Abstract
This review sheds light on John Ogbu’s, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A study of academic disengagement. Although Ogbu offers empirical evidence to make a compelling case about Black middle-class students cultural attitudes toward academics to explain the Black–White achievement gap, this study is replete with several limitations—deficit-oriented thinking, unsound methodology, coupled with a failure to properly consider the interaction of identity formation, culture, and history; the authors highlight these shortcomings in the review.
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Ogbu, J. Black American students in an affluent suburb: A study of academic disengagement (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: New Jersey, 2003).
Eddie Comeaux is a postdoctoral study and lecturer in Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Eddie Comeaux examines comparative race/ethnic, marginality, gender, and class relations with an emphasis on access and learning opportunities for underrepresented minorities and student athletes in education. Uma M. Jayakumar is a doctoral candidate in Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Her research interests include: issue of access and retention for graduate students and faculty of color, campus climate for diversity, and service-learning and higher education for the public good. Address correspondence to Eddie Comeaux, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; e-mail: ecomeaux@ucla.edu
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Comeaux, E., Jayakumar, U.M. Education in the United States: Is it a Black Problem?. Urban Rev (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-006-0031-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-006-0031-9