Becoming New Yorkers: Ethnographies of the New Second Generation

CHAPTER 2: UNRAVELING THE RACE-GENDER GAP IN EDUCATION: SECOND-GENERATION DOMINICAN MEN’S HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCES

28 CHAPTER 2 UNRAVELING THE RACE-GENDER GAP IN EDUCATION: SECOND-GENERATION DOMINICAN MEN’S HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCES* Nancy López Poverty doesn’t necessarily cause crime. . . . People come from New Jersey, buy their drugs, and what kind of life do they lead? —Leo, second-generation Dominican high school student, New York City I read about a study in the newspaper that states that 40 percent of “weedheads ” are in the inner city, but 60 percent are from the suburbs! —José, second-generation Dominican high school student, New York City The social critique articulated by Leo and José, both seniors at what I refer to as Urban High School in New York City, points to the ever-present awareness of racial stigma among Dominican youth, particularly young men. These social critiques are part and parcel of the race-gender gap in education that I witnessed at Urban High School’s graduation in June 1998. At the end of the traditional graduation processional, rows of young women had to be paired with each other because they were graduating at greater rates than their male counterparts (López 2003; Sum et al. 2000; Kleinfeld 1998; Lewin 1998). While at the beginning of the twentieth century men attained higher levels of education than women, at the dawn of the twenty-first century we *All names of individuals reported throughout the chapter are pseudonyms. see the opposite pattern—women attaining higher levels of schooling than men. It is predicted that by 2007 the gender gap will reach 2.3 million, with 9.2 million women enrolled in college compared to 6.9 million men (Lewin 1998). The race-gender gap in education is most pronounced among women from racially stigmatized groups. During the 1990s African American women were twice as likely as men to obtain a college degree (Dunn 1988). In the Boston public high school graduating class of 1998, it was estimated that 100 black and Hispanic males were going to a four-year college for every 180 black and Hispanic females (Sum et al. 1999). In New York City public high schools, where the majority of the student population is considered nonwhite (86 percent), more women graduate than men (New York Board of Education 2000). Even at the City University of New York (CUNY), the overwhelming majority of enrolled black and Latino undergraduates are women—up to 70 percent in graduate programs! The race-gender gap is already discernible among the new second generation —the children of post-1965 immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean , and Asia. Second-generation female students from diverse backgrounds in California and Florida outperform their male counterparts in educational attainment, grade point average, and educational aspirations (Rumbaut 1998; Portes 1996). This is also the case among second-generation Vietnamese students in New Orleans and Mexican-origin youth in California (Zhou and Bankston 1998; Matute-Bianchi 1991; Valenzuela 1999). In New York City, home to over one million public school students, the race-gender gap in education is already discernible among the children of immigrants from the Caribbean Basin—the largest new immigrant group in New York (Mollenkopf et al. 1998; Waters 1999; Hernandez and Rivera-Batiz 2003; López 2003).1 Our own Immigrant Second Generation in Metropolitan New York Study revealed that across all groups women achieve higher educational attainment than their male counterparts. The targeted sample of secondgeneration Dominicans surveyed for the project uncovered that over twice as many of the male participants (31 percent) were still enrolled in high school or had dropped out as female participants (15 percent). Fifteen percent of males had graduated from either a two- or four-year college or had pursued graduate education, but 22 percent of females had done so. What accounts for the race-gender gap in education? In explaining disparities in education among the second generation, the mainstream literature has focused on the ethnicity paradigm—namely, the assimilation process. Segmented assimilation theory posits that the second generation will experience upward or downward mobility depending on a number of characteristics of a given ethnic group: first, its mode of incorporation into U.S. society; second, the type of neighborhoods it lives in; third, the soUnraveling the Race-Gender Gap 29 cial and cultural capital available within the ethnic community; and finally, differences in its “color” (Portes and Zhou 1993; Portes 1996; Rumbaut 1998; Zhou and Bankston 1998; Kim 1999). Accordingly, ethnic groups experience upward mobility...