Race, Gender, and Educational Advantage in the Inner City

Objective. In this study we examine race differences in the effect of childhood in an urban inner–city community on educational attainment in adulthood. Methods. We examine a cohort of African American and white individuals born in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the same hospital. Our analysis examines a set of individual, family, and community characteristics for the respondents at three time points in their life course, birth, childhood, and adulthood. Results. We find that black men and women are substantially more likely than their white counterparts to graduate from high school, and that black women are more likely than white men, black men, and white women to graduate from high school and college. Conclusions. We conclude that social policy to eradicate urban disadvantage must not shift its focus to the plight of poor whites to the neglect of African Americans. Rather, we urge that inner–city white children be “drawn out of the shadows” of social research and that the uniqueness of race, class, and gender intersections realized in the inner city be brought to bear.