%0 Journal Article
%T A Critical Look at Oppositional Culture and the Race Gap in Education
%A William Mangino
%J ISRN Education
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/363847
%X This paper offers a sociological critique of the perceived Black-White gap in education and of the theory of ¡°opposition¡± that underpins it. The literature extending back a century discusses how oppressed and segregated groups adopt attitudes opposed to those who oppress and contain them. Failure to situate the current oppositional culture in this larger body of literature makes opposition seem specific to Black Americans; it is not. Further, among people with similar economic resources, Black Americans have higher educational aspirations and go to college more than comparable Whites. The continued framing of a ¡°race gap¡± without reference to economic circumstances reifies race and lays the blame for educational failure on schools, teachers, families, and students, when the real culprits are social and economic issues like jobs, wages, and residential segregation. But because politically we are unwilling to deal with these larger socioeconomic issues, educational professionals are compelled to practice as if economic inequality and poverty do not matter, but in fact they do. Because Black Americans are disproportionately represented in lower economic strata, a spurious correlation exists in professional and popular discourse that mistakenly identifies Black people as ¡°opposed¡± to education. Net of socioeconomic status, Black Americans are no more opposed than anyone else. 1. Introduction When people tell you¡­it¡¯s poverty, that¡¯s baloney. (Former New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein [1]) In the United States, a cottage industry has propagated around African Americans¡¯ seeming ¡°opposition¡± to education. The scholarly impetus grew from Ogbu¡¯s [2, 3] influential thesis, which asserts that Black students feel pressure from peers and community to not ¡°act White.¡¯¡¯ Equating effort in school with siding with the oppressor, Black people, the argument goes, outwardly eschew academics in order to fit in with ¡°being Black.¡¯¡¯ Sociological critics dispute Ogbu (e.g., [4¨C7]). They rebut that oppositional culture does not hold up when considering Blacks¡¯ attitudes toward schooling. Study after study finds that Black Americans have high educational aspirations and proschool attitudes¡ªin many cases higher than their White counterparts [4, 5, 8, 9]. Ogbu [3, page 446] dismisses such pro-school attitudes as simply ¡°wishful thinking¡± because Black students ¡°do not match their aspirations with effort.¡± The finding of high educational aspirations among Blacks combined with their low test scores and grades gave rise to what is called the ¡°attitude-achievement paradox¡±
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.education/2013/363847/