Race, Class, and Community Cultural Wealth

Abstract

Culture has been established as an integral part of the successful parental involvement of Black parents in K-12 public schools. This chapter explores the implications of institutional racism and classism against Black parents and how schools as social institutions perpetuate discrimination through the hidden curriculum, which often upholds the dominant culture's values, norms, and beliefs. This chapter also investigates how schools operate within the dominant ideology that upholds the White middle-class form of cultural capital as the standard form of capital, thereby devaluing the cultural skills that Black parents use to help children achieve academic success in school. In addition, the literature demonstrates that the unique forms of cultural capital Black parents draw from to help their children succeed in school challenge the dominant ideology that Black parents lack the required capital for school success and are not interested in their children's education.