The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth
with Derron Wallace (Brandeis University, MA)
2 May, 5-6:30pm
Jubilee 144, University of Sussex (Campus Map) / Zoom
Abstract:
In The Culture Trap,
Derron Wallace argues that the overreliance on culture to explain Black
students' achievement and behavior in schools is a trap that undermines the
historical factors and institutional processes that shape how Black students
experience schooling. This trap is consequential for a host of racial and
ethnic minority youth in schools, including Black Caribbean young people in
London and New York City.
Since the 1920s, Black
Caribbeans in New York have been considered a high-achieving Black model
minority. Conversely, since the 1950s, Black Caribbeans in London have been
regarded as a chronically underachieving minority. In both contexts, however,
it is often suggested that Caribbean culture informs their status, whether as a
celebrated minority in the US or as a demoted minority in Britain.
Drawing on rich observations, interviews and
archives in London and New York City schools, Wallace suggests that the use of
culture to justify Black Caribbean students’ achievement obscures the very real
ways that school structures, institutional processes, and colonial conditions
influence the racial, gender and class inequalities Black youth experience in
schools. Wallace reveals how culture is at times used as an alibi for racism in
schools, and points out what educators, parents and students can do to change
the beliefs and practices that reinforce racism.
Speaker
Biography:
Derron
Wallace is the Jacob S. Potofsky Chair in
Sociology and Associate Professor of Sociology and Education at Brandeis
University in Boston, USA. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre on the
Dynamics of Ethnicity at the University of Manchester. From 2022 to 2023,
Wallace was a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Sociology at Durham
University. A cultural sociologist of race, ethnicity and education, Wallace’s
research focuses on structural and cultural inequalities in urban schools and
neighbourhoods as experienced by Black youth. In 2023, Wallace received the
American Educational Research Association’s Early Career Award for research on
the social context of education. He also received the Doris Entwisle Early
Career Award from the American Sociological Association for research on the
sociology of education.