Diverse Pathways: Race and the Incorporation of Black, White, and Arab-Origin Africans in the United States

Chapter 3. Educational Attainment and Postimmigration Schooling Progress

35 Chapter 3 Educational Attainment and Postimmigration Schooling Progress T he educational profile of immigrants provides important insights into their human-capital endowments and their expected trajectory of socio­ economic incorporation. As critical human-capital indicators, schooling levels can predict whether or not immigrants will experience upward mobility trends as they become integrated into society. In practical terms, education is important for providing access to financially rewarding opportunities in the labor market. In most cases, therefore, immigrants with high levels of education are more successful than other immigrants in securing well-paid jobs and improving their economic welfare. Yet, the payoffs to schooling extend beyond more immediate economic considerations. High levels of schooling are positively associated with language assimilation, facilitate neighborhood integration, and influence the formation of interpersonal relationships between immigrants and the native-born (Carliner 2000; Qian and Lichter 2001; Hall 2009). Immigrant groups with low schooling levels can therefore face significant obstacles in their efforts to integrate into their communities. Among immigrants and natives, however, opportunities for acquiring education and overall levels of educational attainment are considerably circumscribed by race and ethnicity. Yet despite increasing attention to the educational outcomes of African immigrants, systematic examinations of racial variations in their education attainment are limited. In general, the significance of education for understanding immigrant incorporation processes points to the need 36 C h a p t e r 3 for new studies examining whether the educational pathways to social mobility available to Africans are differentiated by race. This process requires a closer look at inequalities in the educational profiles of Black and White African immigrants , whether such inequalities are further differentiated by Arab ethnicity, and the implications of these differences for overall socioeconomic incorporation processes. By focusing on the significance of immigration status and race for under­ standingeducationalinequalitiesamongAfricanimmigrants,theanalysisbrings needed clarity to discourses on their achievement patterns. These discourses centeraroundtwobroadperspectives.Thefirstfocusesontheoveralleducational profile of African immigrants and highlights the fact that they typically have higher levels of educational attainment than the US-born (Kaba 2007). While this perspective is supported by empirical evidence, it is nevertheless limited by its failure to distinguish between the outcomes of Black and White Africans or interrogate the outcomes of Africans of Arab and non-Arab origin. Focusing on the larger African immigrant population rather than on racial subgroups also understates the significance of race for immigrants’ educational experiences after immigration. In other words, racial schooling differences among Africans enrolled in US institutions can provide useful insights concerning whether or not racial minority status results in bifurcated patterns of African educational incorporation into US society. A second perspective on African immigrant educational outcomes draws from decades-old research on historical and structural constraints on achievement among US-born Blacks. In particular, comparisons between US-born Blacks and Black immigrants are now used in debates concerning the continued significance of racial minority status as a constraint on achievement. Some interpretations of the comparatively higher levels of schooling of Black Africans relative to US-born Blacks suggest that the Black immigrant experience implies that race is no longer a barrier to schooling. Instead, alternative frameworks used to explain the educational disadvantage of US-born Blacks understate the significance of race as a barrier to achievement by focusing on countercultural influences as major determinants of their lower levels of schooling. Conclusions about race based on comparisons between immigrant and US-born Blacks can, however, be misleading. As argued later in the chapter, such comparisons are limited by their inability to capture specific racial barriers encountered by Black, but not White, Africans during the educational incorporation process. In general, therefore, the analysis presented in this chapter attempts to achieve several objectives. First, it documents existing knowledge on educational achievement among African immigrants in order to provide a critical overview 37 S c h o o l i n g P r o g r e s s of the dynamics and determinants of their educational attainment levels. Second, the question of the Black African schooling advantage in comparison to US Blacks is systematically examined, with particular attention given to the limits of conventional frameworks used to explain this disparity. Third, given the limited focus on the race and ethnic schooling inequalities among contemporary African immigrants, educational inequalities between Black and White Africans of Arab and non-Arab origins are empirically examined. Evidence on postimmigration schooling achievement of African youth is then used to suggest that Black Africans...