School racial composition and the emergence of Black-White within-school inequalities: network-based foundations

Abstract

This article investigates mechanism-based explanations for a well-known macro-level pattern in sociology of education, namely, that Black-White unequal access to advanced coursework is the highest in racially diverse and majority-White schools. The study proposes that school racial composition (defined as the share of Whites students) could influence the emergence of Black-White course-taking inequalities through the combination of two factors: (a), the relevance of network-based resources for advanced enrollment; and (b), the known relationship between racial composition and network structure. Through an empirically informed agent-based model, this study provides support for the proposed theoretical pathway and shows that, when combined with empirically representative structural inequalities, this racial composition effect can help explain the pattern of interest. Possible policy implications are discussed.