Racelessness as a Factor in Black Students' School Success: Pragmatic Strategy or Pyrrhic Victory?
- 1 April 1988
- journal article
- Published by Harvard Education Publishing Group in Harvard Educational Review
- Vol. 58 (1) , 54-85
- https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.58.1.c5r77323145r7831
Abstract
Signithia Fordham presents an analysis of the tensions high-achieving Black students feel when they strive for academic success. Students are pulled by their dual relationships to the indigenous Black fictive-kinship system and the individualistic, competitive ideology of American schools. By analyzing ethnographic data on six high-achieving Black high school students, the author finds that the characteristics required for success in society contradict an identification and solidarity with Black culture. Students who feel the conflict between"making it" and group identification develop the particular strategy of racelessness.Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Black students' school success: Coping with the ?burden of ?acting white??The Urban Review, 1986
- Without dependence on welfare for life: Black women in the community collegeThe Urban Review, 1985
- Observations in Pittsburgh Ghetto SchoolsAnthropology & Education Quarterly, 1981
- Black Identity, Social Class, and Black Power†Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes, 1970
- Fictive Kinship in a North Indian VillageEthnology, 1963
- Informal Fictive Kinship in Japan1American Anthropologist, 1958