Blacked Out : Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High

Rating:
Summary: Culture of poverty? Cultural defiencies? Not acc to Fordham.
Review: I read _Blacked Out_ as part of a graduate program in urban education. It is the best of all the many books I have read in all of my coursework. It doesn't offer easy answers, or in fact many answers at all, it just states the problem. Until we can agree on the problem & acknowlege it, how can the solutions be found?

Like the other reviewer, I suggest you read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Culture of poverty? Cultural defiencies? Not acc to Fordham.
Review: I read _Blacked Out_ as part of a graduate program in urban education. It is the best of all the many books I have read in all of my coursework. It doesn't offer easy answers, or in fact many answers at all, it just states the problem. Until we can agree on the problem & acknowlege it, how can the solutions be found?

Like the other reviewer, I suggest you read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Race and Culture in an American High School
Review: This is a fabulous book. Passionate, eloquent, analytical and self-reflexive, it belongs on the shelves of everyone who has some interest in race, education or in modern anthropological investigation. While certainly scholarly, her writing is open and accessible to a general audience. Some background in social science is probably helpful however,

Fordham examines the cultural context for the phenomenon of inner-city African American high-school students labelling academic success as "acting white". She argues that a complex and contradictory set of messages are internalized by black students so that academic success has become associated with a cultural milieu that devalues and stigmatizes African American culture and African American individuals.

Over the course of two years, Fordham interviews both high-achieving and low-achieving students, their teachers, parents and school officials. She does not spare anyone: the racism of mainstream U.S. society, the contradictory messages sent by African-American parents, teachers and administrators, students own dilemmas regarding peer pressure and the "simple" certainties of youth. Paticularly valuable is her discussion of the differences within the student population in terms of scholastic achievement, degree of attachment to the American Dream and gender. While she offers no easy solutions, Fordham provides essential deep background and analysis to a host of issues, especially the continuing failure of education to meet the needs of young black men. One might add that similar issues can be seen at work in other populations in crisis in other parts of the U.S. and elsewhere in the colonial world.

Fordham's work raises disturbing questions for anyone interested in education as a way to achieve social justice. As someone who has taught in a variety of different academic and racial contexts, I believe her conclusions are sound. Much as we would like to believe otherwise, race plays an overwhelming part in defining the moral and social universes of young "minority" peoples. This book provides an important step in our ability to face this issue and to begin to work out appropriate and effective responses.

Methodologically, Fordham's work serves as a wonderful example of the ability to simultaneously engage with a subject analytically and yet at the same time maintain one's presence (with all the conflicts that entails) as a participant in the overall cultural milieu in which the investigation takes place. Fordham discusses issues of representation, the anthropology of the familiar and the responsibilities of socially-conscious anthropology with humility, grace and wisdom. To anyone who has had problems confronting the legacy and practice of anthropology, I would simply say, "Read this book".