Defiance and Black Students’ Resistance to Cultural Racism

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines defiance as a strategy for resisting cultural racism in schools. Black Caribbean students in London practiced institutional defiance, targeting the school rather than the individuals within it. In contrast, Black Caribbean students in New York practiced interpersonal defiance, identifying specific teachers, rather than the school, as problematic and culturally racist. In London and New York, Black Caribbean young people’s strategies were informed, not by ethnic culture, but by different school contexts. In a school where Black Caribbeans were advantaged but individual teachers consciously or unconsciously constrained their identities, like Newlands in New York, interpersonal defiance predominated. Where Black Caribbeans were disadvantaged by structures of power, not necessarily individual teachers, as in Londerville in London, institutional defiance emerged as a common form of resistance. In both cases, however, defiance emerged when the burden of cultural (mis)representation and the weight of cultural racism proved too much to bear.