Unequal Childhoods Analysis

Pierre Bourdieu was a sociologist, philosopher and an anthropologist. According to the lecture videos, Bourdieu’s important element to his social construction concept is the dialectical relationship between social structure and agency. The relationship is not permanent and can be changed. It’s derived from social symbols and interactions, not through nature or biology. Bourdieu’s work attempts to bridge the gap between constructivism which is the view that our knowledge of the world is based on interactions between social groups, and structuralism which is any analysis that emphasizes structures and relations. In Unequal Childhoods, the author explains that peoples background experiences help shape the methods and total of capital. Bourdieu
People who consider themselves as upper and middle class believe they are superior to the working class. They blame the minority parents for the failure of their children in education. Annette Lareau, author of Unequal Childhoods, downplayed race as a determining factor in African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans failure to obtain cultural capital. In today’s economy, a two-income family is usually necessary to be considered middle class. Working class families consisted of at least one parent having a job. The poor families she studied had no employed parents. Each of the classes Lareau studied were equally divided by white and African American parents. The middle class black families’ children were raised as well as the white families due to the families’ higher income. The African American children achieved cultural capital due to economics – not race. In the poor families, not one had a biological father living with the
However, the Black Power movement might have hindered the acculturation process for African Americans. Although some Native American languages have lasted, only about 20 tribal languages are still spoken in the United States and Canada. Approximately only 20 tribal languages are still spoken by the children of important members of the tribes. If this continues, the tribal languages will vanish completely. Despite popular belief, Hispanic Americans have increased their rates of acculturation by ensuing some of the same patterns that the Europeans did when they arrived to the United States. The reason for the increase is because more and more Hispanic Americans are being born here in the United States and people that came here are staying longer. Asian Americans acculturation is a bit different than the other groups. Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans are extremely acculturated since they have been here for centuries, whereas Filipino and Indian Americans have smaller percentages of acculturations. Racism still exists at every level of today’s