Disentangling Inequity in Gifted Education: The Need for Nuance in Racial/Ethnic Categories, Socioeconomic Status, and Geography

Abstract

There is consensus among scholars in gifted education on the need to address educational equity for marginalized groups based on racial/ethnic categories (Peters et al., 2019), socioeconomic status (Hamilton et al., 2018), and geography (Hodges, 2018). Marginalization exists in terms of identification for services (Mun et al., 2021; Peters et al., 2019) and the extent of those services (Hodges, 2018). Less clear, however, are the complexities of the subgroups who comprise those marginalized groups. Understanding the nuances of racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic designations is a critical component of closing gaps in equity within K-12 gifted and talented services. In the proposed solutions to address these equity gaps outlined by Peters (2021), we argue that success is more likely if these nuances are considered. Aggregating students into broad racial/ethnic categorizations occurs at the federal and state level, affecting how students are labeled in schools. The U.S. Department of Education (2008) recognizes seven racial/ethnic categories: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White, and two or more races. Within those seven categories, though, is an immense amount of variation and nuance with differing levels of economic (e.g., money, property), social (e.g., social networks, connections), and cultural (e.g., education, knowledge, training) capital (Marcucci, 2020). For example, the categorization American Indian or Alaska Native represents not a single monolithic culture but a plethora of diverse peoples with distinct cultures and languages. The categorization Black represents not only individuals who are descendants of African slaves in the United States. but also a diverse group of immigrants from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean (Mwangi, 2014). Peters (2021) briefly describes this understanding in his description of the Hmong community in rural Wisconsin. Students who are Asian are considered well represented in gifted education programs (Peters et al., 2019), but it is unlikely that representation extends to all groups of students who would be classified as Asian (e.g., the Hmong). For example, a scholar would likely be met with skepticism for stating that gifted identification for children of Burmese refugees is the same as that for children of highly educated East Asian immigrants. Yet stating that students who are Asian are well represented is common within the field of gifted education (Peters et al., 2019). What Peters (2021) does not discuss is the nuance within socioeconomic status, geography, or their intersection with race/ethnicity. Like the nuanced differences within racial/ ethnic categories, children within differing socioeconomic status and geographic groups vary as well. The field would be well served to consider how this variability is related to gaps in equity in gifted education. Socioeconomic status groups are not monolithic entities. Poverty and its consequences are felt differently across individuals. Although levels of economic capital may be similar, there may be stark differences in social and cultural capital between families living in generational poverty and those in transient poverty, for example, that a graduate student experiences. A child born into a family from generational poverty is likely to have reduced cultural capital compared with a child of the educated graduate student whose family’s poverty is only a temporary stop to higher economic and social status. That said, both children would qualify for federal meal subsidies and so benefit from gifted identification policies that provide provisions for children who qualify for federal meal subsidies. Sakamoto et al. (2021) found that immigrants from Nigeria have comparable or greater educational and economic attainment in comparison with individuals who are Asian or White in the United States. By the second generation (the children of those immigrants) gaps in educational and economic outcomes were erased. The experiences of a family that recently immigrated from Africa in transient poverty are likely different from a family descended from slavery in generational poverty due to their varying amounts of cultural and social capital. Thus, an important distinction in describing the intersection between race/ethnicity and poverty is considering whether poverty is generational or transient. 1040533 GCQXXX10.1177/00169862211040533Gifted Child QuarterlyHodges et al. article-commentary2021