Black Resistance in High School

Forging a Separatist Culture

By R. Patrick Solomon

Subjects: African American Studies
Series: SUNY series, Frontiers in Education
Paperback : 9780791408483, 159 pages, March 1992
Hardcover : 9780791408476, 159 pages, March 1992

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Table of contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1. Black Cultural Forms in Schools

Black Cultural Forms in Schools

Schools as Arenas of Conflict

Theories of Resistance and Cultural Inversion

The Canadian Encounter

2. Black Life and Schooling in Canada

Black Life Before the West Indians

Black Schooling

Enter the West Indians

West Indians in Toronto

West Indian Children in Toronto Schools

West Indian Subcultures in Toronto Schools

The Community and the School

Lumberville High: Its Programs and Students

3. The Jocks at Lumberville

Group Formation and Membership

"Language is Unity, Identity, and Power"

Dress Style: From "Army Digs" to "Fashion Dreads"

Breaking School Rules

Gym and Playground: The Jocks' Domain

Corridor and Hallway Behaviors

Wall Dancing: Culture or Subculture?

Booze, Herbs, and Soun' Sessions

Summary and Conclusion

4. Authority, Whites, and Women

Authority and Power

Black, Brown, and White

How Boys Dominate Females

Summary and Conclusion

5. Sport as Work

The Sport Subculture

Agents of Sport Socialization

Work: Life after Sport

Summary and Conclusion

6. The School: Contribution to Separatism

The Sorting Machine

Trapped in a "Dummy" School

"Escape from Lumberdump"

How Staff Rule

Rewards as Control

Summary and Conclusion

7. When Structure and Culture Collide: The Outcome of Schooling

The Reproductive Effects of Tracking

School Hopping and Sports: Liberating or Reproductive?

When Structure and Culture Collide

Race and Resistance: An Expanded Model

Implications for Blacks in Canada

The Next Generation of Culture and Struggle

8. Strategies for Change

Working with Black Resistance

Black Subculture: From Opposition to Conciliation

Tracking Revisited

School-to-Work Transition

School-Community Relations

Out of the Gym and Back to the Classroom

Toward a Framework for Race Equity in Education

Appendixes

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Description

This book investigates and brings into focus the formidable issues of racial culture left undeveloped in research on multiracial school populations in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Through ethnographic research, the author presents significant and provocative insight into the formation of black self-concept, and captures the complex interplay between black students' accommodation to the official achievement ideology and their resistance to the powerful structural forces operating within the school. It offers practical suggestions for working constructively with racial and ethnic subcultures as well as offering suggestions to school districts in the process of planning or implementing race and ethnic relations policies.

R. Patrick Solomon is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada.