Oppositional culture

This theory relates to a larger generalized topic of race and intelligence. According to this theory, minority students underachieve intentionally in school and in standardized testing due to a fear of being stereotyped as acting white.[1] Acting white refers to activities and attitudes associated with white middle-class Americans. Adherence to white norms in African American communities represents a betrayal of black normative culture. Spurred by the pre-existing theories including the culture of poverty and the effects of urban decay, oppositional culture emerged in the late 1970s as a theory to explain the education gap. The principal researcher of this idea, anthropologist John Ogbu, details the principal mechanisms and causes for oppositional culture in his books, Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (2003) and Minority Status, Oppositional Culture, & Schooling (2008).

Racial disparities in education stem from the historical foundations of America, from the époque of slavery into the 20th and 21st centuries. Slave owners in the American South by and large prevented their slaves from becoming literate, fearing that literacy and education would strengthen slave resistance and empower the slaves to revolt against their masters. While African-Americans in the North fared better, black schools struggled to keep their doors open.[2]

The Supreme Court's landmark 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson also helped to define education policies in the United States for years to come. The court case ultimately decided that race was an acceptable categorization by which to divide individuals. Additionally the case determined that separation of these individuals was permissible provided that the condition of both facilities was equal.[3] This case helped to promote segregationist practices that prevented African American children from attending white schools. African-American schools had fewer resources leading to greater racial gaps in educational achievement.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that the separate but equal doctrine was unconstitutional in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The court also ruled that segregation inherently caused harm to the cognitive development of black children, and officially recognized the importance of educational equality as a compelling interest in the United States.[4] Following this ruling, Southern school districts began to publish findings of racial gaps in academics as a justification to oppose desegregation. As a result, the United States adopted compensatory education in order to equalize educational opportunities for all students.[5] Despite these efforts, the education gap continues to persist in SAT scores and college acceptance rates. In the 1980s, a researcher named John Ogbu suggested that equal opportunity was not enough to diminish the racial disparities gap in education and that additional factors needed to be addressed in order to reduce the racial disparities gap.

Racial disparities continue to persist in the realm of education even today. A study by George Farkas in 2002 identifies several areas where racial gaps and disparities continue to exist. His research findings show that even in early primary education in pre-school and kindergarten, African American children show lower oral language, pre-reading, and pre-mathematics skills in addition to behavior less suited to school environments.[6] In high schools, measures of academic achievement such as grades and class rank also show an under-representation of African American and Hispanics. Additionally, African American and Latino students consistently perform lower on the SAT than their white counterparts thereby affecting their acceptance rates into universities. Even when accounting for differences in socioeconomic status and single parent households this racial disparity, although reduced, continues to exist.[7] These trends have become the basis for sociological theories, including oppositional culture that explain these continuing racial gaps in education achievement.

John Ogbu's primary goal in his research was to explain "academic performance of racial and ethnic minorities with reference to broader societal structures and historical processes".[8] John Ogbu used case studies, the most famous of which examined the affluent neighborhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio, to research variables that represented oppositional culture. These variables included several explanations of academic disengagement based on African Americans' self-perception of their work load, their own and white people's academic efforts, and their own explanations for their disengagement.[5] From this case study and other research, Ogbu formulated his theory of oppositional culture.

Many sociologists and sources have praised his studies as a valuable addition to the theories explaining the gap in educational achievement among different races.[9] Additionally, his research has spurred similar ethno-cultural case studies around the world that have linked gaps in achievement to communities. One example is a case study done in the UK in 2006 by two researchers, Tomlin and Olusola, that sought to discover factors and conditions that affect the achievement levels of high-achieving black students in two urban secondary schools. The study found that African-Caribbean students reported obstacles similar to those faced by African Americans in their attempts to achieve at the levels of their white peers.,[1] Studies that seek to explain overall achievement gaps between blacks and whites have also looked at Ogbu's criteria from his case studies in education.

However, other sociologists have argued against the validity of his claims. His findings are most often criticized for overgeneralizing the experience of the black community.[9] A study by Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey found that black students are significantly more likely to believe that education increases the chances of finding a job, and that smart African American students are held in higher esteem by their peers for high academic achievement. These findings all contradict the oppositional culture model proposed by Ogbu.[10] Another study by Cook and Ludwig found that after controlling for socioeconomic status, on average black students were no less alienated from school than white students and were no less popular for being good students.[8] These studies show that inconsistencies regarding the existence of oppositional cultures in black communities persist.

While oppositional culture offers one explanation for the gap in racial educational achievement, there are alternative explanations for this phenomenon.