Feb 1, 2024

The Culture Trap

Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth

Derron Wallace

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz

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Summary

In this episode, Elizabeth and John talk with Derron Wallace, sociologist of education and Brandeis colleague, about his new book The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth (Oxford UP, 2023), which explores "ethnic expectations" for Caribbean schoolchildren in New York and London. His work starts with the basic puzzle that while black Caribbean schoolchildren in New York are often considered as "high-achieving," in London, they have been, conversely thought to be "chronically underachieving." Yet in each case the main cause -- of high achievement in New York and low achievement in London -- is said to be cultural. We discuss the concept of "ethnic expectations" and the ways it can have negative effects even when the expectations themselves are positive, and the dense intertwining of race, class, nation, colonial status, and gender, and the travels of the concept of culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Mentioned in the episode:

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report [the Sewell Report] (2021)
The Moynihan Report (1965)
Georg Lukacs, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" (1923)
Diane Reay, "What Would a Socially Just Educational System Look Like?" (2012)
Bernard Coard, How the Caribbean Child is made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System
Steve McQueen, Small Axe, "Education," (2020)
Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
B. Brian Forster, I Don't Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life (2020)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, "Adieu Culture: A New Duty Arises" (2003)
David Simon's TV show The Wire (and also Lean on Me, and To Sir, with Love and with major props from Derron, Top Boy)
Stuart Hall, The Fateful Triangle (1994)

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Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz

Free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today's world. Recall This Book is hosted by Elizabeth Ferry, Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and John Plotz, Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative.

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