Harvard Educational Review

  1. Fall 1995 Issue »

    Navajo Youth and Anglo Racism

    Cultural Integrity and Resistance

    By Donna Deyhle
    In this article, Donna Deyhle presents the results of a decade-long ethnographic study of the lives, both in and out of school, of Navajo youth in a border reservation community. She describes the racial and cultural struggle between Navajos and Anglos and the manifestation of that struggle in schools and the workplace. While utilizing cultural difference and structural theories, Deyhle takes a new position, which captures these theories' central insights, but then moves beyond them. While differences in culture play a role in the divisions between Anglos and Navajos, Deyhle asserts that these differences intertwine with power relations in the larger community, and that Navajo school success and failure are best understood as part of this process of racial conflict. Navajos, subjected to discrimination in the workplace and a vocationally centered assimilationist curriculum in schools, are more academically successful when they are more secure in their traditional culture. This study demonstrates that those students who embrace this life-affirming vision both gain a solid place in their society and are more successful in the Anglo world of the school.
    (pp.403-444)

    Click here to access this article.

    Click here to purchase this article.

  2. Share

    Fall 1995 Issue

    Abstracts

    A Dialogue
    Culture, Language, and Race
    By Paulo Freire and Donaldo P. Macedo
    Navajo Youth and Anglo Racism
    Cultural Integrity and Resistance
    By Donna Deyhle
    Script, Counterscript, and Underlife in the Classroom
    James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education
    By Kris Gutierrez, Betsy Rymes, and Joanne Larson
    Levels of Comparison in Educational Studies
    Different Insights from Different Literatures and the Value of Multilevel Analyses
    By Mark Bray and R. Murray Thomas

    Book Notes

    Other People's Children
    By Lisa Delpit

    National Issues on Education
    Edited by John F. Jennings.

    U.S. Educational Policy Interest Groups
    By Gregory S. Butler and James D. Slack.

    Education at a Glance
    By the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation.

    School Choice
    By Peter W. Cookson Jr.

    Crosscurrents:
    Edited by Lance W. Roberts and Rodney A. Clifton

    Framing Questions, Constructing Answers
    By Noel F. McGinn and Allison M. Borden

    Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature

    Changing the Subject
    Edited by Sue Davies, Cathy Lubelska, and Jocey Quinn.

    Rewriting Literacy
    Edited by Candace Mitchell and Kathleen Weiler.

    The Return of the Political
    By Chantal Mouffe

    Black Popular Culture
    Edited by Gina Dent.

    Thirteen Questions
    Edited by Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg.

    Call 1-800-513-0763 to order this issue.
    Sign up for our eNewsletter »