A Theory Of Success And Failure

Castelike minorities, he argues, not only experience discrimination from the dominant white culture, but they also are caught in a web of inferiority and self-defeat that discourages them from living up to their potential.

Ogbu's work got a lot of ink--not all of it favorable--several years ago, when he and fellow anthropologist Signithia Fordham found that many bright black students at a Washington, D.C., high school did not live up to their academic potential for fear of being accused of "acting white.''

Floretta McKenzie, D.C. school superintendent at the time, endorsed the study (published in an academic journal called The Urban Review), telling The Washington Post: "As we seek to improve achievement of urban blacks, there's only so much you can do with more teachers and books and so on. We're going to have to deal with the value structure, with youngsters who don't see the reward for achieving.'' Other blacks weren't so thrilled by Ogbu and Fordham's analysis. In a letter to the Post, Reginald Wilson, then-director of the Office of Minority Concerns for the American Council on Education, wrote: "It is astonishing that an allegedly responsible educational study can conclude, and the D.C. superintendent reportedly affirm, that the reason black children do not learn is simply because they believe academic achievement means 'acting white.' Blaming the victim for his condition is a very...