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DIVERSIFIERS AT ELITE SCHOOLS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2008

Rory Kramer
Rory Kramer*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
*
Rory Kramer, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Suite 113, Philadelphia, PA 19143. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income students of diverse racial backgrounds to enter elite private high schools in the fall of the ninth grade. Combining ethnographic fieldwork completed during the program with follow-up interviews with ten students after their first semester at boarding school, this article addresses how students interact with and integrate into wealthy, predominantly White schools in an attempt to gain social mobility. Looking at how students interpret their surroundings, the article argues that students are trained to view themselves as “diversifiers” in order to successfully adapt to their new schools. In this role, students perceive themselves as especially serious and motivated students, and their elite peers as naïve, and find satisfaction in teaching others how to interact with people from different class and racial backgrounds. The paper concludes by considering the ramifications of the diversifier concept on efforts to diversify elite institutions and proposes further possible research sites where the concept may be applicable.

Keywords

Boarding SchoolsDiversificationEducational NonprofitsElite Education
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 2008 , pp. 287 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2008

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