences in the specific physical tasks being done. For instance, men may be doing more strenuous or more repetitive heavy work on average.

As prior large studies of the relationship between occupational exposures and risk of shoulder symptoms and disability have been conducted in European populations, these populations have all been predominantly White. And the few existing US occupational studies of shoulder disorders did not have sufficient sample sizes for evaluating associations by race [ 23 , 24 ]. By contrast, the JoCoOA population was recruited in the United States with a population-based sampling design that provided a large, diverse, representative sample of a mostly rural region of North Carolina in which > 30% of the population was Black. This allowed sufficient statistical power to estimate and compare race-stratified associations, which have not been evaluated in prior studies. In our study, most associations did not differ by race, but we did observe a stronger association between heavy work while standing and shoulder symptoms in White than Black participants. Similar to the effect measure modification observed by sex, these results may be explained by differences in the type of heavy work conducted. Of note, a prior JoCoOA study demonstrated that shoulder symptoms did not differ by sex or race overall [ 8 ], so differences in the relative odds do not appear to be driven by differences in the baseline prevalence between groups.

There were several limitations to this study. First, occupational measures were self-reported and it is possible that those who experienced upper extremity pain or disability may have over-reported the frequency of physical tasks at work. However, a prior study comparing self-reported upper extremity exposures to direct observation did not demonstrate such a bias among people with musculoskeletal symptoms [ 25 ]. Furthermore, it is less likely that occupational industry would be reported differentially based on symptoms or disability. We also did not have measures of shoulder-specific occupational exposures, such as arm elevation, which could be more strongly associated with shoulder disability than the general measures of lifting/moving objects and heavy work. Second, shoulder disability measures were only available at a single time point, so we could not evaluate incident disability or whether symptoms or function worsened over time while employed in a physically demanding job. Relatedly, if some participants had endured chronic shoulder symptoms for many years prior to our occupational assessment, this may have reduced the likelihood that they remained in a physically demanding job. If such a bias is present, then the true effects of occupational exposures on shoulder disability may be even stronger than the associations reported here. JoCoOA participants also did not have clinical examinations of their shoulders and so we cannot identify associations with particular shoulder injuries or pathologies. Prior evidence indicates that occupational shoulder demands may influence a myriad of shoulder disorders, including tendonitis, rotator cuff tears, and osteoarthritis [ 20 , 22 ]. Finally, as we did not have lifetime occupational histories we could not evaluate the cumulative impact of occupational exposures over time, and some differences in effects by sex and race may be driven by differences in total years of exposure. Given the older age of our study population, most participants have likely had numerous jobs over time.

In conclusion, we found that having a job in a physical work industry, or a job that specifically requires physically demanding tasks is associated with increased occurrence of shoulder pain and disability. While some associations differed by race or sex, significant associations between physical work and shoulder disability measures were observed across all populations that were examined. Mitigating specific physical work demands may reduce shoulder-related disability. Future prospective studies that capture more detailed occupational exposures along with follow-up for incident shoulder pain and disability will be key to informing appropriate mitigation measures. For example, devices such as exoskeletons are being developed to reduce biomechanical loading on the shoulder joint [ 26 ]. Evaluation of interventions such as these will be important to determine ways to reduce shoulder disability in the future.

Availability of data and materials

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the study authors. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Abbreviations

Body mass index

Confidence interval

Disabilities Arm Shoulder and Hand

Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project

Osteoarthritis

Pain, aching, or stiffness

First follow-up visit

Second follow-up visit

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses requiring days away from work, 2015. 2016. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/osh2.pdf .

Google Scholar  

Miranda H, Punnett L, Viikari-Juntura E, Heliovaara M, Knekt P. Physical work and chronic shoulder disorder. Results of a prospective population-based study. Ann Rheum Dis. 2008;67(2):218–23.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Svendsen SW, Dalboge A, Andersen JH, Thomsen JF, Frost P. Risk of surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome in relation to neck-shoulder complaints and occupational biomechanical exposures: a longitudinal study. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2013;39(6):568–77.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Miranda H, Viikari-Juntura E, Heistaro S, Heliovaara M, Riihimaki H. A population study on differences in the determinants of a specific shoulder disorder versus nonspecific shoulder pain without clinical findings. Am J Epidemiol. 2005;161(9):847–55.

Bodin J, Garlantezec R, Costet N, Descatha A, Viel JF, Roquelaure Y. Shoulder pain among male industrial workers: validation of a conceptual model in two independent French working populations. Appl Ergon. 2020;85:103075.

Hämäläinen P, Takala J, Saarela KL. Global estimates of occupational accidents. Saf Sci. 2006;44(2):137–56.

Article   Google Scholar  

Dalboge A, Frost P, Andersen JH, Svendsen SW. Cumulative occupational shoulder exposures and surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome: a nationwide Danish cohort study. Occup Environ Med. 2014;71(11):750–6.

Wright AR, Shi XA, Busby-Whitehead J, Jordan JM, Nelson AE. The Prevalence of neck and shoulder symptoms and associations with comorbidities and disability: the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project. Myopain. 2015;23(1–2):34–44.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2021. 2023. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2021/home.htm .

Jordan JM, Helmick CG, Renner JB, Luta G, Dragomir AD, Woodard J, et al. Prevalence of knee symptoms and radiographic and symptomatic knee osteoarthritis in African Americans and Causcasians: the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project. J Rheumatol. 2007;34(1):172–80.

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Allen KD, Chen JC, Callahan LF, Golightly YM, Helmick CG, Renner JB, et al. Associations of occupational tasks with knee and hip osteoarthritis: the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project. J Rheumatol. 2010;37(4):842–50.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1990 census industrial and occupational classification codes. https://www.nlsinfo.org . Available from: https://www.nlsinfo.org/sites/default/files/attachments/12124/NLSY97%201990%20Census%20I%20and%20O%20codes.pdf .

Hudak PL, Amadio PC, Bombardier C, Beaton D, Cole D, Davis A, et al. Development of an upper extremity outcome measure: the DASH (disabilities of the arm, shoulder, and head). Am J Ind Med. 1996;29(6):602–8.

Rikli RE, Jones CJ. Measuring functional fitness of older adults. J Active Aging. 1999;1:24–30.

Ananth CV, Kleinbaum DG. Regression models for ordinal responses: a review of methods and applications. Int J Epidemiol. 1997;26(6):1323–33.

Lee J. Cumulative logit modelling for ordinal response variables: applications to biomedical research. Comput Appl Biosci. 1992;8(6):555–62.

CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Dalboge A, Frost P, Andersen JH, Svendsen SW. Surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome in relation to intensities of occupational mechanical exposures across 10-year exposure time windows. Occup Environ Med. 2018;75(3):176–82.

Ostergren PO, Hanson BS, Balogh I, Ektor-Andersen J, Isacsson A, Orbaek P, et al. Incidence of shoulder and neck pain in a working population: effect modification between mechanical and psychosocial exposures at work? Results from a one year follow up of the Malmo shoulder and neck study cohort. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2005;59(9):721–8.

Lewis C, Wahlstrom J, Mukka S, Liv P, Jarvholm B, Jackson JA. Surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome and occupational biomechanical risk factors in a 16-year prospective study among male construction workers. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2023;49(2):156–63.

Yanik EL, Keener JD, Stevens MJ, Harris EC, Walker-Bone KE, Dale AM, et al. Occupational demands associated with rotator cuff disease surgery in the UK Biobank. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2023;49(1):53–63.

Seidler A, Romero Starke K, Freiberg A, Hegewald J, Nienhaus A, Bolm-Audorff U. Dose-response relationship between physical workload and specific shoulder diseases-a systematic review with meta-analysis. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(4):1243.

Dalboge A, Frost P, Andersen JH, Svendsen SW. Exposure-response relationships between cumulative occupational shoulder exposures and different diagnoses related to surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2020;93(3):375–80.

Silverstein BA, Bao SS, Fan ZJ, Howard N, Smith C, Spielholz P, et al. Rotator cuff syndrome: personal, work-related psychosocial and physical load factors. J Occup Environ Med. 2008;50:1062–76.

Zimbalist A, Rempel D, Feng L, Harris-Adamson C. The association between forceful hand exertions and musculoskeletal disorders of the neck and shoulder: a prospective cohort study of US manufacturing workers. J Occup Environ Med. 2022;64(10):e613–21.

Dale AM, Strickland J, Gardner B, Symanzik J, Evanoff BA. Assessing agreement of self-reported and observed physical exposures of the upper extremity. Int J Occup Environ Health. 2010;16(1):1–10.

van der Have A, Rossini M, Rodriguez-Guerrero C, Van Rossom S, Jonkers I. The Exo4Work shoulder exoskeleton effectively reduces muscle and joint loading during simulated occupational tasks above shoulder height. Appl Ergon. 2022;103:103800.

Download references

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

ELY was funded by NIH K01-AR073318. Data for these analyses from the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project were supported in part by cooperative agreements S043, S1734, and S3486 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/Association of Schools of Public Health; the NIAMS Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disease Center grant 5-P60-AR30701; and the NIAMS Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center grant 5-P60-AR49465.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 S. Euclid Ave, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA

Elizabeth L. Yanik

Thurston Arthritis Research Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Carolina Alvarez, Rebecca J. Cleveland, Amanda E. Nelson & Yvonne M. Golightly

College of Allied Health Professions, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA

Yvonne M. Golightly

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

ELY, CA, RJC, and YMG participated in the conception and design of the work. ELY, CA, RJC, AEN, and YMG participated in the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work. ELY, CA, RJC, AEN, and YMG participated in drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.  ELY, CA, RJC, AEN, and YMG gave final approval of the version to be published and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authors’ information

Corresponding author.

Correspondence to Elizabeth L. Yanik .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

All participants completed informed consent forms. The Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has continuously approved JoCoOA (IRB #92–0583).

Consent for publication

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Yanik, E.L., Alvarez, C., Cleveland, R.J. et al. Occupational tasks associated with shoulder pain and upper extremity disability: a cross-sectional study in the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project. BMC Musculoskelet Disord 25 , 374 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12891-024-07487-x

Download citation

Received : 11 March 2024

Accepted : 02 May 2024

Published : 11 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12891-024-07487-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Physical work

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

ISSN: 1471-2474

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]

How our education system undermines gender equity

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, and why culture change—not policy—may be the solution, joseph cimpian jc joseph cimpian associate professor of economics and education policy - new york university @joecimpian.

April 23, 2018

There are well-documented achievement and opportunity gaps by income and race/ethnicity. K-12 accountability policies often have a stated goal of reducing or eliminating those gaps, though with questionable effectiveness . Those same accountability policies require reporting academic proficiency by gender, but there are no explicit goals of reducing gender gaps and no “hard accountability” sanctions tied to gender-subgroup performance. We could ask, “Should gender be included more strongly in accountability policies?”

In this post, I’ll explain why I don’t think accountability policy interventions would produce real gender equity in the current system—a system that largely relies on existing state standardized tests of math and English language arts to gauge equity. I’ll argue that although much of the recent research on gender equity from kindergarten through postgraduate education uses math or STEM parity as a measure of equity, the overall picture related to gender equity is of an education system that devalues young women’s contributions and underestimates young women’s intellectual abilities more broadly.

In a sense, math and STEM outcomes simply afford insights into a deeper, more systemic problem. In order to improve access and equity across gender lines from kindergarten through the workforce, we need considerably more social-questioning and self-assessment of biases about women’s abilities.

As soon as girls enter school, they are underestimated

For over a decade now, I have studied gender achievement with my colleague Sarah Lubienski, a professor of math education at Indiana University-Bloomington. In a series of studies using data from both the 1998-99 and 2010-11 kindergarten cohorts of the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we found that no average gender gap in math test scores existed when boys and girls entered kindergarten, but a gap of nearly 0.25 standard deviations developed in favor of the boys by around second or third grade.

For comparison purposes, the growth of the black-white math test score gap was virtually identical to the growth in the gender gap. Unlike levels and growth in race-based gaps, though, which have been largely attributed to a combination of differences in the schools attended by black and white students and to socio-economic differences, boys and girls for the most part attend the same schools and come from families of similar socio-economic status. This suggests that something may be occurring within schools that contributes to an advantage for boys in math.

Exploring deeper, we found that the beliefs that teachers have about student ability might contribute significantly to the gap. When faced with a boy and a girl of the same race and socio-economic status who performed equally well on math tests and whom the teacher rated equally well in behaving and engaging with school, the teacher rated the boy as more mathematically able —an alarming pattern that replicated in a separate data set collected over a decade later .

Another way of thinking of this is that in order for a girl to be rated as mathematically capable as her male classmate, she not only needed to perform as well as him on a psychometrically rigorous external test, but also be seen as working harder than him. Subsequent matching and instrumental variables analyses suggested that teachers’ underrating of girls from kindergarten through third grade accounts for about half of the gender achievement gap growth in math. In other words, if teachers didn’t think their female students were less capable, the gender gap in math might be substantially smaller.

An interaction that Sarah and I had with a teacher drove home the importance and real-world relevance of these results. About five years ago, while Sarah and I were faculty at the University of Illinois, we gathered a small group of elementary teachers together to help us think through these findings and how we could intervene on the notion that girls were innately less capable than boys. One of the teachers pulled a stack of papers out of her tote bag, and spreading them on the conference table, said, “Now, I don’t even understand why you’re looking at girls’ math achievement. These are my students’ standardized test scores, and there are absolutely no gender differences. See, the girls can do just as well as the boys if they work hard enough.” Then, without anyone reacting, it was as if a light bulb went on. She gasped and continued, “Oh my gosh, I just did exactly what you said teachers are doing,” which is attributing girls’ success in math to hard work while attributing boys’ success to innate ability. She concluded, “I see now why you’re studying this.”

Although this teacher did ultimately recognize her gender-based attribution, there are (at least) three important points worth noting. First, her default assumption was that girls needed to work harder in order to achieve comparably to boys in math, and this reflects an all-too-common pattern among elementary school teachers, across at least the past couple decades and in other cultural contexts . Second, it is not obvious how to get teachers to change that default assumption. Third, the evidence that she brought to the table was state standardized test scores, and these types of tests can reveal different (often null or smaller) gender achievement gaps than other measures.

On this last point, state standardized tests consistently show small or no differences between boys and girls in math achievement, which contrasts with somewhat larger gaps on NAEP and PISA , as well as with gaps at the top of the distribution on the ECLS , SAT Mathematics assessment, and the American Mathematics Competition . The reasons for these discrepancies are not entirely clear, but what is clear is that there is no reason to expect that “hardening” the role of gender in accountability policies that use existing state tests and current benchmarks will change the current state of gender gaps. Policymakers might consider implementing test measures similar to those where gaps have been noted and placing more emphasis on gains throughout the achievement distribution. However, I doubt that a more nuanced policy for assessing math gains would address the underlying problem of the year-after-year underestimation of girls’ abilities and various signals and beliefs that buttress boys’ confidence and devalue girls, all of which cumulatively contributes to any measured gaps.

More obstacles await women in higher education and beyond

Looking beyond K-12 education, there is mounting evidence at the college and postgraduate levels that cultural differences between academic disciplines may be driving women away from STEM fields, as well as away from some non-STEM fields (e.g., criminal justice, philosophy, and economics). In fact, although research and policy discussions often dichotomize academic fields and occupations as “STEM” and “non-STEM,” the emerging research on gender discrimination in higher education finds that the factors that drive women away from some fields cut across the STEM/non-STEM divide. Thus, while gender representation disparities between STEM and non-STEM fields may help draw attention to gender representation more broadly, reifying the STEM/non-STEM distinction and focusing on math may be counterproductive to understanding the underlying reasons for gender representation gaps across academic disciplines.

In a recent study , my colleagues and I examined how perceptions on college majors relate to who is entering those majors. We found that the dominant factor predicting the gender of college-major entrants is the degree of perceived discrimination against women. To reach this conclusion, we used two sources of data. First, we created and administered surveys to gather perceptions on how much math is required for a major, how much science is required, how creative a field is, how lucrative careers are in a field, how helpful the field is to society, and how difficult it is for a woman to succeed in the field. After creating factor scales on each of the six dimensions for each major, we mapped those ratings onto the second data source, the Education Longitudinal Study, which contains several prior achievement, demographic, and attitudinal measures on which we matched young men and women attending four-year colleges.

Among this nationally representative sample, we found that the degree to which a field was perceived to be math- or science-intensive had very little relation to student gender. However, fields that were perceived to discriminate against women were strongly predictive of the gender of the students in the field, whether or not we accounted for the other five traits of the college majors. In short, women are less likely to enter fields where they expect to encounter discrimination.

And what happens if a woman perseveres in obtaining a college degree in a field where she encounters discrimination and underestimation and wants to pursue a postgraduate degree in that field, and maybe eventually work in academia? The literature suggests additional obstacles await her. These obstacles may take the form of those in the field thinking she’s not brilliant like her male peers in graduate school, having her looks discussed on online job boards when she’s job-hunting, performing more service work if she becomes university faculty, and getting less credit for co-authored publications in some disciplines when she goes up for tenure.

Each of the examples here and throughout this post reflects a similar problem—education systems (and society) unjustifiably and systematically view women as less intellectually capable.

Societal changes are necessary

My argument that policy probably isn’t the solution is not intended to undercut the importance of affirmative action and grievance policies that have helped many individuals take appropriate legal recourse. Rather, I am arguing that those policies are certainly not enough, and that the typical K-12 policy mechanisms will likely have no real effect in improving equity for girls.

The obstacles that women face are largely societal and cultural. They act against women from the time they enter kindergarten—instilling in very young girls a belief they are less innately talented than their male peers—and persist into their work lives. Educational institutions—with undoubtedly many well-intentioned educators—are themselves complicit in reinforcing the hurdles. In order to dismantle these barriers, we likely need educators at all levels of education to examine their own biases and stereotypes.

Related Content

Michael Hansen, Diana Quintero

July 10, 2018

Jaymes Pyne

July 30, 2020

Seth Gershenson

January 13, 2016

Education Access & Equity Higher Education K-12 Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Katharine Meyer

May 7, 2024

Jamie Klinenberg, Jon Valant, Nicolas Zerbino

Thinley Choden

May 3, 2024