Oppositional culture, also known as the "blocked opportunities framework" or the "caste theory of education", is a term most commonly used in studying the sociology of education to explain racial disparities in educational achievement, particularly between white and black Americans. However, the term refers to any subculture's rejection of conformity to prevailing norms and values, not just nonconformity within the educational system. Thus many criminal gangs and religious cults could also be considered oppositional cultures.
This theory relates to a larger generalized topic of race and intelligence. According to this theory, minority students underachieve intentionally in school and in standardized testing due to a fear of being stereotyped as acting white.[1] Acting white refers to activities and attitudes associated with white middle-class Americans. Adherence to white norms in African American communities represents a betrayal of black normative culture. Spurred by the pre-existing theories including the culture of poverty and the effects of urban decay, oppositional culture emerged in the late 1970s as a theory to explain the education gap. The principal researcher of this idea, anthropologist John Ogbu, details the principal mechanisms and causes for oppositional culture in his books, Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (2003) and Minority Status, Oppositional Culture, & Schooling (2008).
Racial disparities in education stem from the historical foundations of America, from the époque of slavery into the 20th and 21st centuries. Slave owners in the American South by and large prevented their slaves from becoming literate, fearing that literacy and education would strengthen slave resistance and empower the slaves to revolt against their masters. While African-Americans in the North fared better, black schools struggled to keep their doors open.
The Supreme Court's landmark 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson also helped to define education policies in the United States for years to come. The court case ultimately decided that race was an acceptable categorization by which to divide individuals. Additionally the case determined that separation of these individuals was permissible provided that the condition of both facilities was equal.[2] This case helped to promote segregationist practices that prevented African American children from attending white schools. African-American schools had fewer resources leading to greater racial gaps in educational achievement.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that the separate but equal doctrine was unconstitutional in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The court also ruled that segregation inherently caused harm to the cognitive development of black children, and officially recognized the importance of educational equality as a compelling interest in the United States.[3] Following this ruling, Southern school districts began to publish findings of racial gaps in academics as a justification to oppose desegregation. As a result, the United States adopted compensatory education in order to equalize educational opportunities for all students.[4] Despite these efforts, the education gap continues to persist in SAT scores and college acceptance rates. In the 1980s, a researcher named John Ogbu suggested that equal opportunity was not enough to diminish the racial disparities gap in education and that additional factors needed to be addressed in order to reduce the racial disparities gap.
Racial disparities continue to persist in the realm of education even today. A study by George Farkas in 2002 identifies several areas where racial gaps and disparities continue to exist. His research findings show that even in early primary education in pre-school and kindergarten, African American children show lower oral language, pre-reading, and pre-mathematics skills in addition to behavior less suited to school environments.[5]