Abstract

Excerpted From: Lihi Yona and Tammy Harel Ben-Shahar, “Trashing” Whiteness: Race Consciousness and the Failed Promise of Merit, 56 Arizona State Law Journal 1075 (Summer, 2024) (283 Footnotes) (Full Document)

The legal treatment of educational inequality is at an impasse. The recent Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College case (“SFFA v. Harvard”), in which the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions to higher education, brought the link between race and education back to the forefront. In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas described merit-based “objective grading scales” as the “great equalizer.” Under this paradigm, Justice Thomas reasoned that rejecting race-conscious decisions would generate more diverse institutions, ensuring inclusion of, amongst others, white students “from rural Appalachia.”

It is precisely the perspective of those poor, rural whites--often derogatorily referred to as “poor white trash” (“PWT”) is the focus of this Article. Examining this group's place within the U.S. educational system, this Article demonstrates how “objective grading scales” have failed PWT, and how racism--and more specifically, white supremacy--has operated to perpetuate their marginality. Accordingly, this Article shows that raceneutral decision-making in education does not necessarily hold a promise for poor white Appalachian students, nor for any other racial minorities. Seeing how both the concept of merit (or, alternatively, educational ability) and white supremacy have jointly led to PWT exclusion and segregation is a first step towards educational equity, for Black, Indigenous, other students of color (“BIPOC”), and white students alike.

Unveiling this oft-hidden dynamic, this Article thus brings to attention an extremely understudied phenomenon: educational segregation among whites. While segregation between whites may not seem like a racial issue, this Article argues that it is racial at its core. Drawing from historical accounts of PWT, Part I demonstrates how this group came to be known in the U.S. public imagination as a group failing to meet the standards of whiteness and, accordingly, as intellectually inferior. From the eighteenth century onwards, journalists, scientists, doctors, and politicians began casting poor whites living in specific areas of the U.S. as inferior to those deemed “appropriate whites,” and as lazy, dirty, feebleminded--as “trash.” This depiction followed the core tenets of white supremacy, establishing PWT as a threat to whiteness's purity and superiority. The rise of the infamous eugenics movement in the nineteenth century brought to center stage ideas like selective breeding, presented as a way to improve the genetic traits of “superior races.” As a result, race-purifying policies were set in place aimed at protecting the white race from denigration by tracing and defining good and bad “breed.” PWT were at the center of these policies, as they were considered the highest threat to the white race. Separated institutions were created to house and treat PWT whose close association with white elites was deemed dangerous.

Against this backdrop, the science behind intelligence testing was developed, aspiring to present objective scales of cognitive and educational abilities that would prove the basic racist hypotheses of eugenics. These tests provided policymakers with further justification to segregate those diagnosed as “morons” by the state. The offshoots of these segregationist inclinations, we argue, are still evident in today's educational system.

Moving from history to the present, Part II demonstrates the way historic stigma regarding PWT haunts the current U.S. educational system, and the systemic legal dynamics that maintain it. We uncover two mechanisms tracking PWT students to segregated educational settings, both of which revolve around their assumed (lack of) educational abilities: (1) the formation of ability-based groups of “strong” and “weak” students, in ways that often echo societal distinctions between “appropriate” whites and PWT; and (2) classifying PWT students as having cognitive and behavioral disabilities. The problematic structure of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) further pushes PWT students to segregated education. IDEA's private enforcement mechanism places the responsibility to secure inclusion for disabled students mainly on families and parents. This structure works against marginalized communities who often lack the means to secure this right. The access gap between PWT- and IDEA-guaranteed rights further facilitates PWT educational segregation, lifting systemic barriers that bolster anti-PWT stigma.

To show the reality of PWT students on the ground, we center the voices of self-identified PWT students by narrating their experiences within the educational system; long-term ethnographic studies conducted in schools in recent years similarly highlight how dynamics of exclusion and segregation look in action and the intricate, often subtle ways they take form. Notably, students' “objective” measures of merit in higher education admissions decisions are heavily dictated by mechanisms like ability segregation. These mechanisms start shaping their educational paths as early as elementary school and continue to impact them throughout high school.

Examining these practices and their effects on PWT students reveals intricate dynamics of race, disability, class, and gender relations. To comprehensively assess this multifaceted dynamic, this Article adopts a “PWT lens,” offering an intersectional analysis that considers these key elements. The unique positionality of PWT, at the intersection of race, class, gender, and disability, allows for a nuanced understanding of how these systems of subordination can work in tandem to form social categories and design segregated educational landscapes. Moreover, their experiences reveal the inadequacy of race neutrality in addressing the challenges faced by marginalized white students. Addressing their educational exclusion necessitates a heightened awareness of race's role in the educational system rather than dismissing its impact.

This Article goes beyond the descriptive. After presenting the two techniques for segregating PWT through ability-focused mechanisms, Part III moves on to describe the normative case against strictly merit-based systems, exemplified through ability segregation. This Article details the ethical considerations against educational selection systems that rest on ““objective” considerations, like ability to designate students to specific classes or schools, the bias embedded in the initial classification of ““abilities,” and the normative challenges that arise even when the classification itself is justified, both for PWT students and for the community as a whole. The specific practice of PWT ability-based segregation has two additional costs. First, the separation of whites into the “right kind” of whites and those seen as “trash” constructs this latter identity as such. The educational system, under this paradigm, not only responds to an existing social category but plays a key role in forming the category of PWT, through techniques of hierarchical segregation: spatial, symbolic, and material. Second, the eugenic framing of PWT as feebleminded established concrete guidelines for “proper” whiteness and delineated those who deserve it. Educational segregation of PWT thus reinforces white supremacy's notions of whiteness in ways that harm both PWT and other racial minorities. Further, as seen in SFFA v. Harvard, the social marginality of white Appalachian students, itself the result of white supremacy, is often recruited--rhetorically--by the white elite agenda, to further cement its privileges.

Considering race's place in education, this Article thus argues that it is not a matter of white (or Asian) versus Black. White supremacy is embedded in the educational systems' key logics, to the detriment of all students. To fix it, we must first grapple with the most hidden places in which it takes root. Part IV provides a consideration of how this may look. Following the descriptive and normative analyses, Part IV sketches the legal and theoretical ramifications of recognizing PWT ability-based segregation as discrimination. Building on Justice Ginsburg's strategy of advancing gender equality by centering men who are victims of the patriarchy, we offer a way to advance racial equality by highlighting instances where white people are victims of white supremacy. Until now, educational disadvantage of poor whites was discussed primarily through the lens of poverty, a classification that was not effective enough in addressing educational injustices. The Supreme Court, as well as many state courts, have explicitly rejected the possibility that poverty is a suspect classification, restricting challenges rising from economic inequality. Litigation relying on state constitutions' Education Clauses--arguing that states failed to supply students in poor districts adequate education--proved helpful in some cases, but it focused solely on issues of funding. Notably, while ability-based segregation that creates racial discrimination is actionable, this legal tool is not available for PWT. Developing a new wrong of PWT ability-based segregation thus removes barriers for PWT to argue against their exclusion. Doing so has important positive externalities for advancing racial justice beyond PWT, as well as for imagining admissions beyond merit.

As traditional tools for addressing racial injustice in education become unavailable or are proven ineffective, this mission of paving new ways to tackle educational disparities in schools becomes more crucial than ever.

[. . .]

In the aftermath of SFFA v. Harvard, in which affirmative action plans were declared unconstitutional, the landscape of race and education remains at a critical juncture. This Article seeks to revisit and revitalize discussions on race's place in education from a perspective often ignored in scholarly writing: that of poor white students, stigmatized as “white trash.” In the rare instances in which this group is mentioned in debates around affirmative action, it is often as victims of race-conscious decision-making, portrayed as the students left behind due to the system's over-fixation with race. Against this backdrop, this Article demonstrates how this group is instead left behind by allegedly race-neutral, objective mechanisms to assess merit and educational abilities. White supremacy's influence on societal perceptions of PWT as intellectually inferior has shaped a segregative dynamic that rigidifies path dependencies from elementary to high school, inevitably influencing college admission decisions. The fact that this dynamic was never acknowledged as influenced by racial ideologies like white supremacy granted it a pretense of objectivity, neutrality, and legitimacy.

Through a novel methodological lens that encompasses class, race, disability, and gender, we explored both the history and the present of PWT education. The historical stigma of PWT as intellectually inferior, and the way this categorization has translated to segregation in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, has contributed to an educational apparatus that pushes PWT students today to segregated groups, classes, and schools. This injustice is especially difficult to expose as it is cloaked in what could be considered as a fundamental, neutral, and scientific organizing principle of education: namely, students' ability. Armed with the guise of educational expertise, measuring students' abilities and treating them differently easily passes as benign and beneficial. Current legal and social trends, exemplified by SFFA v. Harvard, entrench this belief, valorizing objective “merit” and treating it as a given, innate trait that should be identified and rewarded rather than developed.

Against these beliefs, this Article attempts to lift the veil of neutrality from PWT educational segregation and expose the justification mechanisms of separation as inadequate. Ability segregation does not live up to its scientific reputation, nor can it be justified through its alleged benefits. Further, we argue, PWT ability segregation comes with a set of costs that warrants unique attention. It does not help PWT students, and it undermines all students' sense of community. Additionally, we highlight the dynamic between educational ability segregation and PWT identity. Educational ability segregation not only constructs the PWT identity, as distinct from white identity, but also bolsters white supremacy in the educational system to the detriment of PWT and racial minorities.

If there is a silver lining to the setback posed by SFFA v. Harvard, it is that it forces us to revisit the idea of merit. The experiences of PWT students challenge the idea that merit can be separated from notions of hierarchy and supremacy. The PWT lens allows us to recognize how these logics of superiority and exclusion are rooted so deeply into our systems, that their effects travel beyond the “usual suspects” of subordination, harming both white and non-white students in intricate, nuanced ways.

The argument laid out in this Article paves a way towards legal recognition of PWT ability segregation as discrimination, providing new avenues through which to tackle white supremacy's grip on our educational system. Undermining the legitimacy of PWT ability segregation casts doubt on the very foundations of the meritocratic project that shapes schools, higher education, and our market. Societal unawareness and legitimacy for PWT ability segregation, this Article has shown, is the crack through which white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and classism sneak into U.S. educational system and shape its core logics.

The fight against racism in education demands innovative approaches. By centering the experiences of the unexpected victims of white supremacy, we may forge new paths forward in the pursuit of racial equality.

Lihi Yona, Associate Professor at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law and School of Criminology., 

Tammy Harel Ben-Shahar, Associate Professor at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law. Academic Director of the University of Haifa Legal Clinics.