Racial Stratification and Education in the United States: Why Inequality Persists

The primary objective of this article is to explain (1) the persistence of inequality between blacks and whites in spite of the changes that have taken place in the opportunity structure since 1960; and (2) why a gap persists in the school performances of the two racial groups. I argue that inequality persists for two reasons. The first is that changes have occurred mainly in one aspect of racial stratification, barriers in opportunity structure, but not in other domains; moreover, the changes have been uneven in the black community, favoring middle-class blacks. The other reason is that white treatment of blacks has been the target of public policies and intervention efforts but not black responses to racial stratification. I argue that the school-performance gap persists because the forces of racial stratification—white treatment and black responses—that created it continue to some degree. However, before explaining why the inequality and school-performance gap persist, I define what I mean by social stratification and distinguish class from racial stratification. One implication of my distinction, which is reflected in subsequent analysis, is that racial stratification between blacks and whites has not been changed to class stratification. Therefore, it is not meaningful to call any segment of the black population in the United States “underclass.” This article is not about public policy or intervention; however, readers can arrive at their own conclusions about both.