According to sociologist Basil Bernstein, working-class children are systematically disadvantaged for possessing linguistic cultural capital that is considered suboptimal by the dominant class. By definition, cultural capital is “the general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills that are passed from one generation to the next” (MacLeod 13). Pierre Bourdieu explains this concept in his essay “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction,” in attempt to describe the persistent nature of inequality. A child raised by a middle-class family is exposed to books, movies, music, theater, etc. that working-class parents cannot provide. The cultural knowledge gained from these experiences are essential for success in the American educational
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Shirley Brice Heath studied two communities that attended the same elementary school. She found that African-American children are asked questions that require comparative or analogical answers. Conversely, white children are asked questions that require them to name objects, identify features, and speak about objects out of context. Not surprisingly, schools value the patterns of the middle class over the working class. African Americans have also developed distinct speech patterns that linguistics call African American Vernacular English or AAVE. Like any other dialect, AAVE follows a set of grammatical rules such as the omission of linking verbs, use of double negatives, dropping of consonants, and many more (Pullum 53). However, when an Oakland school board announced in 1996 that they were going offer instruction about AAVE, the language spoken by a majority of their students, journalists ridiculed their decision (39). AAVE has been criticized as a grammatically incorrect version of Standard English (SE) rather than a dialect of its own. While the working class is disadvantaged for their use of restricted speech codes, African Americans are disadvantaged for their use of AAVE. Working-class African Americans suffer on two fronts, based on their class and their race, because the dominant class devalues the cultural capital specific to …show more content…
In his ethnography Ain’t No Makin’ It, Jay MacLeod follows the lives of teenage boys growing up in the low-income neighborhood Clarendon Heights. In this community, there are two distinct groups of teenagers divided based on race. The Hallway Hangers are mostly white, high school dropouts, drug users, and defiant against classical ideas of success. Conversely, the Brothers are mostly black, high school graduates, and followers of the American Dream. While most of the teenagers simply attended the local public school, Derek, a member of the Brothers, received a government scholarship to attend Barnes Academy—an esteemed private school where most of the students were middle class and white. There, Derek had the resources to learn middle-class cultural capital, an advantage that his black peers at Clarendon Heights had to do without. Although he only stayed at the private school from third grade to eighth grade, Derek’s acquisition of middle-class language serves as an advantage on the job. As a ramp worker at an airport, Derek “banters playfully with fellow workers, most of them white—teasing, laughing, winking, jostling” (MacLeod 228). Although Derek’s pay is meager considering his seven years of experience in the field, he harmoniously interacts with his co-workers, overcoming the issue of language that his many of his friends
Shirley Brice Heath studied two communities that attended the same elementary school. She found that African-American children are asked questions that require comparative or analogical answers. Conversely, white children are asked questions that require them to name objects, identify features, and speak about objects out of context. Not surprisingly, schools value the patterns of the middle class over the working class. African Americans have also developed distinct speech patterns that linguistics call African American Vernacular English or AAVE. Like any other dialect, AAVE follows a set of grammatical rules such as the omission of linking verbs, use of double negatives, dropping of consonants, and many more (Pullum 53). However, when an Oakland school board announced in 1996 that they were going offer instruction about AAVE, the language spoken by a majority of their students, journalists ridiculed their decision (39). AAVE has been criticized as a grammatically incorrect version of Standard English (SE) rather than a dialect of its own. While the working class is disadvantaged for their use of restricted speech codes, African Americans are disadvantaged for their use of AAVE. Working-class African Americans suffer on two fronts, based on their class and their race, because the dominant class devalues the cultural capital specific to …show more content…
In his ethnography Ain’t No Makin’ It, Jay MacLeod follows the lives of teenage boys growing up in the low-income neighborhood Clarendon Heights. In this community, there are two distinct groups of teenagers divided based on race. The Hallway Hangers are mostly white, high school dropouts, drug users, and defiant against classical ideas of success. Conversely, the Brothers are mostly black, high school graduates, and followers of the American Dream. While most of the teenagers simply attended the local public school, Derek, a member of the Brothers, received a government scholarship to attend Barnes Academy—an esteemed private school where most of the students were middle class and white. There, Derek had the resources to learn middle-class cultural capital, an advantage that his black peers at Clarendon Heights had to do without. Although he only stayed at the private school from third grade to eighth grade, Derek’s acquisition of middle-class language serves as an advantage on the job. As a ramp worker at an airport, Derek “banters playfully with fellow workers, most of them white—teasing, laughing, winking, jostling” (MacLeod 228). Although Derek’s pay is meager considering his seven years of experience in the field, he harmoniously interacts with his co-workers, overcoming the issue of language that his many of his friends