Jesus and the streets

Abstract

In this article, against John Ogbu’s oppositional culture theory and Claude Steele’s disidentification hypothesis, this work offers a more appropriate neo-Marxian hermeneutical framework for contextualizing, conceptualizing, and evaluating the locus of causality for the black male/female intra-racial gender academic achievement gap in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Positing that in general the origins of the black/white academic achievement gap is grounded in what Paul C. Mocombe refers to as a “mismatch of linguistic structure and social class function.” Within Mocombe’s neo-Marxist theoretical framework the intra-racial gender academic achievement gap between black boys and girls is a result of the social class functions associated with the urban street life where the majority of urban black males achieve their status, social mobility, and economic gain, and the black church where black females are overwhelmingly more likely to achieve their status, social mobility, and drive for economic gain via education and professionalization.