American students vary in educational achievement, but white students in
general typically have better test scores and grades than black
students. Why is this the case, and what can school leaders do about it?
In The Color of Mind, Derrick Darby and John L. Rury answer these
pressing questions and show that we cannot make further progress in
closing the achievement gap until we understand its racist origins.
Telling the story of what they call the Color of Mind--the idea that
there are racial differences in intelligence, character, and
behavior--they show how philosophers, such as David Hume and Immanuel
Kant, and American statesman Thomas Jefferson, contributed to the
construction of this pernicious idea, how it influenced the nature of
schooling and student achievement, and how voices of dissent such as
Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and W. E. B. Du Bois
debunked the Color of Mind and worked to undo its adverse impacts.
Rejecting the view that racial differences in educational achievement
are a product of innate or cultural differences, Darby and Rury uncover
the historical interplay between ideas about race and American
schooling, to show clearly that the racial achievement gap has been
socially and institutionally constructed. School leaders striving to
bring justice and dignity to American schools today must work to root
out the systemic manifestations of these ideas within schools, while
still doing what they can to mitigate the negative effects of poverty,
segregation, inequality, and other external factors that adversely
affect student achievement. While we cannot expect schools alone to
solve these vexing social problems, we must demand that they address the
dignitary injustices associated with how we track, discipline, and deal
with special education that reinforce long-standing racist ideas. That
is the only way to expel the Color of Mind from schools, close the
racial achievement gap, and afford all children the dignity they
deserve.
