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The Theory and Practice of African American Achievement Dr. Theresa Perry Associate Professor Department of Education Vice President of Community Relations Wheelock College The task of African American kids is distinctive…because of our social, historical, and cultural heritage...because of the historic and continuing ideology of our intellectual inferiority…because of how we are constructed in the white imagination…and it carries with it a unique set of dilemmas.

Dr. Perry started by pointing out that studies show that there is an achievement gap between blacks and Latinos on one side and whites and Asians on the other even in school districts that are highly resourced and where the students and community are middle to high income. Yet there are some schools where there is no achievement gap between these groups.

Dr. Perry then stated that the task of achievement for African Americans is distinctive because of their different social, historical, and cultural heritage, which includes the ideology that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. As a result, blacks face a unique set of dilemmas, including:

• How can I aspire to and work toward excellence when it is unclear whether or when evaluations of my work can or should be taken seriously?

• Can I invest in and engage my full personhood with all of my cultural formations, in my school work if my teachers and other adults in the building are both attracted to and repulsed by these cultural formations, e.g., the way I walk and use language, my relationship to my body, my physicality?

• Will I be willing to work hard over time given the unpredictability of my teachers’ responses to my work?

• Can I commit myself to work harder over time if I know that no matter what I and other member of my reference group accomplish, these accomplishments are not likely to change how we are viewed by the larger society?

• Can I commit myself to work hard, to achieve in school when cultural adaptation functions as a prerequisite to skill acquisition, if the price of the ticket is separation from the culture of my reference group?

In the pre-Civil Rights era the ideology of black intellectual inferiority was out there. So, as a result, black schools and social institutions organized intentionally to counter this ideology and social children to the behaviors and practices necessary to be an achiever. They emphasized freedom for literacy, literacy for freedom, racial uplift, citizenship, and leadership.
In the post-Civil Rights era, the ideology of black intellectual inferiority is still present but it is not talked about, and in most places there are no forces countering it. This is negatively impacting on students’ ability to achieve. The small number of schools where black students do achieve similarly to white students have a few important characteristics:
• They frame a social identity for black students as achievers where being black is coincident with being an achiever.

• They reinforce the behaviors and practices that are necessary for being an achiever, e.g., persistence, hard work, thoroughness, and a commitment to doing one’s very best.

They have challenging curricula with adequate support.


BIOGRAPHY

Theresa Perry is Associate Professor of Education and Vice President for Community Relations at Wheelock College. From 1986-1997, she was Undergraduate Dean at the College. Dr. Perry has edited several books, including, Freedom's Plow, Teaching in the Multicultural Classroom, Teaching Malcolm X, and with Lisa Delpit, The Real Ebonics Debate: Power Language and the Education of African American Children. She is one of three authors of the recently released book, YoungGifted and Black, Promoting High Achievement among African American Children. She is completing a book to be released in 2005, entitled, Educating Black Children, What Teachers, Teacher Educators and Community Activists Should Know. She has lectured at colleges and universities in the States, England and Bermuda. She is currently working with several schools (public and private) and school systems on African American school achievement, as well as with the community engagement component of the Boston High School reform initiative. During the summer of 2003, she taught a two day institute for school leaders, researchers, teachers and teacher educators on African American school achievement. She is at the beginning stage of a research study that will examine the relationship of the "organizational habitats" of a school or program to the creation of social identities of African American children and youth as achievers.