Why Are Black Students Lagging?

New York Times | 11/29/02 | FELICIA R. LEE

[kattracks]

he persistent academic gap between white and black students has touched off difficult and often ugly debates over the question why. Are racist stereotypes to blame? Substandard schools? Cultural attitudes?

This long-running argument may bubble up again next year with the arrival of a book that argues minority communities themselves contribute to student failure.

The book, "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement" (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), is by John U. Ogbu, an anthropology professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a well-known figure in the field of student achievement for more than three decades. Indeed, it was Mr. Ogbu's research that popularized the phrase "acting white" in the mid-1980's to help explain why black students might disdain behaviors associated with high achievement, like speaking standard grammatical English.

Now Mr. Ogbu is back, arguing with renewed fervor that his most recent research shows that African-Americans' own cultural attitudes are a serious problem that is too often neglected.

"No matter how you reform schools, it's not going to solve the problem," he said in an interview. "There are two parts of the problem, society and schools on one hand and the black community on the other hand."

Professor Ogbu's latest conclusions are highlighted in a study of blacks in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent Cleveland suburb whose school district is equally divided between blacks and whites. As in many racially integrated school districts, the black students have lagged behind whites in grade-point averages, test scores and placement in high-level classes. Professor Ogbu was invited by black parents in 1997 to examine the district's 5,000 students to figure out why.

"What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents; they don't know how their parents made it," Professor Ogbu said in an interview. "They are looking at rappers in ghettos as their role models, they are looking at entertainers. The parents work two jobs, three jobs, to give their children everything, but they are not guiding their children."

For example, he said that middle-class black parents in general spent no more time on homework or tracking their children's schooling than poor white parents. And he said that while black students talked in detail about what efforts were needed to get an A and about their desire to achieve, too many nonetheless failed to put forth that effort.

Those kinds of attitudes reflect a long history of adapting to oppression and stymied opportunities, said Professor Ogbu, a Nigerian immigrant who has written that involuntary black immigrants behave like low-status minorities in other societies.

Not surprisingly, he said, the parents were disappointed when he turned the spotlight on them as well as the schools. Peggy Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Shaker Heights City School District, said that minority families cared deeply about their children's academic achievement and the district was working with education experts to reduce the racial achievement gap. She noted that while Professor Ogbu called most of the black families in the district middle class, 10 to 12 percent live in poverty.

Also not surprisingly, many researchers take issue with some of Professor Ogbu's latest findings.

"When we asked if friends made fun of kids who do well in school, we don't find any racial difference in that," said Ronald F. Ferguson, a senior research associate at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who analyzed a new study of 40,000 middle and high school students in 15 middle class school districts, including Shaker Heights.

Indeed, the study, which was administered by the Minority Student Achievement Network, an organization that explores ways to close the racial achievement gap, found that African-American and Latino students work as hard and care as much about school as white and Asian students do.

Mr. Ferguson said that while minorities lag behind whites in things like homework completion, it is wrong to infer that they aren't interested in school. "High achievers are more often accused of acting white than low achievers, but it's because the low achievers suspect the high achievers believe they are superior."

"It's things like talking too properly when you're in informal social settings," he continued. "It's hanging around white friends and acting like you don't want to be with your black friends. It's really about behavior patterns and not achievement."

Mr. Ferguson speculated that what Professor Ogbu saw was a clumsy attempt by black students to search for a comfortable racial identity. "What does it mean to be black?" he said. "What does it mean to be white? The community needs to help kids make sense of their own identity."

"I would agree with Ogbu that there are youth cultural patterns and behaviors that are counterproductive for academic success," he went on, mentioning socializing in class and spending too much time watching television. "But when they engage in those behaviors, they are not purposely avoiding academic success."

Other researchers have zeroed in on other culprits, whether inferior schools, lower teacher expectations, impoverished family backgrounds or some combination.

Theories of black intellectual inferiority, too, have popped up from the 1781 publication of Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia" to "The Bell Curve" in 1994 and beyond. Given that sensitivity and the implications for policies like school desegregation and affirmative action, virtually every aspect of the academic gap has been examined.

Where Professor Ogbu found that some middle class blacks were clueless about their children's academic life, for example, Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, instead concluded that such parents were often excluded from the informal networks that white parents use for information about courses, gifted programs and testing. "I believe, based on my own research, that the center of gravity lies with the school system," she said.

Claude Steele, a Stanford University psychologist, meanwhile, has hypothesized that black students are responding to the fear of confirming lowered expectations.

And Walter R. Allen, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, said that even when racial minorities and whites attended the same schools, they could have radically different experiences because of tracking and teacher expectations.

Professor Allen is conducting a long-term project on college access for African-American and Latino high school students in California. In his view, black students sometimes underperform because of subtle exchanges with teachers who convey the message that they find the students inferior or frightening. And, he said, minority schools still overwhelmingly lack good teachers and adequate teaching tools.

He also pointed out that comparing the income level of black and white families, as Professor Ogbu did with his Midwestern subjects, can be misleading. Black incomes might be derived from two-career families juggling several jobs compared with a single breadwinner in white households.

Professor Ogbu is no stranger to controversy. His theory of "acting white" has been the subject of intense study since he first wrote about it in the mid-80's with Signithia Fordham, then a graduate student and now a professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester. They studied an inner-city Washington high school where students listed doing well in school among the "white" behaviors they rejected, like visiting the Smithsonian and dancing to lyrics rather than a beat.

The two anthropologists theorized that a long history of discrimination helped foster what is known in sociological lingo as an oppositional peer culture. Not only were students resisting the notion that white behavior was superior to their own, but they also saw no connection between good grades and finding a job.

Many scholars who have disputed those findings rely on a continuing survey of about 17,000 nationally representative students, which is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the federal government. This self-reported survey shows that black students actually have more favorable attitudes than whites toward education, hard work and effort.

But that has by no means settled the debate. In the February issue of the American Sociological Review, for example, scholars who tackled the subject came to opposite conclusions. One article (by three scholars) said that the government data were not reliable because there was often a gap between what students say and what they do; another article by two others said they found that high-achieving black students were especially popular among their peers.

"It's difficult to determine what's going on," said Vincent J. Roscigno, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University who has studied racial differences in achievement. "`I'm sort of split on Ogbu. It's hard to compare a case analysis to a nationally representative statistical analysis. I do have a hunch that rural white poor kids are doing the same thing as poor black kids. I'm tentative about saying it's race-based."

Indeed, Professor Mickelson of the University of North Carolina found that working class whites as well as middle-class blacks were more apt to believe that doing well in school compromised their identity.

All these years later, Professor Fordham said, she fears that the acting-white idea has been distorted into blaming the victim. She said she wanted to advance the debate by looking at how race itself was a social fiction, rooted not just in skin color but also in behaviors and social status.

"Black kids don't get validation and are seen as trespassing when they exceed academic expectations," Professor Fordham said, echoing her initial research. "The kids turn on it, they sacrifice their spots in gifted and talented classes to belong to a group where they feel good."

[aristeides]

I looked up a table on normal distributions, so I need to correct those last figures, as I was confusing location at either end of the bell-shaped curve with location at one end of it. IQ of 100 or above represents above the average for whites, one standard deviation above the average for blacks: this is 50% of whites, 16% of blacks. IQ of 115 or above represents one standard deviation above the average for whites, two standard deviations for blacks: this is 16% of whites, and 2.3% of blacks. IQ of 130 represents two standard deviations above the average for whites, three standard deviations for blacks: this is 2.3% of whites, 0.13% of blacks.

[aristeides]

And if what I have read about Asians in America being a half a standard deviation above whites on IQ is correct, then the equivalent figures for them are as follows: IQ above 100, 69%; IQ above 115, 31%; IQ above 130, 7%.

[FITZ]

The "root cause" of this disparity is IQ. That my seem unpalatable to some, but the science is there.

Of course science also never said that IQ is 100% genetic. Early childhood learning and other cultural influences have a role in IQ, also maternal health ---no drug/alcohol use etc, and family environment are big factors in IQ development.

[FITZ]

And lead exposure is a big one.

[Pahuanui]

Asians average IQ (115), Whites (100), American Blacks (85--given that most American blacks have approximately 20% White inheritance), and African Blacks (70--and 70 is borderline retarded). Given our relatively open economic and politial system, those with higher IQs cannot help but do better in wealth, education, etc. What more need be said? Why more money wasted? How many more white children must be sacrificed needlessly in forcefully segregated schools?

My, what a novel take on the subject. You rely entirely too much on 'givens', without substantiation of just how they are either defined or have developed over time.

The foundation of this entire boondoggle is the assumption that categories in use are possible, much less accurate and therefore useful for analysis. I assert that the existence or non existence of genetically determined human races cannot be demonstrated at this point in time. There are certain characteristics that are genetically inherited including skin colour, hair type and others, although no one characteristic is restricted to any one race or group. Skin colour is inherited, and yet at present we cannot show where this is determined in the human genome, therefore our knowledge is inadequate to prove or disprove that genetic races even exist.

Since the 60's with the research of Arthur Jensen (from Berkeley BTW), studies have shown that regardless of Headstart, new Schools, better teachers, even socio-economics, etc. etc. etc., blacks will dramatically do worse than Whites. It cannot be avoided.

On what basis do you justify extrapolating that conclusion from limited data over roughly 30 years?

Just think of the tens of billions wasted in these thirty plus years, and that ignores the damage done to white children exposed to all of this nonsense.

What damage? Please be very specific.

The answer, of course, was to have been honest with blacks from the start, reduced prejudice, opened up society so that Blacks could have traveled freely, and worked as migrant rural workers or a similar servant class throughout the sourth and west instead of what actually happened--blacks concetrating in northern urban squalor, and the introduction of a whole different third race into this country--Indians from Mexico.

Why would you assume that blacks would have travelled the country in search of menial jobs? If, as you put it, society had been opened up, educational opportunites available to white children would have also have been there for black children.

Your 'theory' doesn't address the potential that instead of living in norther urban squalor, they could instead have lived in squalor in urban areas other than in the north, or perhaps in rural squalor. Nor does it recognize that they moved to northern cities as specific times to work jobs in the very categories you cite, and it ignores that they left the south for the jobs in the north to make a better life for themselves than they believed they could have in the south.

In the end, of course, the rise of the Indians from Mexico to more than a third of the US's population in the next 50 years will make completely irrelevant the black race in the US, and White people's inability or design in failing to tell blacks the truth will be largely responsible for that.

Riiiiiight. One can't help but notice all those Tarahumaras and Ixcatecos virtually overrunning the entire nation.

Why if your mathematical abilites are anywhere near as good as your acute observations, I'll bet they could black citizens irrelevant in half that time. /sarcasm.

If I were black in the US, of course, I'd move back to Africa, and I'd use white guilt in the US to finance all of it.

If your obvious manufactured cocern for the welfare of blacks were any more transparent, you'd be pane glass.

Most importantly, in Africa, I wouldn't be 'black', I'd be 'colored' given my 20% white ancestry, and consequently I'd immediately rise to the top of the socio/political/economic class.

You don't know what you're talking about. You'd only be 'colored' in apartheid South Africa, Einstein, and they aren't the top of any of those classes. Elsewhere you'd be misunderstood and not anything of particular note, as many black citizens have found when visiting Africa.

Instead of living in some urban hell-hole in Detroit or D.C. I'd be running a factory in some small town or I'd be in the open air on some farm with dozens of natives working for me.

Your ignorance of Africa and social/cultural dynamics is astounding and, sadly, not unexpected.

Tell me, do you recommend to white citizens in poor urban areas to return to the European country of their heritage, at taxpayer cost?

[wingnuts'nbolts]

Could well known or prominent successful blacks calling Colin Powell and Condi Rice black house slaves have anything to do with student's attitudes?

[Fzob]

Unless I'm mistaken you stated that someone who replied to me was blowing smoke out of their arse. I asked you about it because her story about her childhood and my circumstances were very similar. In other words her story seem plausible to me but you don't seem to believe it so I asked you why you thought it was BS.


As for my cherrios comment, you seemed rather testy about the whole thing.

Perhaps I'm mistaken.

[litehaus]

"lack of self-discipline = failure at school"

Lack of self discipline = 80% Bastardy Rate

[FITZ]

What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents; they don't know how their parents made it,"

Are they comparing non-Affirmative Action homes with other non-Affirmative Action homes? It wouldn't be quite fair to compare whites whose parents didn't benefit from AA with blacks whose parents did. I wonder what would happen if you compared only those who completely made it on their own ---maybe children of military parents.

[FITZ]

where upper-middle-class whites adopt black babies.

But even there you don't rule out prenatal influences ---and the fact that the babies were put up for adoption would imply there was a likelihood of some prenatal factor that made the natural mother less capable of raising their baby.

[FITZ]

I've seen a couple examples first hand where white children whose biological mothers were excessive drinkers/drug users and were adopted into middle and upper middle class homes and they also did not do as well as other adopted siblings or natural born children to those same families. Romanian orphans would be a good example ---they also do not do as well because of early influences. I wonder if there's ever been any study where all factors were considered?

[spintreebob]

As I kid I never thought what does it mean to be white. Amen

When I grew up, there were individualists and rugged individualists. I was raised with the idea that I must read and interpret the Bible for myself; that I should never trust other's interpretation. Max Weber referred to this in the Spirit of Capitalism.

I was oblivious to role models. The question was: What did God want me to be, and to do? I see a small number of my Black neighbors raising their kids exactly the same way. The pre-school kid is reading the King James Bible just as I did. Some Korean families near me also have that personal salvation and reading the Bible for ones self approach.

I see some Sikhs and Moslems raising their kids the same way. They are just using a different book. Maybe for others, the motivation is money and power, not religion.

Conclusion: A religious revival/awakening might be the solution. I'd like to see a study of the MillionMan March and PromiseKeepers (two arms of the same movement). A PromiseKeepers style religious conversion to personal responsibility might just be the answer to our social problems.

[SBprone]

"Sowell is a smart, positively adapted guy. Had he wanted to be an air traffic controler, he'd have started five points up over me."


Don't take this personally but your post is BS!

Sowell is a lot older than he looks. When he came up there was no affirmative action. Actually it worked sort of the reverse of the way it is now. His generation had to meet a standard that was higher, not lower.

[SBprone]

And he's still meeting a higher standard!

[Rocksalt]

"Pop culture has created a generation of "feel-good slackers" who do as they please."

Pop culture as in irresponsible elements of the music and movie industry who have chosen to market the most violent and criminal elements of black culture.There are many hip-hop artists who realise this and are trying to put out positive material with an intent on having good influences on their communitys.These are the real community voices,not the gangsters who are capitalizing on misery.
I feel human potential is related to how it's nurtured and to say any race of people has more potential than another is simply hogwash put forth by people who want to reinforce the virtues of their own race.

[SBprone]

OK. Guess why.