A Theory of Racialized Cultural Capital

Bourdieu developed cultural capital theory to explain the upper class’ exclusive cultivation of skills, knowledge, and dispositions (i.e., cultural capital) that yield institutional advantages. Fundamental to this conceptualization is the idea that cultural capital itself is classed—not racialized—and that what constitutes cultural capital is broadly the same for every individual irrespective of one’s racial position. I draw from the sociology of race to develop a reconceptualization of cultural capital as fundamentally racialized. Using the illustrative case of “Pursuit”—a white‐led organization created in the 1960s to select nonwhite children for integrating white schools—I then theorize about the racial dimensions of cultural capital. I find evidence that Pursuit selected for nonwhite students deemed nonthreatening to the dominant racial group. Thus, I maintain that qualities associated with appearing nonthreatening function as cultural capital for nonwhite students in this field. Accordingly, I theorize that (1) what constitutes cultural capital may vary by the racial position of the holder of cultural capital and (2) those who are dominant in the racial hierarchy contribute to determining what constitutes cultural capital for those they dominate according to their own interests. As it is taken for granted that cultural capital is fundamentally classed, it should be equally understood and applied that cultural capital is fundamentally racialized.