Race & Inequality in America

Transcript for Student Voices

Prudence Carter and Ayana Bass

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You’re listening to Student Voices, a podcast featuring student-led interviews of Brown University faculty based on the Race & in America panel discussion series, curated by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America in partnership with the Office of the Provost.

Ayana Bass: Hello, I’m Ayana Bass, a graduate student studying Urban Education Policy, and I’m speaking with Professor of Sociology, Prudence Carter, about the recent panel discussion on Race and Inequality in America. Thank you so much for being here with me today, Dr. Carter.

Prudence Carter: Thank you. Thank you, it's good to see you too, Ayanna.

AB: Wonderful, wonderful. So as you know, we are here, working through some of the race and inequality work here, and you are a phenomenal professor here at Brown University. And I would really love to spend some time and just ask you some questions and get your insight on your experience as a woman of color and educator. And I have a shared experience, so I'm really looking forward to hearing from you today, and I'm so thankful to be in this space with you again. So, I just have three questions that I really would like to go over with you. You obviously work in the Sociology Department; I’m wondering, how can sociological research act as a lever to uplift voices of communities of color?

PC: Now, that's a very good question. I just finished an essay this morning, where there were lots of arguments that I was making about that very fact. I think sociology as a field has the power to be more educative, and useful, and leading to more enlightenment and progress in our society, particularly when it comes to eradicating or ameliorating the conditions that afflict so many historically marginalized, and racialized, marginalized communities. When I think about sociology, we focus on everything there has to do with human groups, human connections, societies, organizations, institutions. And I think one of the things that's been a tension in the discipline among different subgroups of sociologists is whether or not sociology should be more policy focused or applied in its work, or whether we should just be professional sociologists developing theoretical frameworks and conceptual frameworks and doing methodologically rich research that explains how or why or what leads to, but that doesn't necessarily lead to interventions. And so how I think sociological research— and this is the argument that I've been making—is that sociology can do more, because we know so much collectively about how society runs, how the major macroeconomic and political and social forces from, you know, the origins of this country, thinking about how enslavement and genocide and white supremacy, class exploitation, all those sociological forces have converged to lead to the kind of intergenerational disparities that we see among racially and ethnically minoritized communities today, and other minoritized communities, whether it's by gender, or whether it's by sexual orientation, or religion, etc. So, how can sociology do better? By being more willing to engage in that space from beyond a theoretical conceptual framework; from beyond sociology being an intellectual project, but actually being fundamentally a social and political project as well, because I think it's many of our duties. I don't think everybody has to have, or will have, the skills or the talents to do it, but I think it's many of our obligations to contribute the knowledge that we generate, to help ameliorate and even eradicate some of the social problems that afflict our society today.

AB: Oof! Dr. Carter, oh, that is such a rich and deep response. And I really hope that folks replay this to really hear and understand what you're saying, because it is powerful. And I really hope that folks understand their ability to push work forward and really create positive change, right, with this example, and do that self-reflective work that's necessary to create that positive change, right? It's very possible and doable, but we have to do it, right? It's the people; we have to really think critically about ourselves, and how we show up to do the work.

PC: Well, I think one of the challenges is that, for those of us who are trained in the mainstream academy, there's a tension between wanting to be perceived as scholarly, versus being perceived as an activist. And what I'm talking about, they are not incongruent, right? You can actually use the tools gleaned to develop theory and concepts and rigorous methods to solve social problems. And I think the thing about it is that that has become, in the field of sociology, too déclassé, particularly in the elite, mainstream departments. And it has been enough to just objectify communities, groups, who have faced the barrage of struggles and problems in our society, who've had that impact on them, to just objectify these groups, our groups, right? And it's not enough: look at what the world faced just in the last two years with the pandemic. And so we’ve got environmental problems, too, and environmental sociology is really important, because we know that it also intersects with racism, in terms of, you know, what happens in communities, how toxic environments emerge in low- and lower-income and poor communities, which are often Black and brown. But also thinking about what happened in the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, you know, the jarring, violent images, and then thinking about what happened as refugees were trying to find more liberation and opportunity. And you’re seeing babies washed up on shores, or seeing how this government can even cage migrants from other countries who are looking for the American dream, just like migrants from the late 19th- and early 20th-century from Europe were doing, right? So I think there is something morally, and this is a normative argument, of course. But I think that we have a moral obligation not to just sit back and study and objectify. We have to also co-construct, and help to lead, I believe. That's why I'm in sociology: to figure out how to advance society. Otherwise, we're moving—we could find ourselves, as a discipline, obsolete. I mean, I think that's why fields like economics and psychology, and public policy and political science, find themselves outpacing sociology, because they answer real-world problems, or they attempt to address real-world problems.

AB: I mean, you make a really important point in all the things that you stated. And I think, as a woman of color, one thing that I'm grappling with is navigating the complexities of academia, right? And you made a very good point earlier on, you know…there is this challenge that exists. And, you know, from your experience personally, what are some, whether it's thoughts or recommendations, in regards to navigating these complex systems?

PC: You know, when I left Brown—and I went to Brown as an undergraduate, which was a very empowering experience—to go to graduate school, some of my early, early days were perhaps the first days where I encountered such low expectations of me as a Black female scholar, thinker, doer. I grew up in a de facto segregated community public schools in the Mississippi Delta, but I grew up in an empowered Black community where we had—we may not have had the wealth, but we had the social and cultural wealth, we might not have had the economic wealth. And so I was always inculcated with the idea that I could do whatever I wanted, as long as I put the effort in, and I had the community and my parents, certainly, the kind of support they had, so that's what I came to Brown with. And I went off to graduate school, and I remember a professor closing the door in my face. I remember the kind of blasé initial reports about my ability. I remember professors not really reaching out, as in the doctoral programs, they apprentice you, they want to co-write with you. I mean, eventually I had one to do that. But it wasn't until I started to amass what I call the symbolic capital, the status symbols, awards, and grants, that they started to look at me a little differently. And at that time, there were only two out of 100 PhD students who were Black in that department; it was the most isolating, I didn’t feel like I belonged. But thank God for New York, and the community that I had, and the reading groups I had: that's what kept me. So I know that you can't do—this is cliché, but you know, it's an African proverb: you can't do it without a village. And the village really helped me, right? But I also think one of the things that social psychologically, people in the social sciences have often wondered about African Americans especially, is where this self determination comes from. Even in the studies, even if the material outcomes like achievement, test scores, wealth, health, are not as great or high, one of the things that we show is collective self esteem, is the collective empowerment. And I hope that we can continue to cultivate that. I do see some erosion of that over time in our communities, which, you know, the “old heads” were around when I was growing up, the old heads said to me, before I came off to Brown, you know, “you keep your head up,” and “you can do this.” And then, of course, being someone who was raised in the church about putting God first, right, that spiritual religious core also. That, you know, in the academy would be considered non-rational, but that stuff was what empowered me. And I do believe that it's important for us to take care of ourselves internally, interiorly, spiritually, in order to propel us to realize these visions, the material, whatever that may be.

AB: One of the things that I keep coming back to is just that, right, what is the purpose? How are we thinking about outcomes and creating positive change for our community? And so thinking about—as it relates to the context in which we're talking about, in sociology, I mean, what policies do you find most lacking in education that might be able to help us with this collective change that we really need to push forward?

PC: Well, I think one thing that I write and talk and discuss a lot about, thinking about from the micro to the macro. So you and I just started at the kind of “micro”: thinking about the self, the individual within community, the individual within society. In this, you got this “macro” context that is so big, and how do we, like, tackle these larger, kind of dark, social forces that education—which is a social institution, a political institution, and a cultural institution—it's not just about teaching and learning, right? Education is also the medium through which you socialize, you indoctrinate. And you can see that fear playing out politically with state legislatures around the country, actually trying to—not trying, they have legislated that it is illegal for teachers to teach history about slavery in specific ways. So we know that education is a political institution, as well, as it plays out through the curriculum. And so I think one of the things that's been kind of lacking for so long, for about three or four decades, we were so fixated on so-called achievement gaps, test score disparities, that were racialized. There were class, you know, we saw socioeconomic differences, racial differences, differences in terms of ability levels, and gender, and so forth. And I just felt like it just winnowed down the phenomenon, and the social institution of what education is about, so much. But education arguably has the power to be a part of that ameliorative process I talked about, in terms of undermining, undoing, knocking the structural, knocking the legs off of structural racism, right? And how you do that is through the tools of curriculum, through teaching, through, actually, the inter-group dynamics and engagement that schools could facilitate. But there are people who know that who are very conservative, and who don't want education to serve that role in our society. Because what does it do? It would potentially lead to, in a generation, millions of really critically-thinking people who would possibly support—and very likely support—social and economic policies that would lead to better lives for many more people. See and that, I think is that is—so when I think about the policies, I find so much of the policies that are allocated or under the purview of the Department of Education are specifically about what goes on in classrooms, and what goes on in schools. I do argue, in my work—I'm working on something now—that there needs to actually be more cross-sector and cross-departmental work: economic policy speaking to educational policy, social policy speaking to educational policy. It's all an ecology that shapes the lives of young people, of communities, of families, and if we don't think about it in an ecological context, I don't think that we will ever do more than like, you know, chip away, a little bit of a chip away, at these really hard and enduring structures that make it so hard for many of us to live.

AB: I mean, what I hear is an opportunity for Brown to really work on some interdepartmental programming, because, you know, the Urban Education Policy Program, it's a one year master's, and it's a wonderful experience, and it's a fast-paced experience, which means you also might miss some opportunities, you know. And so I think it will be something that I will recommend to our department heads just to really, in our feedback, as a way to really create the critical thinkers that are going to be able to push this policy work forward to make a difference in a meaningful way. I mean, I just know that we are on a path to positive change, you know, I feel that, and I see it in my classmates with, you know, in the conversations that we have, but I know that there are missing pieces. And so in this experience with you today, what I'm seeing is that I need to also broaden my scope, so that I can ensure that I provide the “macro” experience to those that I reach. And I’m so honored to be in this space with you today and share in this conversation. It is so meaningful beyond what anybody will ever know. Right?

PC: Thank you so much, Ayana, I really appreciate it. What a pleasant surprise, one, to learn of our connection, but two, just to be able to thank you for the questions and allowing me to express my opinions, these are my opinions, but I think that they also matter after 20 years in the academy. I can tell you I've experienced quite a lot, and I've seen a lot in communities, from immersing myself in communities with young people who are experiencing poverty, trying to understand how education is going to matter in the long term, to looking at the racial formations from across the globe, South Africa, the US, and Brazil, and understanding that if we don't attack these bigger forces, if we don't find ways to really disembowel them, then the dominant educational ideology that we we talk about will definitely influence and shape the long term wellbeing of some, but it won't erase the kind of between group—between race, gender, class—kind of differences; we’d just be reproducing that from generation to generation. So we must do more. I think that the time is now, and multidisciplinary solutions are required for multivariate problems. That's how I see it. So thank you for this! And I wish you all the best in your program.

AB: Thank you so much, Professor Carter, for your time today.

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Student Voices is a feature of the Race & in America digital publication series developed by the Brown University Library. Our theme music is “see the unseen” by Butter. Explore the series at digitalpublications.brown.edu.