Blog Post 4/ Institution Racism

      

      From the readings, I have concluded that institutional racism is when any organization or public entity knowingly or unknowingly gives power and privilege to one group of people over another based on race or culture. Institutional racism can be the result of governmental policies, economic policies and unequal education in schools.

      In Who are Today's Students, Sonia Nieto argues that housing patterns and white flight have lead many schools to become resegragated. Nieto claims that segregated schools often lead to unequal funding. Schools in poor and urban communities, which tend to have a higher concentration of minority students, tend to have less funding. These poor communities tend to have many minority students because our early American economic policies discriminated against minority groups. I have personally witnessed the lasting effects of this economic discrimination as well as the unequal funding of segregated schools. I volunteered as a tutor at Wiley Middle School, which is just down the street from John Carroll. A majority of the students are African American and generally come from low income families. Wiley Middle School lacks many vital resources due to a lack of funding. For example, the school has only a few old textbooks. Instead of using textbooks, teachers are forced to use only PowerPoints and handouts. Textbooks usually provide a great amount of background information as well as important contextual information.  I think this will prevent the kids from obtaining a thorough understanding of the material and will hinder their educational growth. Therefore, unequal funding gives power to children in schools that are in high income and Caucasian areas, while denying opportunity to students in poor and minority communities.