Sociology

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Browsing Sociology by Subject "Biculturalism -- United States"

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    To “Act White”: Negotiating Race and Biculturalism in Public Schools
    (2013) Liu, Lisa C.; Gould, Mark
    My following project explores the intersection of race, culture, and differential academic student outcomes in public schools. Located in my research is a deeper inquiry concerning the challenges of integrating cultural differences in public schools in particular and American institutions at large. In bringing my attention to the underachievement of black students, it is my endeavor to find and construct alternative frameworks and cultural explanations for explaining black underachievement. Embedded in my study is a discussion of racial discourse and its relation to the assimilationist paradigm that underlies our egalitarian values and ideology. By identifying black students as social and (bi)cultural actors who must necessarily navigate between different spheres of socialization and communities, I will be exploring peer relations and identity processes in public schools through the “Acting White” phenomenon first observed by Signithia Fordham in her ethnography of Capital High. Through my study I hope to argue that race operates as a central normative framework for determining self and group identity within the black community—as social actors who operate within a collective and racialized culture, black students are held first and foremost to sustaining their racial identity and moral obligations to the collective even at the expense of individual failures and sacrifice. This moral commitment and spirit of resistance was necessary in enabling blacks to collectively overcome their marginalization in a racist society, but become processes into cultural deficiencies within a structure of assimilation. In a world where educational success is strongly correlated with “Acting White,” black‐Americans, who remain committed to the cultural expression of their black identity, will fail in disproportionately high numbers.