Caste Education

Caste education was a concept African American scholar W.E.B Dubois applied to describe the educational injustices his people were given in the U.S. Dubois was an active social activist and scholar for equal treatment of African Americans during his time. Dubois lived during the time when race was not only implicit, but intensively explicit. He lived through the post slavery, segregation and civil rights eras. Due to the views and treatment of African Americans in the U.S. they were forced into living conditions that greatly restricted their resources as American citizens, but worst of all rights as human beings. A caste education is also a result of this. In the time of Dubois, African Americans were in charge of their own education prior to desegregation. When segregation ended issues pertaining to the education of African American children was at the forefront. To Dubois, this forced African American students into an education that would alienate and marginalize them. As the first African American to graduate from Harvard with a doctoral degree, Dubois saw education as a method to liberation and equality. He also sought for education to be a system obtaining interest for the student rather than the institution. Using this framework of Dubois, I would like to apply it to contemporary issues of caste education. The issue I would like to address is the school-to-prison pipeline. Specifically how Polynesians in the state of Utah use American football as an alternative pipeline to school to prison pipeline.   


References:


Dubois, W.E.B. (1973). The education of black people. NewYork: Library of Congress Cataloging.