An Exploratory Analysis of the Effects of Race, Class, and Gender on Student and Parent Mobility Aspirations

Abstract

At any given point in the educational and occupational pipeline, using most measures of educational and occupational outcome, Blacks not fare as well as Whites (Farley & Allen, 1989; Jaynes & Williams, 1989; Reid, 1982). For instance, in 1988, at the upper end of the educational pipeline, 11.3% of Black females and 11.2 % of Black males attained at least four years of college. In contrast, 17.3% of White females and 24.9% of White males had reached such attainment levels (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990). Occupationally, 17.5% of Black females and 13.3% of Black males held managerial or professional occupations, while 26.3% of White females and 26.6% of White males held similar occupations (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1989). One theoretical model used to explain racial differences in educational and occupational attainment is the or culture of poverty model (also referred to recently as the underclass model) (see Baca Zinn, 1989; Inniss & Feagin, 1990; Mincy, Sawhill, & Wolf, 1990). The cultural deficit model contends that Black cultural values, as transmitted through the family and specifically the parents, are dysfunctional, and therefore the reason for Blacks' low educational and later occupational attainment (Banfield, 1970; Moynihan, 1965; Sowell, 1981; see Lewis, 1968, and Wilson, 1987). It further postulates that Blacks not place a high value on education as a vehicle of upward mobility. Social scientists who use the cultural deficit model focus on racial/ethnic background as one predictor of educational and occupational aspirations. Accordingly, Blacks possess deficient values (as measured by their lower aspirations) that place little emphasis on education, which in turn explains why they not well in school. For instance, Ogbu (1983, 1988, 1990a, 1990b) explains how racial (i.e., Blacks and Chicanos) reinforce their own inequality through a cultural frame of reference which ensures failure. As he argues, these involuntary do not the expectations of a better future that characterize immigrant minorities (1990b, p. 47). Moreover, they have not devel-