Effort Optimism in the Classroom

Abstract

Do black and white students hold similar beliefs about the causes of life opportunities? Disparities in academic performance between blacks and whites have been attributed, in part, to differing attitudes about the relationship between education and life opportunities. Advocates of oppositional culture theory argue that black students consider structural barriers to have more influence on prosperity than do their own efforts in the classroom; detractors contend that black and white students equally consider individual academic performance to be key to future life opportunities. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study, 1988 through 1992, the author demonstrates that students simultaneously accept both structural and individualistic explanations for prosperity. Black students report greater support for structural explanations than do white students, but they report equal or greater support for the relevance of education to their futures. The author finds that, while black and white students do differ in their optimism about future opportunities, dissimilar attitudes about social structure, rather than education, are accountable for this.