Abstract
Cultural oppression, as one manifestation of antiblackness in U.S. education, continues to impede Black Americans’ attainment of educational success and sociopolitical equality. Although Bourdieu’s cultural capital framework (CCT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) have frequently been used to examine such oppression in Black education, research which has directly investigated the viability, theoretical validity, and potential utility of merging these two frameworks for educational research is scant. This article presents the results of a content analysis which was used to explore how CRT might restructure CCT to establish a more pertinent theoretical framework from which to examine the Black educational experience. I demonstrate that their merger is possible only if important alterations are made to many of CCT’s fundamental notions, and I offer three propositions that arise from this merger. These propositions begin to redress CCT’s colorblindness, offer a more precise explanation of the form and functioning of cultural oppression-based (educational) inequality as experienced by Black students and their communities, and can be used for future research in the emerging field of Black Education Studies. Also, they support key contentions about antiblackness in U.S. education and in Afropessimist thought. Implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research and practice are offered.
Plain language summary
Many theories have been used to explain academic “underachievement” among Black students. Sometimes these theories suggest that inequalities in schools themselves are at the root cause of this outcome. Two popular theories which suggest this are cultural capital—which focuses on conflicts between students’ and schools’ cultures, and economics—and Critical Race Theory—which focuses on the idea that racism affects all areas of U.S. society. I analyzed important writings on both theories in order to figure out how they could be brought together to explain the way that culture, racism, and antiblackness (the attempted annihilation of Black humanity and Black life) affects Black students and communities. I used their main arguments to create three ideas about inequality in U.S. schools and society, as experienced by Black students and their communities. These ideas are: (1) “Being white” is a fundamental requirement for receiving the most privilege in U.S. society and schools. This requires that Black people/students be treated in an oppressive manner. (2) Because of racism and antiblackness, it can be economically harder for Black Americans to acquire the cultural items that schools require for success. (3) Because “being white” is a fundamental requirement for receiving the most privilege in U.S. society and schools (which requires that Black people be treated in an oppressive manner), and because Black Americans are by definition and legally “not white,” Black students and their communities will always experience oppressive treatment in U.S. schools—and poor schooling outcomes—and society. The results of this study are important because they help to explain how culture, racism, and antiblackness work together as an oppressive force, can be used by researchers in future studies, and can help each of us to create strategies for reform and resistance.
Keywords
Their involuntary entry into the United States as slaves, and their prolonged and intergenerational captivity, have rendered . . . African Americans particularly vulnerable to vilification from cultural oppression. (Schiele, 2005, p. 804) If we recognize that antiblackness may always structure schooling in this country, what does it mean to be committed to Black educational futurities? (ross & Givens, 2023, p. 167)
Cultural oppression (Schiele, 2005), as one manifestation of antiblackness in U.S. education, continues to impede educational achievement among Black students—which, in turn, perpetuates disparities in their school and life outcomes, as compared to their white peers (Hartney & Flavin, 2014). This is particularly troubling, given that Black Americans have maintained an enduring belief in, and pursuit of, educational attainment as a central means for combating racism and effecting sociopolitical equality in U.S. society (Givens, 2021; Wilson et al., 2013)—what Merolla (2014) has identified as constituting a “Black habitus” (p. 101). Although Cultural Capital Theory (CCT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) have frequently been used to examine such oppression in Black education, research which has directly investigated the viability, theoretical validity, and potential utility of merging these two frameworks for educational research is scant (Tichavakunda, 2019). The most noted exception to this gap is Yosso’s (2005) foundational work, which used CRT to challenge the deficit-based educational views and practices that can arise from the improper use of CCT, and offered the community cultural wealth framework which elucidates the possession, transmission and benefits of alternative forms of cultural capital present among students of color. However, while its utility for educational research is inarguable (Wallace, 2018), there remains a pressing need for a fundamental critical race theorization of cultural capital and CCT in which the experiences of Black students and their communities, and the inimical effects of antiblackness, are attended to specifically.
Recently, Tichavakunda (2019) initiated a theoretical discourse between CCT and CRT, and cogently argued that their use in tandem might “facilitate novel insights concerning students of color” (p. 651). My work revisits this initial assessment and extends it by incorporating Afropessimist renderings of antiblackness into the potential interplay between CCT and CRT. Also, my work diverges significantly from Tichavakunda’s (2019) in that, whereas she proffers the tandem (and in-tact) use of these frameworks, I conjoin them to construct a critical race (re)theorization of cultural capital and CCT. This difference results in the elucidation of a more contentious interplay between race, CRT, and CCT than that which is demonstrated by Tichavakunda’s (2019) approach. I note here that while my use of CRT necessitates a critique of CCT’s colorblindness (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), I am not calling for its complete abandonment; rather, I am responding to its need for race-conscious remediation (Richards, 2020). My response is due to CCT’s continued utility for Black educational research (discussed later), and its widespread—yet problematic—application to U.S. educational research—which suggests the likelihood of its continued use. Importantly, handling CCT in this manner also attends to Lynn’s (2019) recent call to advance CRT in educational research “from a problem-posing . . . to problem-solving orientation” (p. x, italics in original) —that is, from “solely critiquing” to “critiquing and addressing” educational problems (including research protocols) through CRT-inspired innovations.
In this study, I bring together CCT and CRT, along their fundamental theoretical grounds, in order to elucidate how CRT might restructure CCT to establish a more pertinent theoretical framework from which to examine the Black educational experience. I demonstrate that their merger is possible only if important alterations are made to many of CCT’s fundamental notions, and I offer three propositions that arise from such a merger. These propositions: help redress CCT’s colorblind limitations; offer a more precise explanation of the form and functioning of cultural oppression-based (educational) inequality as experienced by Black students and their communities; and can be used for future research in the emerging field of Black Education Studies—a “distinct field of educational research . . . which builds on Black studies and education studies” (ross & Givens, 2023, p. 149). Also, they support key contentions about antiblackness in U.S. education and in Afropessimist thought.
This article proceeds in three parts. First, I review central propositions within CCT and CRT which must be understood in order to generate valid theoretical propositions that arise when merging these two frameworks. Also, I note four trends among scholarship which has used race to reconceptualize cultural capital. Second, I present and discuss three foundational theoretical propositions that arise from the merger of both frameworks. Last, I discuss the implications of this study for the use of CCT in Black educational research, and conclude with suggestions for future research and practice.
Researcher Positionality
As a Black teacher who has served for thirteen years in a large urban school district populated primarily by Black students, I have experienced firsthand how schooling practices and policies which are influenced by and manifest cultural oppression, racism, and antiblackness continue to perpetuate disproportionate rates of suspension, expulsion, and classification for special education among these students, compared to their white peers. Further, I have witnessed the criminalization and intentional attempted erasure of Blackness inflicted upon my Black students—a practice which, regrettably (and unwittingly), I too participated in at the beginning of my career. However, I maintain that this experiential knowledge, coupled with my ontological positioning as Black, enhances this study. I find support for this claim in CRT’s voice-of-color thesis, which: holds that . . . Minority status, in other words, brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism. (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017, p. 11)
Cultural Capital Theory
CCT is used to explain how culture can function as a form of capital, and how its possession, privileging, and transmission occurs and operates within the reproduction of social stratification and inequality (Bourdieu, 1973, 1986). Bourdieu conceptualized cultural capital as being principally acquired through “intergenerational transmission” (Kraaykamp & van Eijck, 2010, p. 210)—or, through the socialization and resources one receives from their (immediate) family members—and as existing in three states: (1) embodied, or one’s internal beliefs, knowledge, and preferences (e.g., command of “standard” English); (2) institutionalized, or one’s possession of certifications or credentials (e.g., a high school diploma); and (3) objectified, or tangible cultural items (e.g., a painting) (Bourdieu, 1986). Further, cultural capital has been classified as being either dominant—that is, as reflecting the cultural beliefs, practices and resources of those who have the most power in a given society, and as affording advantage to its possessor—or, in contrast, non-dominant (Carter, 2003). For Bourdieu, dominant cultural capital is scarce and unevenly distributed in a manner which reflects broader societal class-based stratification (Bourdieu, 1973, 1986). The economic underpinning of Bourdieu’s (1986) thinking is noteworthy as, although he developed CCT in response to his critique of traditional economic capital theory, he nonetheless concluded that economic capital is at the base of all forms of capital (including cultural capital), and that cultural capital is valuable because it can be exchanged for economic capital.
In addition to class, CCT is grounded in the examination of educational disparities (Bourdieu, 1986). According to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction, educational disparities are promoted by schooling practices that sanction dominant cultural capital, and require that students possess such capital prior to enrollment. In so doing, schools reproduce inequality by supporting the academic (and future socioeconomic) success of upper-classed/elite students who possess dominant cultural capital, while excluding lower-classed students who do not possess such capital from the schooling process, which results in their academic underperformance (or failure) and the perpetuation of their lower-classed social positioning.
Davies and Rizk (2018) traced the use and development of cultural capital in U.S. educational research, and categorized it as having occurred within “three generations” (p. 333)—with each generation having produced different interpretations of, and uses for, cultural capital. While Kingston (2001) cautioned against such development—claiming its potential to distort understandings of the association between academic success and social privilege—I argue that such development is necessary if CCT is to remain a viable tool in U.S. educational research, given the (increasing) diversity of the U.S. student population—whose experiences with educational inequality must be continuously (re)considered if educational equity is to ever be achieved and maintained. In this regard, one notable site of development has been the use of race to reconceptualize cultural capital.
Race, and the Reconceptualization of Cultural Capital
Previous scholarship has problematized race in Bourdieusian thought (Devine-Eller, 2005; Wallace, 2017), establishing that, although the consideration of race was present in his early work, it is absent from—and subordinated to social class within—his cultural capital framework (Richards, 2020)—a discontinuation which, although inexcusable, may reflect the intellectual tradition and sociopolitical climate of the French context in and for which it was developed (Davies & Rizk, 2018; Richards et al., 2023). CCT’s colorblindness poses a significant challenge for U.S. educational research in that studies employing CCT—even those intended to examine race—risk producing analyses which (inadvertently) subordinate the salience of racialization and racism in the (re)production of inequality, to principally class-based explanations (Cartwright, 2022)—an outcome which Richards (2020) has identified as perpetuating CCT’s “class-based master-narrative” (p. 2). This is problematic, as conclusions drawn from such analyses are arguably limited in their accuracy, incisiveness, and completeness, given the U.S.’s fundamental stratification along classed and racialized lines (among others). It is within this context that certain scholars have used race to reconceptualize cultural capital.
At least four trends are observable among scholarly efforts to recast cultural capital in light of race. First, cultural capital has been recast as a Black communal resource, while maintaining its traditional economic basis (Franklin et al., 2002). Second, it has been recast as being existent in “black” form(s) (i.e., as “black cultural capital”), which are present among both lower- and middle-classed Black subjects across the “Black Atlantic” (Carter, 2003; Meghji, 2019; Wallace, 2017). Third, it has been recast as epistemologically connected to whiteness, with differing—but congruous—explanations being offered as to the foundations of this connection (Richards et al., 2023; Wallace, 2018). Last, it has been recast as fundamentally racialized (and classed), resulting in recent calls for scholarship that centers race in cultural capital analyses (Cartwright, 2022; Richards, 2020). It is this recasting of cultural capital as fundamentally racialized which fundamentally underpins my theorization of cultural capital and CCT, and it is to these calls for race-centered cultural capital scholarship which my study responds. Also, in theorizing the functioning of whiteness and antiblackness within the construction, acquisition, and transmission of cultural capital, and the (re)production of inequality, I am advancing Cartwright’s (2022) initial consideration of the interplay between cultural capital and the constitution of racial hierarchies. For this work, I utilized CRT.
Critical Race Theory in Educational Research
CRT is an approach to scholarship and activism that centers race and racism (Bell, 1995), and its application to educational research has been extensive—such that it has become the field’s “most visible critical theory of race” (Busey et al., 2023, p. 413). For example, CRT has been used to examine: Black students’ linguistic practices (Baker-Bell, 2020; Lyn, 2022); curriculum and instruction (Jones et al., 2025; White, 2024); and leadership (Gooden, 2009; Gooden & Dantley, 2012), among others. Recently, CRT was used to challenge cultural oppression in social emotional learning (SEL) policy (Lemke & White, 2024).
In their foundational work on CRT in education, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) posited that such scholarship might be informed by (a Black scholarly tradition of) “considering race as the central construct for understanding inequality” (p. 50, italics in original), and proceed from three theoretical propositions: “(1) Race continues to be a significant factor in determining inequality in the United States; (2) U.S. society is based on property rights; and (3) The intersection of race and property creates an analytic tool through which we can understand social (and, consequently, school) inequality” (p. 48). It is this centrality of race and its intersection with property which fundamentally underpins my critical race theorization of cultural capital. Also, it is pertinent to mention here that whiteness is considered to be a form of property (Harris, 1993)—a point which receives significant attention later.
Dumas and ross (2016) demonstrated that CRT was constructed, in foundational ways, upon consideration of the Black experience in particular, and through its intellectual tradition. Regarding CRT in education, the authors argued that “CRT enters the field of education as a decidedly Black theorization of race. . . . [Ladson-Billings and Tate’s (1995)] explication of CRT centers most decidedly on anti-Black racism” (Dumas & ross, 2016, p. 416, italics in original). Similarly, I maintain the tradition of developing critical race theoretical notions through consideration of the Black experience in particular, by centering Black students and their communities within my examination of cultural oppression in U.S. schools. In so doing, I am carrying forward Ladson-Billings and Tate’s (1995) initial pursuit of “attempting to uncover or decipher the social-structural and cultural significance of race in education” (p. 50, emphasis added).
Methodology
Critical Race Theory
CRT provides methodologies for educational research (Decuir-Gunby et al., 2019). For example, Solórzano and Yosso (2002) offered a framework comprised of five practices, each of which informed my research design. First, Black experiences with race and racism in education were centered in all components and stages of this study (Practice 1). Second, CCT’s colorblind limitations are challenged and redressed (Practice 2). Third, theoretical propositions which can be used to inform the development of more-equitable educational policies and practices for Black students are offered (Practice 3). Fourth, a more precise manner in which race and class intersect—and diverge—in shaping (educational) inequality is elucidated (Practice 4). Last, the role of law in creating and maintaining (educational) inequality is historicized and interrogated (Practice 5).
Black Education Studies
This study was also informed by BES’s three overarching goals. These include: (1) correcting distortions about Black life in education research and practice; (2) describing the realities of Black education; and (3) prescribing research protocols and educational practices for mitigating the harm caused by antiblackness (ross & Givens, 2023, p. 154). The theoretical propositions offered by this study fulfill these goals (which align to Marable’s (2000) tripart conceptualization of Black Studies research more generally) in that they are: corrective, in identifying racism and antiblackness as foundational to Black students’ experiences with cultural capital/oppression—thereby correcting CCT’s colorblindness and resultant truncated explanation of Black educational oppression; descriptive, in offering a more precise explanation of the form and functioning of such inequality than is possible through the use of traditional CCT; and prescriptive, in their utility for the development of future educational studies which can offer a more incisive critique of cultural capital/oppression and the Black experience than those employing traditional CCT alone.
My offering of these theoretical propositions (each of which centers antiblackness) addresses BES’s fundamental commitment to “generating new . . . conceptual tools [given that] . . . The language and concepts in education are profoundly underdeveloped for attending to Black experiences, particularly when they fail to account for the fundamental antagonism of antiblackness” (ross & Givens, 2023, p. 155, italics in original). Relatedly, it is hoped that this offering is responsive to the “new generation of [BES] scholars [who have] returned to Black studies with fresh eyes, seeking refined theoretical frameworks and modes of study to interrogate current realities in Black education” (ross & Givens, 2023, p. 153).
Methods
The purpose of this study was to explore how CRT might restructure CCT to establish a more pertinent theoretical framework from which to examine the Black educational experience. My exploration was guided by three research questions: (1) Is it possible to merge CCT and CRT in a manner which maintains the fundamental notions of both frameworks?; (2) What theoretical propositions might arise if CCT and CRT are merged along their fundamental theoretical grounds?; and (3) What might these emergent propositions elucidate about the form and functioning of cultural oppression as experienced by Black students and their communities?
Content Selection and Focus
For the purpose of this study, I utilized Maxwell’s (2006) criterion of “relevance” (p. 28) to establish parameters for the inclusion or exclusion of literature for my content analysis (Krippendorff, 2019). Literature which constituted a seminal or foundational explanation of cultural capital, CCT, or CRT (in education) were deemed relevant and served as my data sources. Although I consulted other literature—principally, reviews of both frameworks’ use and development in educational research—to both deepen my knowledge base and support the accuracy of my analysis, they were not included as data sources. I restricted my analysis to foundational works on CCT and CRT (in education) for two reasons. First, as my aim was to bring these frameworks together along their fundamental (i.e., foundational) theoretical grounds, I relied solely upon the original explications of these frameworks as offered by their initial theorists. Second, it allowed the data and analysis to remain manageable which is a consistent obstacle for content analyses—especially those conducted by a sole researcher (Krippendorf, 2019)
For CCT I included “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction” (Bourdieu, 1973), “The Forms of Capital” (Bourdieu, 1986), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Bourdieu, 1998), and Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). For CRT, I relied principally upon Crenshaw and colleagues’ (1995) Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement to account for its founding in legal studies. Importantly, while there are no universally agreed upon tenets which constitute CRT, there are notions which are common to the work of most of its theorists (Bell, 1995). As such, I found Delgado and Stenfancic’s (2017) Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, in which these notions are identified and explained, to be instrumental. Finally, for CRT in education, I included Ladson-Billings and Tate’s (1995) “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education,” and Taylor and colleagues’ (2016) Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education.
Data Analysis Process
I conducted a close reading of the literature in order to identify the main tenets of each framework. Identified tenets were then “themed” (Saldaña, 2021, p. 258) by organizing relatable tenets from each framework into conceptual categories which were then used as provisional codes (Saldaña, 2021, p. 168). The provisional codes which held across the literature were deemed to constitute points of theoretical convergence. I used these points to construct three theoretical propositions which, I argue, must arise when CCT and CRT are merged. Each proposition was then checked for practical validity (i.e., refutation or confirmation of the proposition’s claim, as reflected in recent large-scale national education data). All propositions were supported.
Limitations
While this paper offers a theoretically sound and empirically supported rendering of race in cultural capital, and how CRT can restructure CCT to deepen our understanding of Black education, I make no claims that this study constitutes an exhaustive literature review, nor the sole rendering of race in cultural capital. Also, as I sought to theorize cultural capital in light of race, CRT, and the Black experience in particular, theorizing cultural capital in light of other social constructs or critical theories, or among other students of color, is beyond the scope of this current study.
Results
An unanticipated obstacle to merging both frameworks was the challenge which race, racism, and antiblackness pose to CCT’s explanation of the forms and functioning of cultural capital, and educational and social inequality. That is, the imposition of race upon CCT challenges—and reveals significant limitations of—CCT’s fundamental explanations concerning what constitutes dominant cultural capital, and the inequitable barriers faced by Black students and their communities during its attempted acquisition. Further, CCT, without being merged with CRT, fails to explain the methods by which Black Americans face permanent exclusion from the full possession of dominant cultural capital—and thus, from dominant group membership. The propositions which follow help redress these limitations. They illustrate the importance of Black Educational Studies’ fundamental commitment to “recogniz[ing] antiblackness as foundational to schooling in the modern world” (ross & Givens, 2023, p. 154), and demonstrate the accuracy of this contention.
The following propositions support three main theses of antiblackness in Afropessimist thought (McCarthy, 2021). These include: (1) exceptionality, or the uniqueness of the Black experience; (2) immutability, or the permanence of antiblackness; and (3) structural antagonism, or the positioning of Black Americans as “subjugated and vilified other,” and in diametric opposition to white Americans, as providing structural integrity for U.S. society and the notion of whiteness.
Proposition 1
The primacy of class in CCT’s determination of what constitutes dominant cultural capital is problematic because it marginalizes a primary social construct—race—by which educational inequality has been shown to proceed. Educational research has concluded that examinations of class-based differences alone are insufficient to explain disparities in educational outcomes which persist along racial lines when class is held constant (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). In contrast, CRT centers race while attending to its intersection(s) with other forms of subordination to produce educational inequality and oppression. Given that CCT and CRT identify dominant cultural capital and race, respectively, as central constructs for examining inequality, I contend that merging both frameworks must result in an emergent and foundational theoretical proposition which incorporates race and racism into dominant cultural capital; I offer:
According to Bourdieu (1973), dominant cultural capital possession and dominant group membership are indicated by the effect of laws to protect one’s interests and to secure or afford one’s advantage, and by the practice of excluding “non-dominant” students from the learning process. These two indicators, when used to examine the sociopolitical, economic, and educational history of the United States, confirm that whiteness—which is expressly constructed against Blackness (Harris, 1993; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) (i.e., as “anti-Black”)— has been a foundational component of dominant cultural capital in U.S. society since its inception. For example, Ladson-Billings (2016) noted that the legal right of property ownership was limited to white Americans, while Black Americans were both denied this right and legally defined as property which could be owned. Relatedly, Davis (2018) has argued that U.S. education is based on a “standard of whiteness” (p. 70) which requires the exclusion of Black Americans and is a form of property which Black Americans were once legally prohibited from acquiring. Further, these indicators interweave to secure whiteness as dominant cultural capital in a manner unique from—and much harsher than—that which Bourdieu theorized. That is, it was educational law—based on race, and enforced by state-sanctioned and white vigilante violence—which led to the physical exclusion of Black students from the learning environment itself (Givens, 2021; Gooden, 2009)— rather than (as Bourdieu theorized) the use of discriminatory educational practices which differentiate between, and effectively include or exclude, respectively, dominant and “non-dominant” students who are present within the same learning environment (Bourdieu, 1973).
Educational exclusion continues to be problematic for Black students. This is demonstrated by the disproportionate rates at which these students are suspended from school (i.e., exclusion by removal) and identified for special education placement (i.e., exclusion by separation), in comparison to white students. According to recent national education data, 13.7% of all Black students in U.S. schools received an out-of-school suspension during the 2013–2014 academic year, as compared to 3.4% of all white students (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Similarly, nearly half (46%) of all Black students were placed in special education (i.e., classified as having a learning or intellectual disability) during the 2015–2016 academic year, while just over one third (37%) of all white students were similarly placed (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Thus, such disproportionate rates of exclusion between Black and white students demonstrates that whiteness and its attendant antiblackness continues to function as a component of dominant cultural capital in modern U.S. schools.
Proposition 1, in pointing to the persistence of Black students’ subjection to discriminatory educational exclusion practices, suggests the immutability thesis of antiblackness in Afropessimist thought. Also, it suggests the exceptionality thesis in that, while suspension rates among other student of color groups are higher (e.g., Indigenous students, 6.7% and Latinx students, 4.6%) than the rate among white students (3.4%), they are still markedly low, relative to the rate among Black students (13.7%) (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Recently, this “exceptionality” was found to persist, as Black students were nearly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled than white students—with Black preschool children receiving suspensions at a rate nearly twice their enrollment—during the 2020–2021 school year (U.S. Department of Education, 2023).
Proposition 2
Possession—and, as Bourdieu (1986) maintained, the role of economic capital in determining one’s ability to acquire (and thus possess) dominant cultural capital—is a requirement of all three states of cultural capital. In CRT, the matter of possession is constructed as the “property issue” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 52)— in which the discriminatory granting or denial of the legal right to own tangible and nonmaterial property is understood to be framed by, and to underpin, racial inequality in U.S. society. CCT’s failure to meaningfully consider the influence of race in dominant cultural capital acquisition is problematic, as such colorblindness limits CCT’s ability to address how racism influences possession of the economic capital required for dominant cultural capital acquisition. Given that CCT rests upon possession and maintains that possession of economic capital presupposes and facilitates dominant cultural capital acquisition, and that CRT considers how race and racism are used to constrain or enable one’s ability to engage in the act of possession, I contend that merging both frameworks must result in a theoretical proposition that considers the influence that race and racism can exert upon the possession of economic capital—and, as a result, the acquisition and possession of dominant cultural capital; I offer:
Research has demonstrated that intentional and incessant acts of racism have been used to constrain Black Americans’ economic opportunities, while providing economic benefits to white Americans. For example, Oliver and Shapiro (1995) identified the repeated passage of discriminatory federal policies, throughout U.S. history, as being a mechanism by which enduring race-based economic disparities, and racial inequality, are produced in U.S. society. The endurance of such disparities is illustrated in recent national education data which showed that nearly one-third 30% of all Black students lived in poverty in 2022, as compared to 10% of all white students (U.S. Department of Education, 2024). In CRT, the connection between race, racism, and the economic-based constraining of dominant cultural capital acquisition is evidenced (in education) by the persistence of inequitable school funding and resource allocation policies which disadvantage (poor) students of color (Ladson-Billings, 2016)— with certain school resources constituting cultural capital in its objectified state. Such findings, given their political nature and enduring character, support a CRT definition of racism as “a political system, a particular power structure of . . . socioeconomic advantages, and wealth and power opportunities” (Taylor, 2016, p. 4, emphasis added). Also, they suggest Black Crit’s “foundational idea that . . . Antiblackness is endemic to . . . the social, economic, historical, and cultural dimensions of human life” (Dumas & ross, 2016, p. 429, emphasis added).
Proposition 2, in pointing to the persistence of Black students’ and their communities’ subjection to discriminatory economic policies once more suggests the immutability thesis of antiblackness in Afropessimist thought. Further, it suggests the structural antagonism thesis in that the deliberate withholding of economic and other material resources from Black Americans not only enables the preservation of these resources for white Americans, but, further, enables their distribution to—and their consequent possession and use by—white Americans to occur at a (potentially) surplus level.
Proposition 3
CRT’s notion of whiteness as property holds that whiteness is as a resource (i.e., capital) whose possession affords privileges to its owner (Harris, 1993). While Ladson-Billings (2016) suggested that, like other forms of property, whiteness is transferable to, and possessable by, non-white people (i.e., those racialized as “not white”), she asserted that such transfer and possession is only conceptual (i.e., partial) and temporary. Other CRT scholarship supports this assertion through its identification of two components of racialization—skin color and legal status—which explain how and why the transfer of whiteness to non-white people is constrained. That is, the full and permanent possession of whiteness is predicated upon the possession of both white-colored skin (Bell, 1995; Gooden, 2009)— a possession which most non-white people lack and cannot acquire—and “white” as one’s legal status (Harris; 1993)—a possession which, by definition, all non-white people lack, cannot acquire, and are legally prohibited from possessing. Thus, CRT notions of whiteness as property lead to the conclusion that whiteness is a form of capital which “whites alone possess” (Harris, 1993, p. 1721) in full and permanent measure.
Given that whiteness is a component of dominant cultural capital (and, as mentioned earlier, is constructed against Blackness or as “anti-Black”), and is a capital which Black Americans cannot possess in full nor permanent measure, I contend that merging both frameworks must result in a theoretical proposition which considers the constraining effect that race and antiblackness will always exert upon Black Americans’ ability to acquire and possess a dominant cultural capital which is constituted in part by whiteness; I offer:
Whiteness can function like other forms of dominant cultural capital in that it undergoes intergenerational transmission (white skin and legal status can be passed from parent to child) and socialization (whiteness is imbued with meaning). And, most importantly, whiteness functions as a resource that affords advantages to its possessor. However, whiteness is unlike forms of economic-based dominant cultural capital in that it cannot be fully transmitted to, nor acquired and possessed by, those who are racialized as “non-dominant” (i.e., non-white). It is because of this difference that CCT alone, and traditional notions of cultural capital, cannot be used to adequately account for the role of race, racism, and antiblackness in producing inequality (educational or otherwise) as experienced by Black students, nor to offer a precise explanation of the mechanisms by which such inequality operates and is (re)produced. Further, whereas the class-based underpinnings of CCT allow it to imply a pathway for eradicating inequality—that is, through the redistribution of economic capital—there is no such method for the full and permanent redistribution of whiteness, as it is currently constructed. It is here that race and class differ; and it is this difference which permanently excludes Black students from acquiring—and thus, perpetually positions these students as under-resourced from not possessing—dominant cultural capital—as long as whiteness remains a component of such capital. Thus, the inclusion of race and antiblackness into CCT, through consideration of the CRT notion of whiteness as property, challenges CCT’s fundamental ideas concerning the basis, (re)production, and eradication of inequality—while simultaneously enabling CCT to more-incisively explain how cultural capital functions as a mechanism of educational (and social) inequality among Black students and to illustrate the gravest implication of such a mechanism.
Proposition 3, in pointing to the construction and non-transferability of whiteness, and the intentionally-resultant retention of its affordances for possession and use by white Americans alone (in full and permanent measure), suggests the structural antagonism thesis of antiblackness in Afropessimist thought. And, in contending the permanence of Black exclusion from dominant cultural capital acquisition and group membership, this final proposition not only suggests, but unflinchingly adopts and echoes (in no uncertain terms) its immutability thesis—and, of course, CRT’s notion of racial realism/the permanence of racism (Bell, 1992).
Discussion
The inclusion of race, racism, whiteness, and antiblackness into CCT (via CRT), clarifies how the implications of cultural capital are uniquely experienced by Black students, and helps redress CCT’s colorblind limitations. CCT’s colorblindness and truncated explanation of Black educational and social inequality, is poignant, given the Black habitus (Merolla, 2014), and Black Americans’ continuous subjection to educational and sociopolitical inequalities which interweave to reinforce and reproduce one another—and that CCT was intended to address this very interaction. Paradoxically, it is precisely this Black notion of, and experience with, education and inequality that underscores the importance of CCT’s continued use for Black educational research. That is, since educational attainment is so vital, both to and for Black Americans (and since it can, in fact, facilitate upward social mobility), all available approaches for examining (and addressing) how inequality exists within, and is (re)produced by, schools should be leveraged by researchers. This includes CCT, since it provides important (albeit incomplete) conceptual tools for these ends. Further, CCT’s ability to inform research concerning the role of culture in (re)producing educational inequality is of unique importance for Black Americans, given the severity and persistence of their cultural oppression, and, paradoxically, its subordinated status in Black research (Schiele, 2005). Therefore, I contend that the continued use of CCT in Black educational research is warranted. However, if CCT’s utmost utility for this work is to be realized, then its use must be accompanied by an equal attentiveness to—or even, the foregrounding of—race, racism, whiteness, and antiblackness, as has been demonstrated.
Suggestions for Future Research
It is hoped that Black Education Studies scholars will find the propositions offered within this paper useful for future examinations of cultural capital/oppression in Black education. Also, it is hoped that other critical race theorists will refine (or challenge) these propositions, or construct others. More specifically, it is hoped that those theorists employing BlackCrit will add breadth to the analysis of antiblackness’s functioning within cultural capital/oppression, and that those employing Critical Race Feminism will address this paper’s absence of a meaningful analysis of gender-based oppression’s functioning within these interwoven systems of subordination. For this work, an engagement with Grant et al.’s (2021) and Gordon’s (2023) recent explications of Afropessimism in education, and ross’ (2021) the afterlife of school segregation may be of particular utility.
Conclusion
CRT . . . acknowledges the contradictory nature of education, wherein schools most often oppress and marginalize while they maintain the potential to emancipate and empower. (Yosso, 2005, p. 74)
If the emancipatory and empowering potential of schools is to be actualized, then the racism, whiteness, antiblackness, and cultural oppression (along with other forms of subordination) endemic to these institutions—and to the cultural capital they sanction—must be disrupted. For this critical work, I strongly suggest that educational practitioners recognize, and be responsive to, the Black habitus (Merolla, 2014) present within Black students by adopting philosophical—and indeed political (Givens, 2021)— stances and enacting pedagogical practices which affirm Black humanity and nourish Black “flourishing” (ross & Givens, 2023)—thereby combating the dehumanization and gratuitious violence (ross, 2021)—or, “social death” (Gordon, 2023)—common to the Black (educational) experience. In so doing, educational practitioners embody the long tradition of Black educational thought and praxis — what black critical theorists have recently termed fugivitity (Givens, 2021) or the creation of Black educational fugitive space (ross, 2021).
Further, since educational and social stratification are intertwined and mutually reinforce one another, the work of combating racism, whiteness, antiblackness, and cultural oppression in education must be extended to the inequitable societies in which these educational institutions are situated—if it is to be most efficacious. For this second work, I strongly suggest that educational practitioners adopt cultures of transformative educational leadership (i.e., notions and practices of educational leadership which are centered around interrogating and counteracting systems of inequality in both schools and society)—particularly those based on frameworks which have been developed through consideration of the Black experience and/or through its intellectual tradition (see Dantley, 2005; Gooden and Dantley, 2012; Lozenski, 2017; Wilson et al., 2013). Ultimately, combating cultural oppression in such a dual-thrust manner would help to both disrupt the processes by which schools reflect and reproduce inequitable societies, and leverage the power of schools to create, and then reflect and reproduce, a more equitable society.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge his father and Drs. Sarah A. Robert, Keith Griffler, and Melinda Lemke for their invaluable contributions to the development of this paper.
Data Availability
This study used a content analysis of “public” literature. All data and sources are listed within the main body of this manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical Considerations
Not applicable.
Consent to Participate
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Consent for Publication
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