Structure and agency in resistance to schooling: Class, race, and the reproduction of unequal outcomes

Abstract

For low-income and marginalized racialized minority youth, declining prospects of mobility can undermine favorable attitudes toward schooling if adolescents anticipate limited utility in schooling. We find that adolescents' awareness of race and class inequality affects a complex set of attitudes toward schooling, and that these attitudes contribute to outcomes varying by race/ethnicity and class. We capitalize on a unique longitudinal dataset with a random stratified sample of 1428 Black and White high school graduates from a large school system. Using surveys and administrative data, we show how structural factors and student characteristics shape educational attitudes; and then how these attitudes, school structural features, student, family, and neighborhood factors predict educational outcomes. We find the common ground between Willis' resistance theory emphasizing class and Ogbu’s cultural-ecological model focusing on race. Results provide greater conceptual clarity for core constructs associated with both theories of resistance.