Family (Dis)Advantage and the Educational Prospects of Better off African American Youth: How Race Still Matters

Abstract

While the educational difficulties of poor black students are well documented and have been discussed extensively, the academic performance of well-off African American children has received much less attention. Even with economic and educational resources in the home, well-off African American youth are not achieving at the levels of their white peers. Why is this? A review of relevant literature identifies a set of social processes that pose formidable barriers to the academic and personal development of middle-class African American youth, the closing of the black-white achievement gap, and the preservation of African American family advantage across generations. Constituting a social ecology of African American family life, these processes emanate outward from the immediate home environment, through peers and friends, into neighborhoods and schools, and to society at large.

“Mom made me do it”: The role of family in African Americans’ decisions to enroll in doctoral education.

“…that have been linked to racism in America, the way they socialize and interact with their students is often in a manner serving to lessen the negative consequences of being African American (Franklin, Boyd-Franklin, & Draper, 2002; Stevenson, Davis, & Abdul-Kabir, 2001; Warde, 2008). These interactions are often viewed as “Parent Centered” or insensitive to students’ needs (Gosa & Alexander, 2007, p. 294). For example, African American parents typically use an authoritative rather than a permissive parenting style (Maton, Hrabowski, & Greif, 1998).…”

“…For example, African American parents typically use an authoritative rather than a permissive parenting style (Maton, Hrabowski, & Greif, 1998). Although this style of parenting teaches students to conform and distinguish appropriate and acceptable behavior in educational environments where “juvenile pranks can be mistaken, misperceived, or misattributed as criminal behavior” (Maton et al, 1998, p. 651), scholars have used this as evidence to characterize African American families as “disorganized, weak, and pathological” (Gosa & Alexander, 2007, p. 295).…”

Academic adjustment across middle school: The role of public regard and parenting.

“…We focus on these associations among urban Black and Latino youth for two reasons. First, although widely cited statistics indicate that Black and Latino youth are at elevated risk for poor academic performance (Glenn, 2006; Gosa & Alexander, 2007), less is known about the amount of variation in academic motivation and performance within these groups. Thus, little is also known about what individual and family factors may predict such variation.…”

Communalism Versus Race/Ethnicity: Which Predicts What Pedagogical Strategies Will Be Culturally Relevant? Or Do You Need Both?

“…These issues will be especially critical in urban poor communities where other potential avenues of support and connection are even more likely to be absent or inadequate, replaced by negative perceptions and assumptions about students, their families, and communities. But the same issue can also be consequential in a range of other schooling contexts, including, for instance, in schools where the performance gap persists among affluent AA students (Gosa & Alexander, 2007).…”