THE “NINE LIVES” OF OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE?

Abstract

Some of the more influential research on race and education published in the last few decades comes from the work of John Ogbu and Signithia Fordham (Fordham 1988; Fordham and Ogbu, 1986; Ogbu 1978, 1987, 1991, 2003). In Ogbu's writing about the oppositional culture hypothesis, he argued that Black students frame their relationship to schooling through the lens of their historic marginalization in the United States. Out of their understanding of their systematic disenfranchisement, Ogbu suggested that “they not only generate theories [that] contradict dominant notions of status attainment and produce disillusionment about the instrumental value of school; but develop substantial distrust for school and its agents which then suppresses commitment to school norms” (Lewis et al., 2008, p. 259). Together, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) expanded on these ideas in their article on the “acting White” hypothesis suggesting that students not only disengage from school themselves, they also put pressure on their Black peers not to work hard in school lest they be accused of “acting White.” Together these two interconnected theories have gained substantial notoriety and have become part of the general commonsense about why Black students are not doing better in school—“the problem,” it is believed, is the academic disengagement or “oppositional culture” of African American students.