Reddit reviews Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

On average, black Americans are poorer than white Americans. This was initially due to pre-Civil Rights Movement blatant racism and discrimination. After the Civil Rights Movement, blatant racism started to fade away, but our educational system has kept blacks from escaping from their poverty. Schools are funded by local taxes, so when the people are poorer, the schools aren't as good. The abundance of land and quality of roads has allowed the wealthy to geographically isolate themselves from the poor (usually black, but also white and Hispanic).

However, African American culture may also play a detrimental role, as addressed in this book by anthropologist John Ogbu.

John Ogbu?

http://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X

Cites you want?

There have been many studies done on the schools in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent (generally middle class to very wealthy), racially integrated suburb of Cleveland. Even in one of the best funded districts in the state, black students perform worse than white students.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/csd/summary/v044/44.6jackson.html

Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb presents an interesting departure from traditional studies of the Black and White achievement gap. A trio of elements made this study uniquely different. First, the school district is considered to be one of the best in the nation. Second, Shaker Heights is an upper middle-class suburb with a median family income of $66,000. Third, Shaker Heights is a highly educated community with an estimated 61% of the residents over 25 years old holding at least a bachelor's degree. The presence of these three elements, which are traditionally used to explain the achievement gap, adds a perplexing dynamic to the research contained in this book.

The gap in academic achievement between Black and White students in Shaker Heights led to the fundamental question that guided this research: Why do Black students, who seemingly have the appropriate conditions of life that should lead to academic success, still perform far below their White counterparts? Interestingly, the academic performance of Blacks in Shaker Heights was above the state and national average for Black students.

A few more cites:

http://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X (considered the most authoritative study)
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1565&context=etd_hon_theses (pdf)
http://generaltoolbox.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/the_canary_in_the_mine.pdf (pdf)
http://annenberginstitute.org/pdf/cj_acheivement_gap.pdf(pdf)


For several years, I lived in South Euclid, a lower middle- to upper middle-class, stably racially integrated suburb not too far from Shaker Heights. There was the same gap between black students and white students, with special programs at the high school targeted specifically towards black students to ensure they graduate.

http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/class-action/Content?oid=1502634

TL/DR: the district didn't succumb to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Meanwhile, district officials, led by Superintendent Bill Zelei, refused to let daunting national trends discourage them. Half of black male students drop out anyway. Why bother trying? They didn't ship the new arrivals to special ed or let them coast in dumbed-down classes. They didn't pull money out of the high school and into majority-white elementary schools. They kept the honors courses, the Japanese language instruction, the art classes, and the drama club.

Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement

Minority Status, Oppositional Culture and Schooling

The book is in google books. You can read a lot of it.

Bullet three is exactly backward. Shaker Heights high school used to be ranked in the 90th percentile, but as the mix changed to the one you quote, the Percentage of Students Passing All Four Parts of the Ohio Graduation Test dropped to 67.4%, the high school stopped being one of the most desirable, and white flight has and is occurring.

I agree with you that Clevelanders do NOT fear integrated education, but people value education and will chase these rankings. So if an influx of black students changes a highschool's pass rate, you will see white flight based on the change in status of the highschool. It's also worth noting that the high desirability of these schools is a draw which creates demand for real-estate and as the rankings decline, people will abandon the community as it is a precursor to declining home values, which is where most of the middle-class has the majority of their wealth, exasperating the "white flight" scenario.

There was a Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement written about the phenomenon.

The author John U. Ogbu was ostricized by the black community because of it.

Haven't you ever wondered why the scientific consensus is the opposite of your claims?

For starters, IQ isn't a great all-around measure of intelligence. It does accurately predict social outcomes and is highly correlated with many intellectual and academic accomplishments, but it has severe flaws. Take for example the Flynn Effect: previous generations had much lower IQ scores than today, when normalized to be on the same scale. The rapid increase of IQ globally (Great Britain saw an increase of 15 points in 70 years) cannot be explained by any plausible genetic explanation—the increase has simply been too fast. Genetic effects couldn't have spread throughout the entire population. There is also no plausible argument that general intelligence has improved by that much. If it had, 40% of the British population a century ago would be mentally damaged by today's standards.

The reasons for the Flynn Effect are unclear. A rise in standardized testing and formal schooling appears to be at least part of it. What is clear is that when comparing people from wildly different environments, IQ is a poor measure of general intelligence. (When comparing people from similar environments, it does remarkably well. The reasons for this are still being studied.)

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Even if IQ were a good measure of intelligence (which it isn't), that doesn't mean IQ score differences are genetic. Indeed, we know for a fact that they aren't.

Take the Burakumin of Japan. They are an ostracized class and have been for centuries; due to complex religious/spiritual/social reasons, if you have an ancestor who engaged in an "unclean" profession (e.g., a prostitute, a butcher, an actor, etc.), you too are unclean and are socially inferior. The important thing is that the class is genetically identical to the rest of the Japanese population. You can't tell the difference by looking, which is why the Burakumin were forced to get tattoos, and why corporations started keeping lists of who was Burakumin so they knew who not to hire. Today, while those lists are banned, they are still socially stigmatized, and the group forms the ranks of the Japanese mafia, with the tattoos becoming a source of pride.

Anyway, the average have an IQ of the Burakumin is 10-15 points lower than the average Japanese person. See here. This is the same as the gap between white Americans and black Americans. Importantly, both gaps have been shrinking. Most interestingly, the Japanese gap completely disappears among immigrants to the United States—the people here don't know that they're supposed to discriminate against one of the groups.

Similar stories of vanishing IQ gaps appear all over the field. Adopting someone at three years old from Sub-Saharan Africa into a European family cuts the IQ gap by 15 points., cutting the IQ gap in half. The remaining gap, to reiterate, is the same sized that is known to be caused by discrimination. And note further that this is without any improved pre-natal care, which is known to be extremely important to a child's health.

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Finally, this is all assuming that "race" is a thing, scientifically speaking, which it isn't. To draw an analogy, it's like constellations. Yes, some stars are closer to others. But the physical differences have little connection with how they appear in the sky, any anyways are not clustered into distinct groups. The stars and the distances between them exist; the pictures only exist in your head. I mean, the idea of "whiteness" isn't even self-consistent and varies across time. Are Poles white? Are Russians? Are Italians? Are Southern-Europeans? Are North-Africans and Middle-Easterners? Are Indians? Are Jews? Are Spaniards? Are Mexicans? Are Chileans? (The last few are the most hilarious currently—the jumps required to assert that South Americans are genetically inferior to "us", but "us" includes the Spanish and Portuguese, are hilarious.)

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Race doesn't exist the way you think it does. Intelligence might, based on the g-factor (scores in completely different aptitude tests are correlated, suggesting a legitimate "general intelligence"), but IQ is not a good measure of it cross-populations. Intelligence is not a metric of moral standing; the Jews aren't naturally the superiors of everyone else just because they have higher IQ. And IQ differences are entirely explainable by environmental factors.

Yeah really. Like it or not, he is pretty much correct.

For instance, check out this 30-year sociology study on academic habits.

Amazon link to the printed studies and other of his works.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=John+Ogobu&x=10&y=22

http://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289444666&sr=8-1-spell

Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

http://www.amazon.com/Minority-Education-Caste-Cross-Cultural-Perspective/dp/0125242506/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289444666&sr=8-2-spell

Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective (A Carnegie Council on Children Monograph)

http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generation-Ethnography-Neighbourhood-anthropology/dp/0127855890/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289444666&sr=8-3-spell

Next Generation: Ethnography of Education in an Urban Neighbourhood (Studies in anthropology)

It has been noted that voluntary immigrants (whites, asians) do far better than most involuntry immigrants (most african americans, native americans).

I figured that was what you were thinking but didn't expect you to admit it openly.

> Spoiler: it's black people.
>
> I don't know if there's a single perfect book, because it's a difficult problem and nobody knows all the answers. Here's a decent book that tackles the politically correct part of the problem. For the politically incorrect part, you can read between the lines of books like this or you can delve into the horrible dark corners of the Internet like this. As to the validity of the politically correct and politically incorrect theories, who knows. Maybe it's a combination?

Spoiler: it's black people.

I don't know if there's a single perfect book, because it's a difficult problem and nobody knows all the answers. Here's a decent book that tackles the politically correct part of the problem. For the politically incorrect part, you can read between the lines of books like this or you can delve into the horrible dark corners of the Internet like this. As to the validity of the politically correct and politically incorrect theories, who knows. Maybe it's a combination?

Here's a book that more or less sums it up:
https://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X

I agree with you on two points:

1. The condition blacks are in today is due in large part to being enslaved for ~100 years, then being subject to institutional racism for another ~100 years.
   
2. There are still people who hold positions of power that who knowingly or unknowingly hold black people back.
   
   
   After that our agreement ends. The position and opportunity of black people in society today is better than it has ever been. If they had the culture of Asians or Jews they could easily outpace white people in every metric. Further, whining and blaming everything on "white racism" will hold black people in the ghetto forever. Your viewpoints are actively oppressing African Americans.

You're just spamming the sub now with this.
Repeating the same things and not advancing your position.

Nor are you responding to my questions so that we can have a rational discussion by establishing what is "racism and privilege" exactly and how it pertains to the city.

Because right now it's all this fuzzy notion that makes excuses far too easy. Talking to you really does remind me of a good will hunting secene. I even brought up Howard Zin for cryin out loud.

Anyway, Perhaps something like John Ogbu's study "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement" would be of benefit here.

Otherwise this is isn't going anywhere and it's clear that no amount of reasoning is going to change whatever some militant BLM mantra crept into your mind.

You really, honestly should. Especially if you take your interest in sociology seriously. It would be like not reading The Bell Curve (which a bunch of people disagree with)

https://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X/

I didn't realize I had to do your homework for you. This was the top result of a google search for "shaker heights sociology study schools". When I saw this study last it was in article format but I am not surprised the author wrote a book about it.

Anyways, you are remembering the study incorrectly. It was a study of middle class black families in comparison to middle class whites within the same community. He found that the white parents were significantly more likely to preach the value of education and homework and hold their children responsible when they performed poorly academically, whereas the reverse was true with the black parents. They did little to reinforce the importance of school or homework and blamed the teachers/schools when their children did poorly. So yes, actually, it addresses this point directly.

Look, I do not care to "convert" you. I couldn't care less if you believe what I am saying. The link to the book is of zero help to you as you are not going to order it and read it and you have demonstrated an unwillingness to search for any evidence that is contrary to your claim (unless it is spoon fed to you), so what do you want? Shall I xerox the relevant pages of the article (assuming I ever find my copy) and mail them to you? Why is that my responsibility? I have told you that there is evidence to support my claim, I gave you a really good jumping off point, and you do not want to do any work. Fine. Again, I don't care. But do not make the mistake of assuming that your laziness or my apathy is reason enough to continue believing you are right about this.

Seriously you ask for my opinion and that's the reply I get? And I thought we were friends. I also find you attitudes on the achievement gap to be quaint. Here is a study by a black sociologist on the reasons black students perform poorly in a rich middle class school district. His conclussion...It isn't the teachers.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/rich-black-flunking/Content?oid=1070459

Here is another perspective from a white teacher who chose to teach in a primarily black school district. I am sure the blame for the achievement gap rest on his shoulders as well.

http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-it.html

Evidence shows the differences in academic aptitudes among races are so small as to be negligible. The same is true about gender where females tend to be very slightly better at some tasks on average ... but who cares. It's negligible on average and says nothing about any individual.

The problems with inner city schools that you mention are primarily socio-economic and also cultural (see Shaker Heights: https://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X ), not genetic.

I think you are arguing that teachers should be evaluated based on growth rather than proficiency.