Abstract
In this article, the author reports the “voices” of four academically successful African American men, in their early 20s, as they explicitly respond, in retrospect, to questions regarding the applicability of the burden of acting White theory to their schooling experiences—responses made after reading research articles written by Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu. In general, the responses from the four men illustrate that they successfully negotiated the burden of acting White, even as they revealed instances in which the theory might have been applied to their schooling experiences. The author argues that the various interpretations and uses of Fordham’s and Ogbu’s (single- and co-authored) theories—and, in part, the theories themselves—failed to escape the lure of oversimplification. In that, the (mis?)interpretations and (mis?)uses often oversimplified the theories, and, in turn, the schooling experiences of Black students (and historically marginalized students in general).
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Notes
The terms African American and Black are used interchangeably throughout this article to describe an individual of African descent who claims the “cultural identity” of the United States.
Keeling High was an “urban high school located in a suburban community” (according to a description found on the school’s Web site), 10 miles from a large city in the South; it was situated in a 95% African American community where the mean home value was $220,000. Keeling High had approximately 1,300 students, with 99% of the students being identified by race/ethnicity as Black by the school system. Although the student population was homogenous racially, it was very diverse socioeconomically, ranging from the working poor to the middle upper class (44% of the students were eligible to receive free or reduced-priced meals). The school provided an embedded mathematics and science magnet program (25% of the students were enrolled in the program) for Newberry County, a large (over 70,000 students) and well-funded school system (i.e., school facilities were modern and well maintained).
The descriptor “demonstrated achievement and persistence in high school mathematics” was met if a participant achieved one or more of the following criteria his junior or senior year of high school: (a) completed successfully an AP calculus or statistics course; (b) completed successfully a joint-enrollment calculus or statistics course; or (c) scored in the fourth quartile (top 25%) of the mathematics portion of the SAT.
It is important to note that all four participants attended public schools (K–12) in which African American students were the majority. It is beyond the scope of this article to compare or predict how the schooling experiences of the participants might have been different if they had attended racially diverse schools. On the other hand, both Fordham and Ogbu developed their theories in similar school contexts (i.e., both developed their theories in schools in which African American students were the majority). Ogbu (2003), however, did “test” his theory later in a school district in which African American students were the minority. Moreover, it is also important to note that since the mid-1990s African American students have increasingly attended schools in which they are the majority, as public schools across the nation have become progressively resegregated (Frankenberg and Lee 2002).
On the whole, Horvat and O’Connor’s (2006) edited volume explains the complex, nuanced, and multilayered schooling experience of Black students from a (cultural) sociological approach. For a cultural/social psychological approach to the schooling experiences of minority students see Downey et al. (2005) edited volume, Navigating the Future: Social Identity, Coping, and Life Tasks, or Murrell’s (2007) book, Race, Culture, and Schooling: Identities of Achievement in Multicultural Urban Schools.
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Acknowledgments
This article was derived from my dissertation, completed in the Department of Mathematics Education at the University of Georgia. I wish to thank the members of my doctoral committee for their support and wisdom: Denise Mewborn (chair), Jerome Morris, George Stanic, Paola Sztajn, and Dorothy White (and Bettie St. Pierre). I also wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of The Urban Review who provided critiques and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. Portions of this article can be found in earlier published accounts of my dissertation (see Stinson 2006, 2008).
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David W. Stinson’s research interests are the sociocultural and sociohistorical aspects of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning, specifically, how students constructed outside the “White male math myth” successfully negotiate the mathematics classroom.
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Stinson, D.W. When the “Burden of Acting White” is Not a Burden: School Success and African American Male Students. Urban Rev 43, 43–65 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-009-0145-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-009-0145-y