Nobody wants to hear it.

May 23, 2003 9:20 AM

Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it.
posted by studentbaker (50 comments total)

Wow... Parents' and kids' attitudes matter. If your parent cares, you'll care, and if you care, you'll do better--at least statistically. Makes sense--that's why you want to put your kid in a school district with other parents that care
posted by psychotic_venom at 9:31 AM on May 23, 2003

The reverse of this is why Asian students succeed (Better Luck Tomorrow aside). The guilt and possible violence directed toward Asian children in regards to their schoolwork and success is enormous. And it seems to work.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:39 AM on May 23, 2003

This is very interesting, studentbaker (and cool to see an anthropologist doing this work). I disagree with Ogdu's (or with the article's description of Ogdu's) positing of the alienation of black kids from white culture as an alternate explanation to racism. Such alienation could also arise from racism, even amongst the middle class - money doesn't necessarily 'whiten,' after all. A similar question was explored in the 1970s by another anthropologist, Paul Willis, in the context of working class boys in British schools. At a very high level he concluded that the boys' perceptions - that they would only get working class jobs when they left school - led them to become alienated from school and not to participate. (The book is out of print - but Amazon page and two reviews here.)
posted by carter at 9:45 AM on May 23, 2003

Wow fascinating article. Great link.
posted by bitdamaged at 9:51 AM on May 23, 2003

Their project yielded an unexpected conclusion: It wasn't socioeconomics, school funding, or racism, that accounted for the students' poor academic performance; it was their own attitudes, and those of their parents.

A-F-ing-men. So we've finally figured out that you can't blame oppression for everything, and just maybe, people share responsibility for their own actions and attitudes.
posted by tomorama at 10:00 AM on May 23, 2003

Interesting link, and thanks for the book recommendation bitdamaged, my university library has a copy so will be reading it some time this week.
posted by biffa at 10:05 AM on May 23, 2003

Prior discussion of Ogbu's theories here.

And tomorama, don't get too excited about the newfound ability to place all the blame squarely on the shoulders of blacks. Dig a little bit into the history of the alleged anti-intellectualism, and I'm pretty sure you'll find its roots solidly grounded in oppression as well.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 10:09 AM on May 23, 2003

birdamaged: bingo. I wonder where he got the instinct to divorce cultural components from one another. How likely is it that an African-American's attitude about the intersection of their selves and their society (e.g. school, if you are a teenager) is in no way tempered by racism, a dominant cultural narrative?

That being said, I went to high school that was all white, very rural, and very poor. There is obviously no ethnic comparison to be done, but it was quite clear that an underlying ~cultural attitude drove the academic environment in general. Everyone expects to fail there, and it is even reflected in the way that resources are allocated. Try floating a school tax bond in any of the nation's poorest rural districts.

The wierd thing about the Shaker Heights situation is that those kids could have realistically expected to succeed. In Trailerparkistan, expecting to be a failure is actually a sign of high intelligence.

And tomorama, don't get too excited about the newfound ability to place all the blame squarely on the shoulders of blacks. Dig a little bit into the history of the alleged anti-intellectualism, and I'm pretty sure you'll find its roots solidly grounded in oppression as well.

Word. Don't let one ethnographic perspective get blown out of proportion in yer head there, tomo. That sort of sentiment is why Zeppelin can get some bullshit historical blame for shite like Whitesnake.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 10:32 AM on May 23, 2003

"The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that's where their role stops," Ogbu says during an interview at his home in the Oakland hills. "They believe the school system should take care of the rest. They didn't supervise their children that much. They didn't make sure their children did their homework. That's not how other ethnic groups think."

I have to say that I see this attitude in a lot of parents, regardless of race. There is a rat race to get your kids into the best schools, but then no follow through. I don't place all the blame on parents though. We place far too much emphasis on evaluating and publicizing school performance (standardized testing, education level of the faculty, etc.). How about throwing in the level of parent involvement as a school asset?

on preview: "Trailerparkistan" is my new favorite word.
posted by whatnot at 10:35 AM on May 23, 2003

John McWhorter, another Berkeley professor (linguistics), wrote a book on a similar subject, about how many young black students have be instilled with a "culture of failure". The East Bay Express (which is responsible for this article as well, apparently) did an excellent write-up on him. Needless to say, people were not very happy with his views. There are also several other anthropologists (well, one that i know i've read) who have come to similar conclusions. Anyhow, very interesting reads.

Also, for those attending Berkeley (or planning to), John McWhorter teaches a great fucking intro linguistics course (and probably many others besides) that fufills one of the breadth requirements. I totally recommend it -- brilliant teacher.
posted by fishfucker at 10:35 AM on May 23, 2003

"The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that's where their role stops," Ogbu says...

OK, Ogbu is the guy who spent nine months in students' homes, so he knows far more about what was happening than I do. Still, does that quote set off anyone's bullshit detector? His criticism sounds so ... personal ... when he expresses it this way.

On the other hand: Black slavery lasted on this continent for more than 300 years, and it ended just 138 years ago. Blacks in the South were prevented from voting until 39 years ago. I attended a racially segregated school in first grade, 34 years ago. For centuries, blacks were denied schooling, and for decades, they were segregated into third-rate schools, so is it surprising that some black kids would consider academic success to be a white thing? In the context of such long-lasting and recent oppression, doesn't it make sense that black kids would reject at least some aspects of "white" culture? White folks (such as myself) shouldn't be so quick to absolve ourselves of all responsibility. There's plenty of responsibility to share.
posted by Holden at 10:47 AM on May 23, 2003

umm can't take credit. Carter made the informative post but somehow his "posted by" got mangled.
posted by bitdamaged at 10:57 AM on May 23, 2003

There's plenty of responsibility to share.

As the article noted, a group of parents had reached that same conclusion:

Parents in Shaker Heights began trying to explain the disquieting gap months before Ogbu arrived. A small group of black and white parents gathered in the mid-1990s to study the issue months before the student newspaper at Shaker Heights High School published its article. Their preliminary explanations were divided into four broad categories: the school system, the community, black parents, and black students. The group concluded that the academic gap was an "unusually complex subject, involving the internal and external synergistic dynamics not only of the school system, but also of the parents and of students, collectively and individually, as well as our community as a whole."

It was a diplomatic way of saying there was much blame to go around, some of it attributable to black parents or students. Although many black parents would later react negatively to Ogbu's work, this biracial group had in fact beaten him to some of his conclusions. "Ogbu didn't find anything new," recalls Reuben Harris, an African-American parent who served on the subcommittee. "It's just a community where you wouldn't think this kind of gap would occur."

Ogbu agreed. ...

posted by pmurray63 at 11:11 AM on May 23, 2003

In the context of such long-lasting and recent oppression, doesn't it make sense that black kids would reject at least some aspects of "white" culture?

Maybe, but of course it is a fallacy to believe that education is only a part of white culture. Not saying it's not what's going on, just that it's that much sadder for being so totally incorrect.

I think it's fairly obvious that the ideal of popular black culture in this country is not the erudite scholar, it's the basketball player or the hip hop musician. Acting "white" isn't discouraged prima facie, but the MTV and BET ideals of what it means to be "black" are encouraged to the exclusion of anything else, such that the effect is the same -- even on college campuses, black students try to act as though they don't care about learning. It's a very odd, robotic sort of response.

I would also say that I agree with you inasmuch as I think what we call black culture is in large part created, or at least controlled, by white people. Rich white men generally decide how black people are to be portrayed in the media. At the same tim, though, there has to be personal responsibility for buying in to a racist and paradoxical identity. So I don't know who to blame, but I think Ogbu has the right idea.
posted by Hildago at 11:12 AM on May 23, 2003

Fascinating post!

Holden, but why must blacks HOLD ONTO to the memory of slavery for so long? Women weren't allowed to vote until recently, does that cripple me in some way? Does that make it okay for me to fail? (Do I blame every failure on the oppression of women-which certainly still exists today. (Sure, these comparisons are not on the same level as slavery.)

I think there is a huge problem in the black culture of not taking the blame. Blame the whites. Blame racism. Blame the administrators. Blame the teachers. Blame the intelligent black man who came to conculsion you didn't like, but FOR GOD'S SAKE, DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF OR "The kids."

Sure, just like the question of "why are we so violent" can be attributed to many different causes, this one can too. But, growing up in a very black school (I was known as the "little white girl") I too have seen this first-hand. Boo-hoo that you have to speak "the king's english." Boo hoo that you have to do homework. Boo hoo that you can't just "be yourself." We all have to do the same thing to succeed. These kids and their parents need to stop blaming everyone else, even if others are partially to blame, and take the steps themselves as a culture to change from the inside.
posted by aacheson at 11:18 AM on May 23, 2003

cheers, bitdamaged ;)
posted by carter at 11:27 AM on May 23, 2003

Another thought
You can't change the past, you can only change the future.

If white america suddenly stood up and said collectively "We're sorry. Slavery was awful. We wrong you. We oppressed you. We made money of your blood and sweat and tears. We still continue to gain from this after slavery has been gone for years." Or even gave every black person money in America who could trace roots to slavery money for "reparations," would that make it better? Would that change anything? Would that suddenly make it okay for black kids to want to learn? Would that make racism go away? Would that level the playing field? Would that stop the decline of the black culture? No no no no no. That would make some people feel better, but it would accomplish nothing in the big picture.

That's why I get so frustrated by this. Agonizing over the past accomplishes nothing and helps no one. Until blacks realize this and deal with the future and not the past, things will not get much better for them, which is extremely unfortunate. After all, no one benefits from nor enjoys no wants the existence of a huge, angry, underclass.
posted by aacheson at 11:28 AM on May 23, 2003

Frankly, I'm surprised he hasn't been excoriated more extensively. Or perhaps lashed to a rabid badger and driven --kicking and screaming and protesting his academic worth all the while-- into Lake Anza, weighed down heavily with recycled-paper copies of his own foul heresy.

Not that he deserves that. It's just there is a powerful inclination among those who seek to solve problems to focus far more energy on making sure everyone thinks the problem is what THEY think it is. Any solution is secondary to an entrenched mindset that snarls and claws at any suggestion that, yes, there is a problem, but, no, it might not not be quite what you think it is.

This goes for both sides of the political spectrum. Any suggestion that the problem of educational inequality might actually have its origin closer to home is as repugnant as the suggestion that requiring your grandmother to slip off her open-toed podiatrist-ordered sliders and shuffle painfuly through a machine under the dim, brutal gaze of a crowd of men eager to pound someone --anyone-- into jelly, is not the way to stop terrorism. Just fight the problem our way, dammit, and shutup. In both cases I think striving against the problem is more important to SOME (not all, or even most) than any solution. Given the choice between solving a problem or continuing to pursue its solution IN THEIR WAY, I believe the choice would devolve to the latter in a surprising number of cases.

Frankly, I even admire the restraint in here. I clicked on the discussion licking my chops, already smelling blood, but was blissfully disappointed.
posted by umberto at 11:55 AM on May 23, 2003

Glad to see my hometown being talked about in such a postive light...*rolls eyes*

Shaker was an interesting place. By high school, nearly every student accepted self-segregation. We even had a "black door", one exit where usually only black students exited from.

More after work
posted by Be'lal at 12:14 PM on May 23, 2003

What's strange about this trend is that there is a strong tradition of African-American intellectual elitism. W. E. B. DuBois is the most famous example, but the historians Frank Snowden (1911- ) and John Hope Franklin (1915- ) also come to mind. (My father, who knows Snowden, tells me that he was the last person at Harvard to write his doctoral dissertation entirely in Latin. Oh, today's diminished academic standards... : ) ) It's not as if these men came out of nowhere. Wilson Moses' excellent Afrotopia, on the nineteenth-century emergence of Afrocentrism(s) among African-American intellectuals, is a good place to start. (As Moses points out, the original Afrocentrists were often trained classicists who knew all the requisite ancient and modern languages; they were mainstream scholars in a way that is no longer true of most modern Afrocentrists.)
posted by thomas j wise at 12:20 PM on May 23, 2003

also, i would add that i don't think this is a "black thing" ... it's more of a class issue. I hung out with some fairly poor kids growing up (kids, for example, who were accustomed to the electricity being turned off in their house every other month), and they all had a very negative attitude regarding schooling.
posted by fishfucker at 12:28 PM on May 23, 2003

Holden:
For centuries, blacks were denied schooling, and for decades, they were segregated into third-rate schools, so is it surprising that some black kids would consider academic success to be a white thing? In the context of such long-lasting and recent oppression, doesn't it make sense that black kids would reject at least some aspects of "white" culture?

fishfucker:
also, i would add that i don't think this is a "black thing" ... it's more of a class issue. I hung out with some fairly poor kids growing up (kids, for example, who were accustomed to the electricity being turned off in their house every other month), and they all had a very negative attitude regarding schooling.

Aren't you two kind of missing the point of the article? The whole point was to try and explain why reasonably-affluent college-educated black families had children that underachived. The students weren't poor, and had parents that were academically successful that they could look up to. Do the kids consider their parents to be "acting white?" Do they consider themselves to be oppressed by "The Man" while living in a middle-class neighborhood?
posted by gyc at 12:47 PM on May 23, 2003

sorry, i was commenting more on the mcwhorten article and the idea of "culture of failure" -- i'm most likely missing the point of the ogbu article.. point well taken.
posted by fishfucker at 1:25 PM on May 23, 2003

Fascinating article. Reminded me of the Shelby Steele piece in Harper's ("The age of white guilt and the disappearance of the black individual''). Excerpt:

The black individual lives in a society that needs his race for the good it wants to do more than it needs his individual self. His race makes him popular with white institutions and unifies him with blacks. But he is unsupported everywhere as an individual. Nothing in his society asks for or even allows his flowering as a full, free and responsible person.

It seems like Ogbu arrived at some of the same conclusions as Steele, but applied in the realm of education. Neither the parents nor students, according to Ogbu, took responsibility for their roles as individuals in an educational system - but instead deferred to the notion of the black community as a more important cultural force. And the black community, according to Ogbu, considered educational success a "white" thing.

I would be interested to see Ogbu study an affluent black school district (with black administrators and teachers), where the color of "success" isn't real, but imagined. Would he find the same results? And is this an American phenomenon, or is this a global thing?
posted by ariana at 1:54 PM on May 23, 2003

I wish there were an acultural way of discussing and understanding the difference between "blame" and "responsibility." The former is what we do in lieu of training in how to do the latter. I've often felt that way in work situations, so it's not surprising to realize that the mentality gets instilled in school.
posted by divrsional at 3:03 PM on May 23, 2003

If a student has poor grades year after year why wait until they graduate to say: what happened?

My first years of grade school were in Texas, mom was single, failed school, mom re-married moved back to Cali; attended private school to have the extra tutoring in class knowing it would be at the start of the school year, not at the end; graduated each grade above average, though at the start of each school year sat with the bottom rung; jr high/high/college on my own.

Didn't the teachers say something too? Can't say the parents here didn't care they moved there for a reason, they say. But, not following up, you are being blind in thinking that a great school will make a good student. Saw it happen in private schools too. It's the teachers & parents that make a student, not a system. If a system was perfect you wouldn't need parents & teachers. They both teach just at different locals.

a society that needs his race for the good it wants to do more than it needs his individual self And is this an American phenomenon, or is this a global thing?
Traveling abroad, never had anyone tell me whom they were by color/parent's nationality, only where they were born. Was even asked, why do Amicans include family heritage when asked of their origin; don't you know where you were born?
posted by thomcatspike at 3:40 PM on May 23, 2003

White folks (such as myself) shouldn't be so quick to absolve ourselves of all responsibility. There's plenty of responsibility to share.


I agree with this, and I think that the roots of black underachievement and general racial gaps in a variety of measures of success are due to oppression and unfair treatment, most of which from the past. An entire race of people who are forced to start from the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder (and forcibly encouraged to stay there for generations to follow) are not going to blend seamlessly into equilibrium with everyone else over a few generations even under perfectly equal treatment. Just as the social and economic factors are not going to fade quickly, neither will the cultural factors and attitudes developed as a result of past oppression.

In other words, even if black culture frowns upon (or fails to highly encourage) academic success, the fault my lie heavily upon whites (mostly of the past).

An important thing to acknowledge here though, is that does not necessarily mean that whites are the most capable of improving that situation today. Black parents and cultural figures are going to be much more effective at inspiring black youths to put effort into, and succeed in school than whites are, regardless of who is responsible for the formation of the problematic attitudes in place.

This is not a trial to pronounce judgement and punishment upon those who created this sad situation, it is an effort to understand how to improve the situation, and I think that black cultural attitudes and expectations towards educational achievement and success do need to change if we want to reach a more effective equality.
posted by Wingy at 3:47 PM on May 23, 2003

How sad that this research is so controversial. Being an undergrad anthro student, I sometimes do get the feeling that only white Westerners have negative cultural qualities. It was with black humor that I noticed in my Mexican-American Studies class that the (sociologist) professor was so adamant about not blaming Mexican culture while bringing up example after example of patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic attitudes that had as much to do with cultural mores as they did with gender/class/racism.

I know all cultures have good, bad, and neutral traits. Cultures are after all constructed by people, but there is this definite sense that minority cultures have been so oppressed that any negative traits are the majority's fault. That may be the case, but it does not remove the responsibility from perpetuating those negative aspects from both cultures.

I have similarly come to the conclusion that the disparity between Asian and Black/Latino minorities is to some extent explained by forced vs. voluntary migration. Being Chicana, there is this sense that the U.S. has taken something from us, with of course would breed mistrust.

I asked my Chicana friend who's a college student what made us different from other Mexicans. Her flip answer? We absorbed a lot of white culture. When educational achievement continues to be connected with whiteness, it is going to remain difficult for those multi-cultural children who exist within their traditional families and the larger American culture to succeed.

Also, my parents were not involved at all in my schoolwork. They heard which schools relatively close by were good academically, and that's where I went. We were also separated from the Mexican community, and in school I didn't academically mix with the large Hispanic population. I think this sense of individualism and isolation also contributed to my academic success.

So in my own experience I do see resonance with Ogbu's work, even if some are too quick to completely discount it because it touches on the hot topic issue of race.
posted by lychee at 5:08 PM on May 23, 2003

One thing I don't see in the discussion so far is a posting from someone who has experienced the corrosive, soul-destroying effects of racism directed at him- or herself personally. Another thing I don't really see is any indication of whether racist attitudes are common in the social climate at this school. Are they?

Yes, I have met many minorities who as individuals are entirely too willing to blame racism, real or imagined, for any and all ills rather than confront the possibility of their own personal involvement and responsibility. But I have also seen what happens to people who genuinely do experience racist attitudes in their daily lives: it fosters anger, resentment, and a huge chip on the shoulder. It robs them of much if not all desire to strive and achieve, because it to do so feel like capitulation or servitude.

But what is more, I have seen what can happen when a minority, once subjected to such attitudes, goes on in life to find a new place among people who don't give two shits about their race and treat them like a person. The transformation takes time, but it is amazing. It's night and day. Sometimes, the ice melts, the chip falls off the shoulder, and what emerges is a person who slowly finds the ability to believe that their actions and their choices genuinely will determine what happens in their life -- that maybe their role wasn't determined at birth. Sometimes. Either way, I without more information on the social climate involved, I would not be in any hurry to rule out racism as a first cause here, even though I too have seen it used as an excuse.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:02 PM on May 23, 2003

"The achievement depends on what expectations the teacher has of the student. There are savage inequalities in the quality of instruction offered to children. ... -- Georgia State University's Hilliard

Savage inequalities? This guy must have been reading Jonathan Kozol.
posted by kayjay at 7:34 PM on May 23, 2003

"When you're in a public setting people are less apt to speak their mind if they think it's politically incorrect."

Big problem number two.

Hooray for Ogbu.
posted by hama7 at 8:02 PM on May 23, 2003

I thought the same thing, kayjay.

"The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that's where their role stops," Ogbu says ... "They believe the school system should take care of the rest. They didn't supervise their children that much. They didn't make sure their children did their homework. That's not how other ethnic groups think."

Huh. That's not how all black parents think either! Nor is that attitude strictly limited to blacks. How'd this turn into a racial thing again?

I'll stick with the same perspective I ended up with the last time this came up: this is more about individual parental involvement in their children's schools than it is some race or culture-based rejection of the very idea of education. When you expect strangers to be more involved in your kid's studies than you are, what do you think will happen?

I lived in an all-black neighborhood and went to integrated schools my whole life without any serious problems. The other black students didn't have any objections to my good grades, and if they had I would've more likely attributed it to a lack of any culture than to some inherent "learnin' is bad" aspect of black life. We were all racial anomalies, I guess.

Speaking of which, would any of you "it's their culture" proponents care to specify what it is in black culture you're talking about when you say that? Music? Food? Politics? Religion? Language? I can't really think of many universally shared traits in any of those categories, let alone specifically negative ones passed from parent to child. I think I asked in a previous thread, too (and I wasn't the only one), but nobody answered.

Thanks for the in-thread links, by the way. I still dislike McWhorter, but that article showed a more sympathetic side to him than I got from reading the first few pages of Losing the Race and giving up in the face of his smug, unfounded generalizations.
posted by tyro urge at 8:07 PM on May 23, 2003

fishfucker, if you'd read through the EBE article linked, you would have been pleased to see John McWhorter interviewed at some length.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:11 PM on May 23, 2003

You're all diseased.

The very fact that anyone could seriously countenance the idea that anything -- anything -- is other than orders of magnitude less important to the achievement of these students than personal responsibility is laughable, and shows in clear contrast once again how deeply fucked, irreemably politicized, and divorced from any kind of reality discussions of this kind are in America. It's always someone else's fault in the good ol' US of A.

Paragraph 5 in that McWhorter piece fishfucker links above says, in its entirety :

How interesting, then, to discover that McWhorter is one of those liberals.

No, fuck you, it is not interesting, Mr Thompson. It could only be claimed to be interesting after artificially setting the stage by spending paragraphs devoted to talking about worthless left/right/conservative/liberal labels that distract from the real issues, which you carefully did. Cheap rhetorical device, and infuriatingly patronizing.

Gah.

One thing I don't see in the discussion so far is a posting from someone who has experienced the corrosive, soul-destroying effects of racism directed at him- or herself personally.

I experience it on a daily basis and excel, regardless. Thus my relentlessly cheery demeanor.

You either game the system or you lose, and if someone doesn't understand that, I'm really not interested in hearing them moan about how others have failed them. They have failed themselves.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:41 PM on May 23, 2003

The very fact that anyone could seriously countenance the idea that anything -- anything -- is other than orders of magnitude less important to the achievement of these students than personal responsibility is laughable

I disagree, Stav. The slope of the playing field matters; if it's a long way from level, no amount of "taking responsibility" is going to solve the problem.

I experience it on a daily basis and excel, regardless.

I think you are missing the point here. We're not talking about being the funny foreigner by choice, we're talking about people descended from slaves ferfucksake. Generation after generation of institutionalised racism followed by a gradual decline in outright racism that has yet to dispel the miasma of white privilege. I readily concede that you know more about what racism feels like than I, but I would argue that neither of us know what it feels like to grow up under its malign influence, born to parents who grew up likewise.

You can't point at these kids who are doing poorly despite apparent advantages and say "it's all their fault". The situation is more complex than that. Lack of parental involvement and the students' academic disengagement look like symptoms to me, not causes. At the very least, I think it would make it easier for these kids to take responsibility if they had a clearer idea of their own motivations and desires, and of the roots of same.
posted by sennoma at 11:52 PM on May 23, 2003

Tyro - I was gonna answer your question but as I did I kept opening up more and more things to mention and it ended up being this big redundantly retarded post and man like the intarweb really needs more of those. Just to let you know I thought about it but didn't.

To whomever asked if this was just an American thing: uh, dunno. Not aware of any forced-immigration vs. voluntary-immigration populations to compare elsewhere. Or more accurately, I don't know if any such populations have been studied if someone found 'em.

On preview: sennoma, no one is saying "it's all their fault". People are saying "there are a couple steps no one but them can take and those who take them are the exceptions to the rule." (hoorah for referring to big group of people as "them")
posted by kavasa at 11:59 PM on May 23, 2003

Also on review: I'd say it's less the kids and more the parents. You gotta get in there and ask Johnny about school and pester & help him with homework and call his teachers and so on and so forth.
posted by kavasa at 12:01 AM on May 24, 2003

we're talking about people descended from slaves

Bah. We're all descended from slaves, one way or another. Some remain slaves, some do not, and that's the crux of my ranty shit here.

You can't point at these kids who are doing poorly despite apparent advantages and say "it's all their fault".

Nobody's doing that, least of all me. What I'm saying is it's mostly their fault, and that of their parents, and the sooner people - black, white, green or purple - take responsibility for their own lives, the better chance they'll have of not turning out to be the whining turds they so often grow up to be. You say symptom, I say cause; it's all good. Polite disagreement about stuff like this is what is supposed to have made America (or, er, Australia) great, right?

There's no such thing as a level playing field. There never will be. Some people are smarter or better looking, some are born into wealthy families or poorer, some are healthy and some are sickly. The advantaged may coast and succeed, the disadvantaged may work their tits off and fail, (or the reverse may happen, although it rarely does, perhaps) and that's just the way the cookie bounces. Nothing will ever change this, and that's as it should be.

I feel bad about the evils perpetrated on the ancestors of black Americans. I feel bad about the Holocaust too, and the Khmer Rouge, and about a hundred thousand other bad things that have happened, but when someone tells me, directly or by proxy, that they are unable to personally succeed, overcome adversity, because of one or more those things, I lose interest. Maybe that's just me, being callous.

I wasn't missing the point (I realize my comparing my 'choice' to live where I do is an apples and (if not oranges, maybe) pears analogy) - I was attempting to show that the point was nonsense.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:10 AM on May 24, 2003

What drives me screaming apeshit to the wall is the thought that there's any ONE primary cause for anything as complex as this.

Consider: there's unconscious and, yes, overt racism at play. Yes, there is.

There's the outright pathological communal dynamic that correlates academic success with "acting white." Equally ineluctably real: I saw it with my own eyes every day when I taught at Martin Luther King, Jr., High School in NYC.

There's the unavoidably subjective nature of academic grading in the high school setting. Some teachers do NOT grade in good faith, or enough anyway to cast real doubt about any imputed objectivity in the process.

There are kids, black and just as often white, who think they don't have to lift a finger because they're athletically talented or popular or connected and the school wouldn't dare fail them.

All of these are real factors. So I would dare to venture that there are almost as many "reasons" for academic underachievement as there are underachievers, with different factors coming into play to a greater or lesser degree in each particular case. Of course, this doesn't make for a nice sound bite, or a stirring plank in a party platform, or reinforce our comfortable notions of correctness (whether "liberal" or "conservative.")

When are folks gonna twig to the fact that "both/and" is a surer guide to these sorts of situations than "either/or"?
posted by adamgreenfield at 12:27 AM on May 24, 2003

When are folks gonna twig to the fact that "both/and" is a surer guide to these sorts of situations than "either/or"?

I'd amend 'these sorts of situations' to 'damn near every situation', but you're right, of course, adam.

The problem is, is most folks are both lazy and stupid (heh), and not being able to reduce things to neat cause and effect is terrifying. How would we know who to hate, and what to declare war on, then?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:37 AM on May 24, 2003

grrarrgh00 did a post on John Ogbu not too long ago. It was one of the best discussions I've had on MetaFilter.

I'm glad such a forum exists where people can talk hot topics with such (relative) civility.
posted by dgaicun at 1:17 AM on May 24, 2003

Oops... missed grrarrgh00's above comment with the link. Sorry!
posted by dgaicun at 1:29 AM on May 24, 2003

Interesting old thread - missed it the first time round, just skimmed it, will go back and read more carefully now. Thanks.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:38 AM on May 24, 2003

What stavrosthewonderchicken has said in this thread...

Having said that, I should look for my meds because I can't believe I agree with him on anything...
posted by Plunge at 8:01 AM on May 24, 2003

Yes, that discussion was also one of the best I've had here on MetaFilter. It made me confront my own preconceptions and prejudices, something which maybe doesn't happen often enough. Now that you've discovered it, I won't recapitulate it in a magnum opus.

Among the things I've been stewing on between then and now is this idea of "success" that dgaicun complicated rather interestingly, and that gets bandied about rather unexamined. From the point when "success" in America was measured by how many blacks you owned to the point where formal social and legislative barriers no longer restricted black access to the bearers of the vast majority of the nation's wealth (a period of over two hundred years), a black notion of "success" naturally developed in counterpoint to white society, a notion that necessarily preferred excellence in non-financial, non-academic areas, areas in which the resources they were allotted permitted them to be competitive with whites. Like, say, music and sports, among other things. I'd submit that the black saturation of the music and athletic industries today is a symptom of this fact, rather than any super-significant genetic predisposition black folks have towards rhythm and athleticism.

It wasn't until 1965 that America's courts forced the nation to grudgingly say, "All right, then, welcome to the club" and inform black people that "success" actually means being the richest and smartest. Meanwhile, we've developed generations upon generations of heroes who are not scientists, or tycoons, or presidents, or explorers, but who are performers. Click some random names in Britannica's Guide to Black History, and see who black kids have been taught to look up to above all.

For a couple centuries at least, blacks in America were told that success for them was measured by how well they entertained. All of a sudden in 1965, the rules were changed midstream, and success for blacks was the same as everyone else -- real success at least was academic and monetary. Of course, this threatens to belittle the achievements of heroes blacks have upheld for so long -- with the exception of a random George Washington Carver here or a Blanche Bruce there, they were just writers, entertainers, athletes. This is what "acting white" means, in macrocosm. It means surrendering a value system that allows us to cherish Michael Jordan and Louis Armstrong above all others for a value system that upholds a couple hundred white guys above all others. Understand that this shift in cultural perspective is a bit difficult for some to make.

I have a cousin who's doing awfully in school, but devotes hours upon hours of time and effort every day to studying basketball, improving his basketball game. Is he lazy, stavros?? The reason people are so quick to dismiss Ogbu's clearly valuable research is it lets some folks (cough ... aacheson ... cough cough) assign blame soooooo easily. "Whew! So black social failure is all their fault, our work here is done." The matter of "fault" is a smokescreen, it's a matter of values. I mean, stavros, it's your fault you're not having enough man-on-dog sex. You need to take responsibility for your life.

This is a matter of figuring out how to communicate to black youths (who are, as tyro urge reminds us, not a monolithic community) that opening the door to academic success does not threaten the merit of artistic or athletic excellence. Plainly, despite the fact that their parents managed to assimilate the truth that black academic success is probably more beneficial to black society at this point than success in athletics or art, these students are still being fed a skewed view of success that very disproportionately favors black entertainers. There are a number of things I think we can do to combat this, and they do involve taking an honest look at Ogbu's findings. But they don't involve notions of "blame," "fault," or "failure" that lie askance of the phenomenon.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 8:30 AM on May 24, 2003

I didn't want to clutter this discussion, but I cannot find your email address, grrarrgh00.

It is rare that mefi introduces a truly new idea into my cynical, atrophied brain. I have been trying to wrap my head around this issue, but lacked the perspective.

Thank you for your comment. I think I get it.
posted by frykitty at 11:47 AM on May 24, 2003

notions of "blame," "fault," or "failure" that lie askance of the phenomenon.

Best post and best point on mefi in a month of Sundays. Thanks.

</cheerleader>
posted by sennoma at 12:13 PM on May 24, 2003

We're all descended from slaves, one way or another.

I'm not saying that the Shaker Heights kids bear no responsibility for their poor performance, any more than you are saying it's all their fault. I think we're arguing politely discussing where on that spectrum these kids lie.

I would dare to venture that there are almost as many "reasons" for academic underachievement as there are underachievers

Then why are the black kids doing worse than the white kids? If each case is different, why the correlation? Correlation does not imply causation, but it often indicates a relationship to the real cause. Thus being black is not why these kids are doing poorly, but being black may well be related to the reason for their underachievement (see, e.g., grrarrgh00's post).
posted by sennoma at 12:29 PM on May 24, 2003

It seems like Ogbu arrived at some of the same conclusions as Steele, but applied in the realm of education. Neither the parents nor students, according to Ogbu, took responsibility for their roles as individuals in an educational system - but instead deferred to the notion of the black community as a more important cultural force. And the black community, according to Ogbu, considered educational success a "white" thing.

While I don't necessarily agree with that last statement, I think there is the crux of something here. It sometimes seems to me that the black community is so focused on being black, retaining racial identity above and beyond all other considerations, that individual considerations are given short shrift. A huge amount of collective energy is focused toward this identity maintenance.

The 'white community' does not exist, except as a demographic. No energy, attitude, or focus is directed toward maintaining our 'whiteness.' In a closed system, there is only so much energy to expend. Perhaps it's a zero-sum game.
posted by umberto at 7:42 AM on May 25, 2003

Feh. grrarrgh00 preemptively says what I was going to and does it ten times better. What's left for me now? Let's see...

If I had to assign blame to the varying parties in this article, I would portion it out to each group (in decreasing order) thusly:

1) The students. To put it bluntly, I think these kids are defeatist losers. Their rationale for underachieving seems to go along the lines of "well, some people out there are racists, and they'd probably thwart our ambitions even if we did try, so let's not make the effort." I'm sorry, but that's just plain moron talk. Not that I don't recognize a kernel of truth in it-- yes, it's possible that they may be unfairly discriminated against at some point in their lives-- but damn, you're supposed to suck it up and try your best anyway! What, are you gonna try harder in your next life or something? I guess I'm pretty close to stavros' first post in that regard, although I was a bit leery of the "blame the victim" sentiment it seemed to contain. It's not all the students' fault, but they sure aren't helping things.

Sorry if that sounds excessively harsh, but the passivity and negativity behind that kind of attitude just irritates me to no end. On one hand, I can see how certain historical realities can give black students an overall impression that education is a blind alley for them. I've never had the "acting white" pejorative applied to me personally, but I think I can see how someone could couple a deep-seated belief in pervasive racism with a historical sense of how black people were routinely denied equal access to education and end up assuming that any black person foolish enough to challenge the perceived status quo is just deluding himself-- acting like skin color isn't a factor in a clearly racist world. I still say it's a pathetic and defeatist way to think, but I can see it.

I agree with what grrarrgh00 said about the overemphasis on sports and music: certain paths to wealth and fame were viable to blacks long before we were accepted into other fields, so they might be considered a safer bet. More black kids will have heard of Michael Jordan than of Ben Carson; people know who Halle Berry is, but mention the name Octavia Butler and you'll get blank looks. To many black people, athletics and entertainment are tried and true fields, where most intellectual careers were legally forbidden to them until about forty years ago. Again, I think it's a short-sighted take on things, but I can see how students might place more faith in the former than the latter.

(Sorry for venting. I'll be more concise, I swear.)

2) The parents. Hmm. Let's see. You don't know what's going on with your kids, so you ask an outsider to study them, ask them questions, delve into their lives... as you do what exactly? They basically got Ogbu to do what each of them should have done themselves. Parents, talk to your children! Find out for yourself what they're worrying about, what their hopes are, what obstacles they face and how you can help them get through them.

Or you could ask someone else to do it and get all huffy when they provide answers you don't like. Your choice, I guess.

3) The school. This is a distant third. There's nothing in the article that allows me to say that the school really did anything wrong, so why blame them?

I feel for anyone trying to teach a group that has already taken such a pessimistic view of education. How to help? I dunno-- maybe help them learn more about their own history? Show them that there have always been black people who pursued truth and knowledge, prospered financially by using their wits, and improved the world despite discrimination? Just try to teach them that succeeding in the face of racism has never been a hopeless task. Still, I would say that the bulk of the responsibility lies with the students themselves and their immediate families.

Heh, and I think that's all I have to say about that. Although...

Whenever I see a thread that has something to do with black people, I all but groan aloud. I do so because I am practically assured of a couple things.

First, there seems to be a very high probability that whatever premise (always negative) made in the initial post will be accepted uncritically throughout the course of the subsequent thread. Was it just me, or were there potentially valid critiques and questions about Ogbu's methods? Those seem to have vanished somewhere between the article and the Metafilter thread. Was it because they were irrelevant, or are people a bit more eager to lay the blame than evidence might objectively allow?

Second, there's the inevitable topic drift. Like a bill passing through Congress, a post about black people seems to draw all kinds of unrelated "rider" topics-- and they're typically pretty ugly, if you ask me. In the lead article, Ogbu is called in to figure out what's going on with a group of black students in a Cleveland community. How did we go from that conclusion about a specific group of students to broadsides against black people as a whole? When did terrorism and profiling come into play? Every time I see a post about black people on Metafilter, I just know I'll watch the discussion field grow increasingly wide-- and negative. I brace myself for race-based generalizations and I always find them. That thing I mentioned about black students not being able to name doctors and authors as readily as sports stars and musicians: isn't that just as broadly true for all students? Blacks frequently end up with the sole blame for that in these threads, as if the rest of the country is oh-so-focused on honoring brains and heart over looks and flashy skill. If prizing ignorance is a cultural problem, then I'd say it's an American cultural problem, and anyone trying to pin it exclusively on black people as if we invented it is being intellectually dishonest, if you ask me.

To sum up, I still say that this article highlights a recurring individual problem, brought on by a cultural vacuum (if culture figures into it at all) and a lack of parental involvement.

And if you read all this, wow, I salute you.
posted by tyro urge at 1:16 PM on May 25, 2003