Overcoming the Black-White Achievement Gap
Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement
By John U. Ogbu
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., 2003
352 pp., $69.95 cloth, ISBN 0-8058-4515-1, $32.50 paper, ISBN 0-8058-4516-X
By Ronald Roach
The affirmative action debate brought on by the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of the reverse discrimination lawsuits filed against the University of Michigan provides a timely context for the publication of Dr. John Ogbu’s Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement
Readers who have followed the affirmative action debate closely know that the fight has centered around access to the nation’s most competitive colleges and universities. Because Ogbu, an anthropology professor at the University of California-Berkeley, has tackled the tricky subject of Black student academic performance in the integrated Cleveland suburb Shaker Heights, he has provided a valuable case study on developing a framework for understanding the Black-White achievement gap.
