Chapter 4: Teachers and Students Living Culturally: The Ethnographic Mediation of Culture in the Urban School Context

Diversity is a prominent topic in both research and practice mostly because of the changing demographics brought about by immigration. In the United States, for example, these changes have created a fundamentally new sociocultural context for education. The most recent data indicate that in the 100 largest school districts in the country, so-called minority students, mostly Latino and African Americans, account for almost 70% of the total student population; in the 500 largest, the figure is 60% (Sable & Young, 2003). These percentages are widely expected to increase as this century progresses.

This population of students is mostly from low-income families. As of 2000, the median net worth nationally of Latino households, which includes ownership of home and other properties, savings, and stocks, among other assets, was $7,932; the median net worth of African American households was even lower at $5,988. However, the median net worth of White American (non-Latino) households was $88,651. Latino households have less than 10 cents for every dollar owned by White households; African Americans have even less (Kochhar, 2004). These households, then, are characterized by what is known as “asset poverty.” Even the “middle class” Latinos and African American households have less than one fifth of the wealth owned by White households (Kochhar, 2004, p. 7). Therefore, when we speak of the education of Latino or African American students, we are referring primarily to (low-asset) working-class education. It is well known that such a depressed socioeconomic standing has negative implications for the schooling of children, both in terms of their preparation to begin school (Lee & Burkam, 2002) and of inequalities regarding the quality of their experiences once in school (Oakes, Joseph, & Muir, 2004).