Diamond et al. 2007

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Race and school achievement in a desegregatedsuburb: reconsidering the oppositional cultureexplanationJohn B. Diamond a; Amanda E. Lewis b; Lamont Gordon ca Harvard University, USAb University of Illinois at Chicago, USAc Brown University, USA

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oppositional culture explanation', International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20:6, 655 - 679To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/09518390701630791URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518390701630791

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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in EducationVol. 20, No. 6, November-December 2007, pp. 655–679

ISSN 0951-8398 (print)/ISSN 1366-5898 (online)/07/060655–25© 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09518390701630791

Race and school achievement in a desegregated suburb: reconsidering the oppositional culture explanationJohn B. Diamonda*, Amanda E. Lewisb and Lamont GordoncaHarvard University, USA; bUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, USA; cBrown University, USATaylor and Francis LtdTQSE_A_262925.sgm10.1080/09518390701630775International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education0951-8398 (print)/1366-5898 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis206000000November–December [email protected]

Recent research suggests that oppositional culture and a burden of acting White are likely toemerge for Black students in desegregated schools in which Whites are perceived as having greatereducational opportunities. Using interviews with Black and White students in one desegregatedsecondary school, this ‘school structures’ argument is assessed. While Black students perceive race-based limitations to their opportunities for getting ahead and are cognizant of racial patterns oftrack placement within the local school context, the authors found no evidence that Black studentsoppose school achievement. These findings are important because they shed light on some of theeducational dilemmas that Black students encounter, which have received limited attention in priorwork on oppositional culture. These dilemmas include cross-race peer pressure from Whitesamong high-achieving Black students and dilemmas of low achievement among Black studentswho struggle academically. Based on the findings, future lines of research are suggested that mighthelp researchers better understand racial achievement disparities in such contexts.

Recent research on oppositional culture has focused on the importance of school struc-tures (e.g. student racial composition and race-based educational tracking patterns) inshaping how and whether students experience negative peer pressure (Tyson et al.,2005; Fryer, 2006; Mickelson; 2006; Tyson, 2006). While most recent work does notfind support for pervasive or distinctive oppositional culture among Black adolescents(Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey, 1998; Downey & Ainsworth-Darnell, 2002; Tysonet al., 2005; Harris, 2006, (but see Farkas, Lleras & Maczuga, 2002, for a notableexception) some work suggests that Black students in desegregated schools in whichrace and social class shape course placement and access to educational resources arelikely to experience some race-based opposition to education among their peers

*Corresponding author. Harvard Graduate School of Education, 418 Gutman Library, 6 AppianWay, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]

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656 J. B. Diamond et al.

(Tyson et al., 2005; Tyson, 2006),1 to pay a popularity penalty for high achievement(Fryer, 2006), or to disengage from education (Ogbu, 2003).2

In this article, we build on this recent literature by examining students’ experiencesin one such desegregated context. We summarize the oppositional culture argumentand use interview data to assess the oppositional culture hypothesis in the context ofa racially diverse suburban high school. In line with John Ogbu’s (1978, 1990, 1991)original argument regarding the source of students’ oppositional culture, we findthat Black students are more likely than White students to perceive racial inequalityin their schools and communities and to anticipate that race will limit their lifechances. However, unlike Ogbu, we do not find that Black students’ beliefs translateinto the development of pervasive or distinctive oppositional orientations towardeducation.

Instead, we find that small and nearly equivalent numbers of high-achieving Blackand White students experienced negative peer pressure related to their academicachievement. When it occurred, students reported that this negative peer pressurewas only a limited distraction and did not affect their academic behaviors. In addi-tion, many high-performing Black students reported experiencing negative feedbackfrom White peers and teachers in honors and advanced placement (AP) classes. Infact, these students report challenges negotiating predominantly White honors andAP classes as often as they reported challenges relating to African-American peersoutside these classes. This highlights an additional challenge in managing academicsuccess among Black students (Horvat & Lewis, 2003) to which prior research onoppositional culture has given limited attention. Finally, low-achieving Blackstudents reported high levels of positive peer pressure—support for school achievementamong their peers in the form of encouragement to improve their performance. Infact, low-achieving Black students were more concerned about the implications oflow achievement than high achievement, and they reported being negatively sanc-tioned by their peers for doing poorly in school. We would not expect these patternsof positive peer pressure and sanctioning for poor performance if a culture of opposi-tion to schooling existed among Black students. Moreover, this suggests that bothhigh- and low-achieving students experience achievement dilemmas.

This study contributes to the oppositional culture debate in multiple ways. First,we assess the oppositional culture argument in a desegregated suburban high schoolin which educational tracks are racially identifiable—just the type of school in whichrecent research suggests that oppositional culture among Black students is mostlikely to be found (Ogbu, 2003; Tyson et al., 2005; Fryer, 2006). Second, we drawon a large sample of Black and White students in one desegregated suburban school.Some prior work in such contexts, which emphasizes Black students’ disengagement(Ogbu, 2003), is limited because only Black students and not White students wereinterviewed and, as a result, distinguishing between general patterns of school resis-tance that occur among all students and those that might be specific to Blackstudents’ peer groups is difficult (Tyson et al., 2005; Diamond, 2005. Third, weexamine the achievement dilemmas experienced by both high- and low-achievingstudents. While much prior work emphasizes the experiences of high-achieving

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Race and school achievement in a desegregated suburb 657

students (O’Connor, 1997; Akom, 2003; Horvat & Lewis, 2003; Tyson et al., 2005;but see Carter, 2005, 2006 for exceptions), we examine how both high and lowachievers negotiate peer dynamics and school achievement and provide a rich pictureof these relationships.

We argue that an oppositional culture is not pervasive among Black students, evenin this desegregated school where prior work suggests a burden of acting White mightbe prevalent (Tyson et al., 2005; Fryer, 2006). Our research adds to the body of workthat challenges the oppositional culture argument (Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey,1998; Downey & Ainsworth-Darnell, 2002; Carter, 2005; Tyson et al., 2005) but alsosuggests paying attention to issues that have received comparatively less attentionsuch as the achievement dilemmas faced by struggling students and the added burdenof high achievement for Black students emerging from low expectations of themexhibited by White teachers and peers.

The oppositional culture argument

In the past, much of the conversation about gaps in school achievement has invokedthe supposed academic disengagement or ‘oppositional culture’ of African-Americanstudents to explain their lower average outcomes. This oppositional culture frame-work was perhaps best outlined in the work of John Ogbu. According to Ogbu (1978,1990, 1991), when we try to understand the experiences of racial minorities in USschools, we need to distinguish involuntary from voluntary minorities. Involuntaryminorities who were historically forcibly incorporated into the US through coloniza-tion and slavery have very different relationships to dominant institutions like schoolsthan voluntary minorities who have come to the US through their own free will. Whilevoluntary minorities tend to favorably compare their situation in the US to theirformer condition in their homeland, involuntary minorities view their status througha comparison with the dominant group in the US—Whites—and understand that,relatively, their opportunities are constrained along a number of dimensions. Withthis understanding of the many social, political and institutional barriers members oftheir group face when trying to succeed, Ogbu hypothesized that involuntary minor-ities would develop an oppositional culture, disassociating from these circumscribeddomains and limiting the effort they put forth to succeed in them. Ogbu’s originaltheory thus envisaged a complex relationship between structural constraints (in bothschool and society) and cultural responses wherein there existed a tightly linked recip-rocal relationship between involuntary minorities’ experience of limited opportunityand what he predicted to be their negative personal attitudes and resistance towardsschooling.

Building on this general theory, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) argued that high-achieving black students are faced with the ‘burden of acting White.’ That is, theysuggest, as part of the process of disidentifying with structural and cultural formationsthat prescribe their opportunities, African-Americans define a whole set of behaviors,styles, and symbols as ‘White,’ including doing well in school. Therefore, Fordhamand Ogbu argue, African-Americans generally reject school as a ‘White domain’ and,

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related to that, individual African-American students feel pressure from their peersnot to work hard in school lest they be accused of ‘acting White.’

In fact, since the mid-1980s, the ‘acting White’ hypothesis and the related opposi-tional culture argument has captured scholarly and popular imagination in discus-sions of educational achievement (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Farkas et al., 2002;Rodriguez, 2002; Horvat & Lewis, 2003; Ogbu, 2003; Carter, 2005; Tyson et al.,2005; Fryer, 2006). The acting White hypothesis and the correlate explanation thatblack students under-perform in school because their peers discourage them fromachieving has taken on a life of its own in popular culture as arguably the explanationfor Black–White achievement gaps (O’Connor et al., 2006). Despite its popularity inthe press, a recent spate of research has begun to question this thesis, challenging theidea that Black students either possess an oppositional orientation toward educationor reject school as a ‘White thing’ (O’Connor, 1997, 1999; Ainsworth-Darnell &Downey, 1998; Cook & Ludwig, 1998; Carter, 2005; Tyson, 2002; Tyson et al.,2005; Horvat & O’Connor, 2006).

Oppositional culture and school context

While analyses of national data sets find little support for oppositional culture argu-ments, increasing attention is being paid to the ways in which variations in schoolstructures might influence experiences of racially based oppositional culture. Forexample, Tyson and her colleagues (2005) interviewed secondary school students ineight North Carolina schools and found that Black adolescents were achievementoriented and experienced very little racialized negative peer pressure. They also foundstrong similarities in the experiences of high-achieving Black and White adolescents,suggesting that achievement dilemmas exist for all high-achieving students. In the fewcases in which race-based peer pressure was found (only two of 40 Black students,both of whom attended the same school, reported experiencing race-based negativepeer pressure) it was in desegregated schools in which Whites were perceived ashaving greater educational opportunities. As Tyson et al. write:

[racialized oppositionality] is more likely to be part of the local school culture of schoolsin which socio-economic status differences between Blacks and Whites are stark andperceived as corresponding to patterns of placement and achievement. (2005, p. 601)

Therefore, while Tyson and her colleagues reject core components of the actingWhite hypothesis, they argue that in racially mixed schools, with ‘large Black–Whiteincome and [course] placement gaps’ (2005, p. 599), more evidence of racializedopposition to schooling and animosity among students might be found.

Research related to oppositional culture and the burden of acting White in deseg-regated schools has found mixed results, however. Some work supports the argumentthat particular school structures might be associated with students’ opposition toeducation (Ogbu, 2003; Mickelson, 2006; Fryer, 2006). For example, Fryer (2006)tested the relationship between achievement and popularity among Black students,using his admittedly ‘narrow’ definition of ‘acting White.’ He found that among Black

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students popularity increases as grades improve until they reach a 3.5 grade pointaverage, at which point their popularity drops off substantially.3 However, thispattern is found only in racially desegregated schools, not predominantly Black schools,suggesting that the phenomenon might be more pronounced in desegregated contextsand lending partial support to Tyson and her colleagues’ (2005) argument about theimportance of school structures. As Fryer argues, ‘acting White is a vexing problemwithin a subset of American schools…. But I find that the way schools are structuredaffects the incidence of the acting White phenomenon’ (2006, p. 54). Unfortunately,Fryer can only speculate about the dynamics driving these patterns because thesurvey data he uses do not capture students’ racial beliefs and cannot unpack themeaning they attach to the relationship between school achievement and popularity.

Ogbu’s (2003) study of race and achievement in Shaker Heights, OH, a raciallydesegregated suburban school district outside Cleveland, suggested that Blackstudents (and parents) were disengaged from the educational process in comparisonwith Whites. He argued that Black students suffered from a low-effort syndrome—they ‘were not highly engaged in their school work or homework’ (Ogbu, 2003,p. 18), which contributed to racial achievement gaps. However, because he onlyinterviewed Black students, and relied primarily on their perceptions of Whites as hisevidence of Whites’ behaviors, it is unclear whether or not Blacks were any more orless engaged in school than Whites in this context.

While the studies by Fryer (2006) and Ogbu (2003) provide partial support forTyson and her colleagues’ ‘school structure’ argument regarding oppositionalculture, other work in similar school districts (racially desegregated schools) findslittle support for this argument. Survey research from 15 affluent suburban districts(including Shaker Heights) does not show high levels of oppositional orientations ordisengagement among Black students (Ferguson, 2002). In fact, results from thatsurvey of 40,000 middle and high school students show that African-Americanstudents were more likely than their peers to report that their friends think it is ‘veryimportant’ to ‘study hard and get good grades.’ Very few students of any racereported that their friends ‘make fun of people who try to do really well in school’(Ferguson, 2002). Finally, as with the research using nationally representative datasets, students from all racial groups taking similar classes report spending about thesame amount of time on homework (with the exception of Asian students who spenda bit more time) (Ferguson, 2002).

Thus, work focused on oppositional culture in desegregated schools has reachedcontradictory findings. It remains unclear whether or not an oppositional cultureexists among Black students in desegregated suburbs. Do high-achieving Blackstudents in one such suburban school face an added burden because of negative peerpressure from Black peers? Does a culture of ambivalence toward school achievementexist among lower achieving Black students in this context?

We answer these questions based on data from a study of a desegregated suburbanhigh school in the context of the following presuppositions. In order for the opposi-tional culture argument to be supported, Black students must perceive that racialdiscrimination will limit their chances of getting ahead in life and this perception must

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result in the development of oppositional orientations toward school among Blackstudents. If an oppositional culture exists among Black students, high-achievingAfrican-American students should perceive facing peer sanctions for academicachievement and, as a result, limit their academic striving or engage in efforts tomanage their academic success (Horvat & Lewis, 2003). Moreover, if this negativepeer pressure is to explain the achievement gap, it must be pervasive and more commonamong high-achieving Black students than among high-achieving White students.Finally, if an oppositional culture exists among Black students, low-achieving Blackstudents should be discouraged from academic striving by their peers and be ambiv-alent about their own academic performance.4

The research context: Riverview High School

The setting for this research is Riverview, a mid-sized city located within a large metro-politan area. Though not nearly as diverse as the large city it abuts, Riverview is, rela-tive to most suburban communities in the metro area, quite diverse. It is a communitymany flock to precisely because of its diverse population and strong schools. RiverviewHigh School itself has a long history of success locally and nationally. The schoolgrounds are impressive including not only a large school building with numerous, far-flung wings, multiple swimming pools, gymnasiums, and state-of-the-art facilities forscience and art, as well as vocational training, but also numerous well-appointedathletic fields on several acres surrounding the school. In 2003–2004 the student bodyof over 3000 students was primarily Black and White with a significant minority ofLatino students (see Table 1). Just over 30% of the students come from low-incomefamilies. The school boasts many academic accomplishments. It has very high grad-uation rates (see Table 2), nearly 80% of its graduates attend college (including morethan 70% of African-American student graduates) and many national merit scholarshave attended the school. In many ways, the school is a picture of racial integrationand high student achievement.

This image, however, belies racial differences in family resources, residentialpatterns, and school achievement in Riverview. As shown in Table 3, median family

Table 1. Riverview School demographics 2003–2004

Riverview, 2003 – 2004 Students Teachers

White 1497 48.0% 184 72.9%Black/African-American 1288 41.3% 54 21.6%Hispanic 265 8.5% 10 4.0%Asian/Pacific Islander 65 2.1% 4 1.6%Native American 3 0.1% 0 0.0%Total 3118 100.0% 252 100.0%

Limited English proficient (of any race) 50 1.6% n/a n/aLow-income (of any race) 976 31.3% n/a n/a

Source: Riverview School Report Card (2004).

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income for whites is more than twice the black average. White families are more likelyto live in their own homes and far less likely to be poor. Disparities in parents’ educa-tion also exist. While nearly 75% of Whites over 25 years of age have graduatedcollege only 24% of African-Americans in the same age group are college graduates.

Residential segregation is also a major issue in Riverview. African-Americans areconcentrated in two areas of the city: the southern and westernmost areas (the indexof dissimilarity is 70%).5 Moreover, the areas with the largest African-Americanpopulations are also the lowest income census tracks.

Finally, there are major differences in school achievement. As shown in Table 4,while almost 90% of White students met or exceeded standards in both reading andmathematics, more than 70% of African-American students fell below standards onthe same tests.

Evidence suggests these differentials begin early. For example, looking more closelyat mathematics achievement, there are major differences in students’ course taking.During fourth grade students are tested in mathematics. Based on these tests, andteachers’ recommendations, they are placed on two different ‘tracks,’ one that leadsto higher level mathematics in high school (e.g. calculus by twelfth grade) and onethat does not. In this district, with its desegregated schools, students are differentiatedalong race lines in striking ways. In fifth grade, the vast majority of students placed inthe upper level mathematics sequence are White. By eighth grade, most of thesestudents have taken Algebra I, an important milestone for students to reach high level

Table 2. Riverview School graduation rates by race and ethnicity

Graduation rates, 2003–2004 Riverview (%) State (%)

White 95.8 91.8Black/African-American 86.7 74.0Hispanic 91.5 75.9Asian/Pacific Islander 100 75.9Native American n/a n/a


Table 3. Riverview community key demographics

Median family income (1999 dollars)

Families living in owner-occupied housing (%)

Individuals below poverty line (%)

White (not-Hispanic or Latino)

103,145 58.6 7.8

Black (not-Hispanic or Latino)

46,422 44.1 13.9

Hispanic or Latino 55,729 37.8 14.0Asian/Pacific Islander 63.438 24.1 14.3Native American n/a n/a n/a

Source: US Census Bureau, American FactFinder.

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mathematics before high school graduation. By the time students reach the twelfthgrade, very few African-American students are included in upper level mathematicscourses. While Blacks make up 40% of the student population in Riverview HighSchool, they make up only 9% of the students taking A.P. Calculus. In contrast,whites make up 50% of the student body but 82% of the students taking this class bytwelfth grade. Beyond just these higher level mathematics classes, Whites and Blacksare distributed differentially across course levels in all subjects. Riverview has essen-tially four instructional levels—levels 1 and 2, honors, and advanced placement. AsFigure 1 shows, African-American students are concentrated in levels 1 and 2, amuch smaller number are in honors courses in eleventh and twelfth grades, and fewerthan 10% ever take A.P. courses.Figure 1. Distribution of Black and White students in Regular, Honors, and Advanced Placement class levels at Riverview High SchoolTherefore, given the race-based socioeconomic inequality in the community, theracial composition of the school, and the unequal distribution of students across

Table 4. Riverview Grade 11 Achievement examination results by race and ethnicity: 2003–2004

Reading Mathematics

Riverview, 2003–2004Below

standards (%)Meet or exceed standards (%)

Below standards (%)

Meet or exceed standards (%)

White 10.4 89.6 10.4 89.6Black/African-American 70.5 29.4 74.8 23.2Hispanic 66.0 34.0 62.0 38.0Asian/Pacific Islander 29.4 70.6 23.5 76.4


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Regular Honors AP

Pe

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BlackWhiteLatino

Figure 1. Distribution of Black and White students in Regular, Honors, and Advanced Placement class levels at Riverview High School

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course levels, Riverview is just the kind of school in which we would expect to seeBlack students experiencing oppositional orientations among their peers and facing aburden of acting white (Ogbu, 2003; Tyson et al., 2005; Fryer, 2006).

Data and methods

The data for this study come from interviews with 70 Black and White students atRiverview High School and from existing school data including racial composition,course-taking patterns, and student achievement. Forty-two of these interviews werewith African-American students and 28 were with White students. We over-selectedAfrican-American students because we were particularly interested in their educa-tional experiences. In Table 5, we summarize some key student demographic charac-teristics.

We used school officials’ recommendations and data on students’ academic perfor-mance to identify our sample of respondents. We interviewed primarily tenth- and elev-enth-grade students (we also interviewed one ninth-grade student, four twelfth-gradestudents, and one recent graduate). These students’ achievement fell into one of threecategories. High achievers were students with grade point averages (GPA) between3.0 and 4.0 on a 4.0 scale. Moderate achievers had GPAs between 2.0 and 3.9, andlow achievers had GPAs below 2.0. We selected students at various achievement levels

Table 5. Selected characteristics of informants by race

Students Black White

42 28Social Class1

Middle 19 21Working 19 7Poor 2 0

Achievement LevelAbove 3.0 19 20Below 3.0 1 6Below 2.0 17 0

Ever taken Honors/AP Classes 25 24

Parents’ Education2

Advanced Degree 3 0BA/BS Degree 5 2Associate’s Degree 2 5Some College 4 0HS 19 5Less than High School 4 16

Notes: 1We were not able to determine social class for two of the African-American students. 2Among Black student, three students reported that their parents had attended school in other countries (one from Eritrea and two from Haiti) but that they did not know how much education they had obtained. In addition, two students were unsure about their parents’ educational backgrounds.

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because we were interested in understanding how their position in the achievementhierarchy shaped how they perceived the school’s peer culture dynamics. We felt thatthis was particularly important because students’ perceptions regarding other studentshave often been used as evidence of these other students’ attitudes and behaviors. Forinstance, Ogbu (2003) used Black students’ perceptions regarding their White peersas evidence of White students’ behaviors. This raised questions concerning the veracityof his claims. Likewise, many studies of oppositional culture examine high achieversor low achievers. We felt that it was important to examine high and lower achievingstudents simultaneously. We also collected data about respondents’ parents’ employ-ment and educational backgrounds and used this information to categorize studentsby social class.

The interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and were conducted at RiverviewHigh School. They were semi-structured interviews conducted by the authors as wellas by trained graduate students using a standard protocol. We were interested in gain-ing an understanding of students’ school experiences, their educational aspirationsand expectations, their perceptions of race and opportunity, and the beliefs aboutpeer dynamics that impacted on their school achievement. Because we were inter-ested in exploring the impact of peer relationships, specifically the ways that peersmight discourage students from educational engagement, we asked questions aboutsuch influences. However, we chose not to interject the term ‘acting White’ into theinterview. While others have asked students directly about the ‘acting White’ accusa-tion in order to unpack the meaning that students attach to it (e.g. Neal-Barnett,2001; Mickelson, 2006), we argue that, in our case, asking students if they or theirfriends avoid doing well in school because they might be accused of acting Whitecould potentially lead students to over-estimate the impact of the accusation and toconnect the accusation to academic achievement because this is suggested by thequestion. In the context of other studies, it makes sense to ask this question directly.However, our study is not about the ‘acting White’ accusation. It is an examinationof peer dynamics associated with academic achievement. We therefore asked students iftheir peers discouraged them from academic achievement—directly probing the rela-tionship between peer influence and student engagement and achievement.6 All ofthe interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. A research assistant ‘cleaned’ allof the interviews following transcription to ensure that the transcripts accuratelycaptured the interview exchanges.

Data analysis

We analyzed the data manually and with the assistance of the computer programsNVIVO 2.0 and N7.7 We read all of the transcripts and coded them for key factorsof interest. We coded demographic and descriptive data (e.g. students’ race, socialclass, GPA, and sex) at ‘case’ nodes. We also created 30 ‘topic’ nodes (whichincluded broad categories including ‘aspirations’, ‘expectations’, ‘perceptions ofschool’, ‘parents’, and ‘peers’; Richards, 2005). Connected to these broad categories,we created multiple sub-dimensions of these nodes. For instance, under the node for

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‘perceptions of school’ was the ‘child’ node ‘racial discrimination,’ and under thenode ‘peers’ were the ‘child’ nodes ‘peer pressure,’ ‘negative peer pressure,’ and‘positive peer pressure’ among others. We created profiles of individual studentsacross key dimensions of interest and created matrices that allowed us to visualizepatterns across cases (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

We used the textual and node-searching capabilities of NVIVO and N7 to help usunderstand broad patterns across the data. For example, we used text searches tocreate new nodes from which to conduct additional coding. We used the programs’index searching capabilities (such as matrix searches) to examine patterns acrossracial groups and student achievement levels.

Results

Students’ perceptions of race and opportunity

Race and life chances. One of the key suppositions of the oppositional culture argu-ment focuses on students’ perceptions of the opportunity structure. For example, inhis study of Shaker Heights, Ogbu (2003) argued that Black students becamediscouraged from striving academically because they believed that their race wouldlimit their returns to education. He argued that having observed their parents’ strug-gles with discrimination, Shaker Heights students became disengaged from educationand put forth less effort than their White peers. As in his past writing, in this studyOgbu saw a tight link between students’ perceptions of opportunity and their educa-tional aspirations and academic engagement.

In examining Riverview students’ beliefs about the implications of race for their lifechances and their current experiences in their local communities and schools we foundsubstantial differences along racial lines. Black students were far more likely to see raceas a meaningful part of their identity and to believe that their race would have negativeimplications for their chances of ‘getting ahead’ in the US than were White students.

For example, the majority of the African-American students believed that their racewould limit their chances of getting ahead in life. Tyrone, a low-achieving student,argued that being Black would ‘make it more difficult’ to get ahead ‘because I … needto have my standard set pretty high to try to get ahead in life because as a Blackperson, [I’m] part of the minority groups, and minority groups have a tough timegetting ahead.’ Keisha, a low-achieving Black student, argued that:

I mean—it’s not—this is just to me, but like most White people like right now, they havebetter jobs than Black people do, they get paid more, they have like—I don’t know how tosay it. Higher at what they do…. I think it’ll be difficult [for me] because like Black peopleprobably have to work harder to be whatever they want to be.

Tammy, a high-achieving student, felt that race still influenced life chances as well,arguing that ‘Black people, in general just have to work harder than everyone else toget recognized…. They have to work harder I feel like.’

Finally, Tracey, a Black female student, argued that ‘In a way just in the world thatwe live in right being Black it’s gonna always gonna be hard just because of the color

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of your skin. No matter where you go, you say [this] isn’t a racist city or country; it’salways gonna be hard being Black. Point blank.’ This student’s perceptions regardingrace and opportunity were tied to national as well as local contexts. As she argued,‘no matter where you go … it’s always gonna be hard being Black.’ As a whole, Blackstudents believed that race would limit their life chances.

In contrast to Black students, White students rarely perceived that race would havean impact on their life chances. For the most part, White students believed that racedid not matter for them. In fact, many of these students had a hard time finding anysignificance in their race outside of skin color. For example, when asked what it meantto him to be White, Gabe, a high-achieving White sophomore, said: ‘What does itmean? Probably all it means is that I’m lighter than most people; um, and that’s reallyit.’ Later in the interview, when asked about race and his life chances, he said that ‘Iknow race is kind of not as big nowadays as I guess it used to be. So, I don’t think itwill have a large impact on my life.’ Laura, a high-achieving white sophomore, said ofbeing White ‘it just means that I’m pink, actually, cause I’m Irish … I sunburneasily… I guess it’s just kind of like one of those things that sort of defines you insociety…. It means basically that I like mayonnaise more than hot sauce, so.’

Richard, another high-achieving White student who identified himself as Jewish,was confused when asked what it meant to him to be White: ‘I have white skin.I mean, I don’t understand the question.’ After we clarified the question, he went onto say that he felt his race would have little impact on his future unless ‘I get rejectedfrom a college because they want a minority student to go.’ As with Richard, a fewother White students mentioned affirmative action as limiting their future opportuni-ties. For example, Michelle, a White sophomore, said that ‘I don’t even agree withaffirmative action. I think it should be on ability. I know they want a variety … every-body has the same potential. It’s just who lives up to it, you know?’ However, mostWhite students argued that being White would not play much of a role in their futuresand almost none of the White students felt that whiteness gave them advantages ingetting ahead.

Thus, there were major differences in Riverview students’ beliefs regarding theimplications of race for their life chances. Black students perceived their race to be aliability in the effort to get ahead in life. White students, on the other hand, rarely sawrace as significant. White students perceived whiteness as a skin color and little more.A few White students believed that their race could be a disadvantage in some circum-stances (e.g. in college admissions because of affirmative action); however, for themost part, they believed that their race would have little impact on them.

Race and school structures. More specific than just general perceptions of race andopportunity, prior work suggests that the second-generation segregation (Mickelson,2001) that comes from racialized tracking patterns in desegregated schools can haveadditional consequences for students’ orientation to schooling. For example, someresearch suggests that race-based tracking contributed to the development of animos-ity between high- and low-achieving Black students (Tyson, 2005, 2006; Mickelson,

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2006). When students recognize such patterns, it is argued, they associate highachievement with Whiteness and a race-based opposition to schooling among Blackstudents can result.

In fact, as mentioned earlier, courses placement at Riverview was racially marked.Whites make up 48% of the student population but nearly 90% of the students takingadvanced placement classes and 80% of students taking honors classes. Both Blackand White students recognized and remarked on these racial patterns across educa-tional tracks. Black students recognized (and were concerned about) the racial compo-sition of classes. For example, Julius, a Black junior with a 4.1 GPA on a 4.0 scale,8

argued: ‘The fact is that Riverview is two schools in one. There is the honors Whiteschool, and then there’s the other school.’ Based on personal experience, Julius feltthat access to upper-level classes was at times unfair. As he explained:

My freshman teacher didn’t like me. She didn’t recommend me for US History AP. Mymom had to spend a couple of hours on the phone getting me into the class, even thoughI’m a kid who takes extremely hard classes, and gets good grades, they just don’t let youin. They make it very, very difficult for you to take the classes you want.

While Julius was unusually articulate in his critique of the placement process, Blackstudents were all aware of the racial disparities in course placement.

White students also recognized differences in course placement by race. Richardmade this clear in his discussion of course placement, going as far as to identify classlevels by race ‘I mean if you look at the numbers, I’m betting there are more Whitekids that are in the honors classes, and more Black kids that are in minority classes.’

Scholars have identified both patterns, understandings of the role of race in generaland in course placement, as important precursors to the development of oppositionalculture. As already mentioned, Ogbu (2003) argued that Black students’ recognitionof limited opportunities based on their race led them to become ‘discouraged fromstriving for academic pursuit’ and ‘disengaged from schooling’ (p. 154). Likewise,Tyson et al. (2005) and Tyson (2006) argued that race-based oppositional cultureemerges in response to local school patterns that associate race and achievement.Given these arguments, and the patterns in understanding we find, we would expectBlack students at Riverview to have oppositional orientations toward education andwould expect that this opposition would be more pervasive among Black studentsthan among White students who believed that education would pay off for them. Inthe following section we focus on students’ educational orientations across severaldimensions to examine this connection.

Students’ educational orientations

Overall, while Black students perceive race-based limitations to their opportunities forgetting ahead and are cognizant of racial patterns of school achievement at Riverside,we find no evidence that a lack of academic striving or a disengagement from educa-tion is more prevalent among Black students than among White students. With veryfew exceptions, the students we interviewed (both Black and White) said that they and

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their friends planned to attend college. Likewise, negative peer pressure was experi-enced by very few high-achieving students and was not more common among Blackstudents than among White students. Finally, low-achieving Black students reportthat they and their friends care about grades, supported high educational achieve-ment, and actively sought to avoid low grades. Below we discuss students’ educationalorientations and peer dynamics associated with them.

Educational aspirations. While the data above indicate that Black students were morelikely to believe that the pay-off to college might be limited by their race, nearly all ofthe students reported that they wanted to attend college. For example, in respondingto a question about his plans after high school, a low-achieving Black sophomorenamed Daryl said ‘Definitely go to college; definitely go to college.’ When asked whyhe wanted to go to college he said, ‘cause the way I think now it is like … I know youcan’t just get no high school diploma and then call it quits…. You need to get out ofcollege [graduate] to actually get a nice job.’

Most students argued that college attendance was necessary to participate in thecareer that they sought and to reach their desired adult status. As a low-achievingBlack student named Lydia stated, ‘nowadays you can’t do nothing without going tocollege. Everybody has to have a college background if they expect to go somewhere.’

Similar sentiments were expressed by the majority of the students. College wasviewed as a necessary part of a solid education and students connected collegeeducation to their future job opportunities and economic well-being. While perceiv-ing racial discrimination, Black students expressed what we call pragmatic optimismabout their future. This pragmatic optimism allowed them to recognize barriers togetting ahead in their daily lives and in the future but to also maintain a firmcommitment to the instrumental value of education. These students seemed toreason that more education was better than less because some economic rewardwould come from their investment in school, even if that reward would be circum-scribed by race.

Peer dynamics and high achievement among Black and White students. Small and nearlyequivalent numbers of high-achieving Black and White students experienced nega-tive peer pressure related to their academic achievement at Riverview. Among highachieving African American students only four of 19 (21%) reported experiencingnegative peer pressure related to their school achievement. Among high-achievingWhite students, only four of 18 (22%) reported experiencing negative peer pres-sure. This is despite the fact that we asked them directly if they had experiencedsuch discouragement from their peers. As others have found when studyingstudents in other contexts, Black and White high achievers’ experiences of negativepeer pressure seem very similar (Tyson et al., 2005). When we asked Cassie, ahigh-achiever white student who plays softball, if other students discourage highachievement, she said that ‘I would say that’s very true. Um, I’m supposedly thenerd on our [softball] team.’ Greg, a high-achieving White student, argued that

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early in his high school career students would accuse him of being a nerd for study-ing too hard. When asked if he was discouraged from high achievement by hisfriends Greg said:

Oh, yeah. Like, oh, yeah, you’re a nerd, you know. Like, you read that book. It’s like, no,I had to do it for work. But … the older you get, the more that goes away … freshman yearin high school my friends are all like, Greg, don’t do your homework. You’re a nerd. Butthen this year they’re all doin’ it so.

David, a high-achieving Black student who takes honors and AP classes, reports expe-riencing negative peer pressure ‘all the time.’ He claims that it does not affect hisachievement because ‘I think, come back and talk to me in 15 or 20 years’ (laughs)and later he states that ‘I’m used to it; it kind of goes over my head.’

Dawn, another high-achieving Black student, also experienced negative peer pres-sure that she perceives to result from her academic performance.

Oh, yeah. Ever since I’ve been getting A’s, I’ve been the bookworm. ‘All Dawn does isread. When do you have fun? It’s like her fun is doing homework.’ Yeah, a lot. I getmocked all the time…. In junior high, I noticed it was just people who weren’t doing aswell, they would like tease me. They’d be like, ‘Oh, Dawn she’s just a genius. She workson a paper three weeks before it’s due. I mean, what’s a bookworm.’ You know?

While Dawn reports experiencing negative peer pressure, like David she does notbelieve it impacts on her school performance. When asked how she responds tostudents who tease her, Dawn tells her peers that her high achievement results fromhard work. ‘Usually, I do this all the time, “No, it’s not that I’m so smart. I just stud-ied really hard. I got extra help with the teacher.” If it’s just that I aced it, I’m like,“Here, I can help you.”’ As can be seen from this statement, Dawn does not down-play her academic effort but instead highlights her hard work and the extra supportthat she receives from her teachers. Thus, unlike what others have found among somehigh-achieving Black students, Dawn does not try to camouflage her academic effortand achievement from low-achieving peers (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Horvat &Lewis, 2003).

Moreover, the experience of being teased does not generate a high level of animos-ity. Several students talk about this teasing as little more than joking. As one low-achieving girl says, ‘Well with my brother and his friends they do. But it’s like joking.I think it’s more of like people joking around then actually being serious.’ Tracy, astudent with a low GPA who takes regular and some honors classes, said that ‘I haveanother friend who is taking all AP classes, we’re like, not in a mean way, but we belike sort of … we’re too dumb to hang with you, like that. She know we’re just funningwith her.’ As we saw above, Dawn even offers to help those lower achieving friendswho are teasing her to improve their school performance, also suggesting less animos-ity than some have reported.

Teasing for achievement or behavior? While a small minority of students report beingteased by their peers for doing well in school, they also argue that some high-achievingstudents are teased because of their behavior (e.g. flaunting overachieving, fitting

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stereotypes, or isolating themselves from other students). Paul, a high-achievingWhite student, discusses a friend of his who is a high achiever and gets teased:

Paul: He gets teased about it. He’s on the baseball team, so he gets heckled a lot youknow at practice.

I: Because he gets good grades?Paul: No because everybody gets good grades. It’s the way he talks, and how he seems

like he’s a smart Alec…. Like stats, he’ll like memorize and you know, always talksabout them. So nobody wants to hear that. And it’s like, ‘shut up.’

In this case, teasing comes from other high-achieving students (who are mostly Whitegiven the composition of the baseball team) because of the ‘smart-Alec’ behavior ofanother high-achieving white student.

Tanya, one of the four high-achieving Black students who reported directly expe-riencing negative peer pressure, argues that ‘it’s never been that bad for me becauseI talk to everyone. But I know there are some people that probably dislike me becauseI can do well in school.’ Her comments suggest that one may become a target if oneisolates oneself. Michelle, a high-achieving White student, makes a similar observation:

A lot of them [high achievers] are actually the popular people or whatever. A lot of themwork hard, or at least they get pretty good grades. The kids that study hard and don’t doanything else, they’d start having problems with people. But that’s just because they’reintroverted anyway, usually.

Terrence, a high-achieving Black student who was teased in elementary school butnot in high school, argues that students who fit stereotypes of being socially awkwardnerds might be teased by their peers. ‘If you fit the stereotype … glasses, you know,suspenders and calculator in your hand, yeah.’9 When we asked Daryl, a low-achievingBlack student, if students are teased because they get good grades, he said: ‘No, ifyou’re a geek, you’re a geek; it’s not because of the grades you get. Some people willsay that because of how you look, how you dress, how you act.’ Finally, Samuel, ahigh-achieving White student, argues that a small subset of students might get teasedbut only ‘the kids that overachieve a lot, then a little bit, [they get] tease[d] a little bitabout it.’ Like Carter (2005), we find that across race (and achievement level) studentsreport that teasing is often associated with non-academic behavior or flauntingachievement rather than simply doing well academically.

Racial dynamics in honors and AP classes. High-achieving Black students did reportexperiencing achievement dilemmas at Riverview. These dilemmas, however, wereoften more a result of low expectations from White teachers and students rather thannegative peer pressure from Black peers. In particular, they described a school culturein which less was generally expected of them. Gabe, a high-achieving White student,shared his perception of how people at Riverview think about race and intelligenceand the presence or absence of students of color from advanced courses:

I guess, I’m White, so I’m expected, I guess, to be smarter. Usually, when someone seesme, they always think I’m smarter than most people…. I think that usually the perceptionis … that Black people are dumber than White people and Hispanics are not as smart as

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everyone else…. So if you have a really smart Black person, that’s when you see the most,‘That’s weird.’ In one of my classes, there’s one Black kid in the entire class; there’s zeroHispanics. It’s all just White people. And that’s, it’s weird

While we have no measure of how pervasive such beliefs are at Riverview, high-achieving Black students reported perceiving such low expectations in the behaviorsof White students and teachers in honors and AP classes. David (the same high-achieving Black student who previously reported negative peer pressure from otherBlack students) believes that he faces negative peer pressure because his highachievement defies expectations of Black make students in particular:

I just think that kids aren’t used to seeing a successful, like, black male student. Most peopledon’t expect anything from black males. Whenever I do something that’s not even abovestandards, it’s just like normal. They’re like, ‘Whoa.’ I just think that they’re not used to it.

David did report multiple kinds of pressure from peers. However, while he describednegative peer pressure from Black males as ‘direct’, he described negative feedbackfrom White peers as more pervasive and insidious:

Most of the stuff is indirect from White students. A lot of times racism is indirect. Theywon’t come out directly and say, ‘Whoa. You’re Black. Black males aren’t supposed to dothat.’ There’s like undertones and stuff that you can kind of pick up.

Therefore, while David reports some of the stereotypical negative peer pressure fromBlack peers who question his academic effort, he also reports a different kind of negativepressure from White students who over-praise him for academic achievement that is‘not even above standards.’ David’s experience points to a critical but under-examinedcomponent of Black students’ experiences in desegregated schools: Black studentsconfronting subtle but widespread negative expectations cross race peer dynamics.

Another high-achieving Black student named Kim talked about the kind of perfor-mance anxiety she experienced in her honors Spanish class as a result of being theonly Black student:

It was a little intimidating to be like the only African-American, and then you have all theseCaucasian students—and they’re raising their hands. I had the answer. I was just sittingthere. I know the answer, as well; but it was sort of intimidating just to watch them youknow, talk and stuff like that.

Being placed in a token position based on race and gender has shown to heightenperformance anxiety (Kanter, 1977; Carter, 2005). While these dynamics typicallyoccur in honors and AP classes that are populated by high-achieving students, lowerachieving Black students are also aware of lower expectations for Black studentsgenerally and of higher achieving Black students’ difficulty negotiating high-levelclasses. A low-achieving Black student named Daryl explained why being Black madeit more difficult for him at school: ‘they don’t expect much from black males, like youknow—’cause like I was looking at the percentage of our grades and stuff, the Blackmales, we’re like at the bottom. Our grades are the lowest. They don’t expect nothingof us.’ Other low-achieving Black students have heard about their peers’ struggles. Alow-achieving student named Mark shared the following observation.

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I’m in this [student] committee…. I was in a meeting the other day and a … lot of storieswere coming from the fact that African-Americans in honors classes and AP classes are,you know, they’re—they’re very little compared to the Caucasians and the others in theclass. And so it, not only is it an uncomfortable environment knowing that you know it’slike a handful of you guys that are just there struggling together, but … one … girl …wasthe only one in that class, the only African-American. And instead of the teacher to realizethis and to say, ‘Okay you’re probably already uncomfortable, you know, a little uncom-fortable being that you’re the only one.’ You know? But she’s the only one and she wastrying. But instead of the teacher to realize that and help her, the teacher instead would …every time she would talk like ‘Yeah, okay now what were you saying?’ to like someoneelse…. So [he would] call on her … she would tell the answer. But you know how teacherswill sometimes like ‘Ahh, it’s sort of right. You’re on the right track, but not really.’ Youknow, he did that to her. But then like turned around and a Caucasian person said the exactsame thing … and he was like, ‘Exactly. Right on the head, you hit it right on the dot.’ Youknow? She was very upset. Very upset about that because she was getting that all the time.

Here, students experience not only the pressure of being one of the only, if not theonly, Black students in a class but also the pressure of having those around them intheir classes thinking they are likely to be less talented. When, in a school that is 40%Black, very few students are to be found in advanced courses, it is perhaps no surprisethat, as captured by Gabe above, the gut-level response by White students to a reallysmart Black person is, ‘That’s weird.’

Peer dynamics among low-achieving Black students. The oppositional culture frame-work not only predicts certain attitudes among high-achieving students but alsoamong lower achievers. Based on this framework we would expect low-achievingBlack students (those with GPAs below 2.0 on a 4.0 scale) to disparage high achieve-ment and to be ambivalent about low achievement. In contrast to this expectation,we found that low-achieving students were concerned about their academic perfor-mance, sought ways to improve their grades, and found support for academic strivingamong their friends. Students also reported that their friends teased other studentsfor low performance and that those who performed poorly in school tried to camou-flage their low grades from their peers.

Karen, a low-achieving student, argued that she and her friends all wanted to dowell in school. She said ‘I don’t really hang out with people that don’t want to doanything after high school. You know? They just want to sit around then they’re notfor me. I want to have a family and provide for them.’ As discussed earlier, Karenbelieves that doing well in school will pay off for her in the long run because she willbe able to support a family, presumably because she will have access to a job that payswell. She argues that ‘all my friends plan to go to college.’ Perhaps as a result of theseaspirations, she reports that her friends are concerned about their grades and that theytry to help each other out academically. ‘If … somebody’s not doing too well, we’lltalk about how we can help each other out and get each other’s grades up.’ For exam-ple, Riverview students receive midterm grades that do not appear on their final tran-scripts. Karen reports that if she and her friends receive low midterm grades they tryto raise them.

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Karen: Just walk up to your teacher and ask them, you know, do you have a range wheremy grade is, before it gets to the report card point. Before, you know, they comeout, you can bring it [your grades] up.

I: Is that something you do a lot? Do you talk to your teachers before …Karen: Yeah. Because if something’s not right I want to fix it before—’cause all this stuff

that’s in the grade book, it doesn’t—you know colleges don’t see that. They seethe final grades. So you want to change that before it gets there.

While Karen’s GPA is slightly below a ‘C’ average she (along with her friends)engages in strategies to improve her grades. The motivation for her efforts comesfrom her college aspirations and her desire to eventually ‘provide’ for her family. Shealso reports receiving support for her academic effort from her friends.

As with Karen, Jarrod (a low-achieving Black student) reports that the desire toattend college also motivates his peers to seek higher grades. When we asked him todiscuss his friends’ orientation toward grades, Jarrod, said that he and his friends ‘toldeach other that Cs are not cutting it no more cause like in eighth grade a C would belike, like the best thing in the world but now we trying to just get As and Bs.’ Whenasked why his friends’ attitudes were different in high school than in eighth grade, hesaid:

‘Cause we didn’t know anything about like college. We [weren’t] focusing in on that at thepoint until we got to high school and they started telling us about college and stuff and likethey don’t accept anything but straight As and you gotta have 3.6 or 4.0 or all that gradepoint average. We didn’t know anything about that.

Therefore, like Karen, Jarrod and his friends were motivated to strive for highergrades by their desire to attend college and thus their college aspirations were a posi-tive force that influenced their academic striving.

Most low-achieving students also reported that they and their friends did notdiscourage academic achievement. Trevor, a low-achieving Black student, reportedthat his friends did not respond negatively to students who received higher grades. Hediscussed of his friends, Joshua, who is an honor-roll student:

Trevor: My, uh—Joshua—he made honor roll I think. But I’m not sure, I think he madehonor roll.

I: Is there—do people tease Joshua since he’s on honor roll?Trevor: No. [in a surprised voice]I: And the rest of you all aren’t?Trevor: No.I: Okay. Are people proud of him? …Trevor: No. It would be like ‘Snap.’ Like we say something like that…. Then we just go on.I: Okay. So you’re indifferent to him being on the honor roll? You’re not proud of

him or you’re not envious of him?Trevor: It’s cool. Like, he did his thing.

In discussing his friend Joshua’s performance, Trevor is surprised by the suggestionthat his friend would be teased for high achievement. Instead, Joshua is more likelyto be given kudos because he ‘did his thing.’

These students’ comments are representative of the low achievers’ statementsconcerning their orientations toward school achievement. The vast majority of

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students reported that they wanted to perform at higher levels than they currentlywere and that they received support for these aspirations from their friends. Thesereports do not suggest that an oppositional orientation toward schooling is prevalentamong Black adolescents at Riverview.

In fact, rather than have low investment in school affirmed, several low-achievingstudents reported being teased for not doing well. While Trevor reported that hishigh-achieving friend Joshua received no negative feedback from peers, he alsosuggested that low achievement might lead to negative sanctions:

Trevor: ‘Yeah but everybody else they’re doing good … like nobody fails…. Like if some-body fails, we’ll laugh. [laughs]

I: Okay. So you give them a hard time?Trevor: Yeah.

Likewise, a low-achieving Black student named Rod argued that high achievers donot face negative sanctions ‘like all that nerd stuff … I don’t think people really dothat no more … unless you just to yourself or whatever and don’t talk to nobody.’Rather, he reports, ‘they’ll probably talk about you more for the Fs.’

Rod went on to argue that higher achieving students are often the ones who teasethe lower achievers. ‘Some people get like a 95 on the chemistry quiz, somebody elseget like a 63 … the person that got the 95 is the one that’s always putting you down.You got a 63, you stupid.’ This pattern of teasing for low achievement has also beenfound by other scholars who find this pattern among younger African-Americanstudents (Tyson, 2002; Ferguson, personal communication). As a result of this teas-ing, some low achievers try to hide their grades from other students. For example,Rod argues that ‘if a person gets a low grade, they’ll try to hide it. They’ll try to hideit as hard as they can.’ Shantel discussed similar experiences of teasing for lowachievement: ‘If a teacher asked somebody a question and they didn’t know it, wellthere can be other kids like talk about them.’

In fact, Black students who struggle at Riverview may be forced to manage theiracademic struggles through camouflaging low achievement.10 In contrast to studiesthat report high achievers having to engage in strategies to hide their high achieve-ment (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Horvat & Lewis, 2003), we find some low-achievingstudents at Riverview report hiding their grades because they fear being teased byother students. This suggests a different set of achievement dilemmas than are typi-cally reported for Black students—dilemmas that seem to emerge out of a focus onachievement rather than on oppositionality.

Discussion and conclusion

This study assessed the oppositional culture argument in a desegregated suburban highschool. We study this context because recent research suggests that if oppositionalculture is prevalent among Black students anywhere, it is likely to be in desegregatedschools, like Riverview, in which educational tracks are racially defined and animositybuilds between high- and low-achieving students (Tyson et al., 2005; Tyson, 2006).

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We found that while Black students were much more likely than White students toperceive that their race would limit their life chances (as oppositional culture argumentssuggest) this did not lead them to the development of oppositional orientations towardschool. Despite perceived circumscribed returns to education, Black students’ collegeaspirations were comparable to those of White students (for similar findings usingsurvey data, see Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey, 1998; Cook & Ludwig, 1997, 1998).

Our interviews also revealed that small and equivalent numbers of high-achievingBlack and White students experienced negative peer pressure related to theiracademic success and did not demonstrate cases of ‘racialized’ negative peer pressurein which Black students reported being accused of ‘acting White.’ The negative peerpressure reported by Black and White students was generalized teasing such asstudents being called ‘nerds.’11 Both Black and White high-achieving studentsreported that such teasing did not limit their academic effort or affect their perfor-mance. Both high- and low-achieving students also reported that teasing was oftenlimited to students who isolated themselves from others, were vocal overachievers, orengaged in other behaviors that led them to be ostracized by their peers.

While there was consistency among students with regard to their educational aspi-rations and experiences of traditional negative peer pressure, high-achieving Blackstudents reported experiencing inter-racial negative peer feedback, which involvedlow expectations of them because they were African-American. They experiencedthese dynamics primarily in honors and AP classes in which they were far outnum-bered by White students. This highlights an additional achievement dilemma facedby high-achieving African-American students that has received limited attention in theliterature on oppositional culture but is particularly salient in desegregated schools.

In contrast to the expectation that low-achieving Black students would be ambiva-lent toward school (based on the oppositional culture literature), low-achieving Blackstudents at Riverview reported high levels of peer encouragement to strive academi-cally and to improve their performance—what we call positive peer pressure. In addi-tional to peer encouragement for improvement, these students also reported beingteased or criticized for performing poorly in school. Again, this pattern is inconsistentwith an oppositional culture toward schooling.

While high-achieving African-American students in this study do not report thatnegative peer pressure is common or that it impacts their school achievement, theydo suggest that they face challenges in negotiating honors and advanced placementclasses because White teachers and students doubt their ability to perform at highlevels in such contexts. While some work has discussed this issue (Tyson et al., 2005),and Fordham and Ogbu (1986) made reference to this issue, we believe that moreattention could usefully be paid to the inter-racial dynamics associated with Blackstudents’ experiences in predominantly White classes. As Horvat and Lewis (2003)show, Black students ‘negotiate multiple friendship groups within the Black peergroup’ (p. 266). However, in desegregated schools, high-achieving students’ interac-tions with White students (and teachers) are also common and appear to be highlysalient. Therefore, in considering how students manage academic success, we needto attend to the dynamics they experience in their interactions with White peers as

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well as Black peers. Given what we know from social psychology about how stereo-type threat can depress academic achievement among African-Americans (e.g. Steele,2003; Aronson & Steele, 2005.) we argue that additional attention should be paid tothe added burden of achievement for Black students in mostly White honors andadvanced placement classes in desegregated schools.

Further, while prior work has focused on the achievement dilemmas of high-achieving students (Tyson et al., 2005), our work suggests that low-achievingstudents also experienced dilemmas related to their academic performance. Thesestudents report a general push for higher achievement among their friends—positivepeer pressure. However, they also report that performing poorly in school is sanc-tioned by their peers. Such sanctioning leads some students to hide their low achieve-ment because of embarrassment and could lead students to avoid performing belowa certain threshold. Alternatively, it may also limit some students’ participation andeffort in their classes. However students negotiate such achievement dilemmas, thissort of sanctioning for poor performance is contrary to what we would expect ifstudents were opposed to academic achievement.

While we clearly do not seek to over-generalize based on one school context, ourdata provide little support for the oppositional culture argument in this desegregatedhigh school and raise doubts about the power of this explanation in explaining racialachievement gaps in such contexts (Ogbu, 2003). Future work, perhaps drawing onsurvey data from similar school districts and systematically testing the oppositionalculture explanation, would provide a more broadly generalizable test of the proposi-tion that race-based oppositional culture is prevalent in desegregated schools.

Based on our findings, we suggest that our search for oppositional culture amongBlack students might be diverting our attention from other critical educational issues.As Jeannie Oakes (1985) wrote some time ago:

In our search for the solution to the problems of educational inequality, our focus wasalmost exclusively on the characteristics of the children themselves. We looked for sourcesof educational failure in their homes, their neighborhoods, their language, their cultures,even in their genes. In all our searching, we almost entirely overlooked the possibility thatwhat happens within schools might contribute to unequal educational opportunities andoutcomes. (p. xiv)

Our work adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that we may be ‘barkingup the wrong tree’ in our search for oppositional culture as an explanation for theBlack–White achievement gap in desegregated schools.

Notes

1. Tyson and her colleagues do not argue that oppositional culture is necessarily pervasive indesegregated contexts but that the ‘burden of acting White’ may be fueled by dynamics that areset in motion by ‘institutionally imposed and sustained patterns of achievement by race’(Tyson, 2006, p. 84). As a result, oppositional culture and the ‘burden of acting White’ aremore likely to be found in such contexts.

2. Fordham and Ogbu (1986) suggest that high-achieving Black students in desegregated schoolsget pressure from both sides, arguing that ‘the burden of acting white becomes heavier when

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academically successful black students face both pressures from black peers to conform, anddoubts from whites about their ability’ (p. 199). The experience of doubts about their abilityhas received limited attention in the oppositional culture literature.

3. White students continue being popular as their grades improve.4. This paragraph builds on a set of premises related to the burden of acting White outlined in

Tyson et al. (2005).5. An index of dissimilarity measures how closely neighborhoods in a city or region reflect the

area’s overall population demographics. The number indicates how many people would haveto move for individual neighborhoods to reflect the diversity of the larger area.

6. Even though we made this decision, we thought that the term ‘acting White’ might be raisedby the students we interviewed. Surprisingly, it was not.

7. The first and third authors, along with two graduate students, coded all of the data for thispaper. We followed a process by which a common understanding of each code/node was estab-lished and reconfirmed this common understanding by discussing coded text.

8. At Riverview, students receive a GPA boost for taking honors and advanced placement classes.An honors students who receives an ‘A’ is given 4.5 on a 4.0 scale and AP students are given5.0 on a 4.0 scale for an ‘A’ grade. Ostensibly this is to encourage students to challenge them-selves by taking more difficult classes without the threat of hurting their overall GPA.

9. In this case, Terrence might have learned to manage his high achievement perhaps by camou-flaging it (not fitting the high-achieving stereotype).

10. Tyson (2006) reports that some low-achieving Black students engage in ‘face-saving strategies’designed to persuade other students that they are higher achievers than they are.

11. See Tyson et al. (2005) for a discussion of generalized, racialized, and class-based oppositionality.

John B. Diamond is Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate Schoolof Education. He studies how race and social class intersect with school leader-ship, policies, and practices to shape students’ educational opportunities andoutcomes. His recent co-edited volume, Distributed Leadership in Practice, ispublished by Teachers College Press.

Amanda E. Lewis is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology andAfrican-American Studies and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Research onRace and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her researchfocuses on how race shapes educational opportunities.

Lamont Gordon is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School ofEducation. His research focuses on African American high school teachers whoexamine issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation in the classroom.

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