Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural ... · A Cultural-Ecological Theory of Minority School Performance Ogbu calls his explanation of minority school performance a cultural-ecological

Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities:A Cultural-Ecological Theory of SchoolPerformance with Some Implicationsfor Education

JOHN U. OGBUDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of California, Berkeley

HERBERT D. SIMONS

Graduate School of EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley

This article has three objectives. First, it describes Ogbu's classification ofminorities: autonomous, voluntary or immigrant, and involuntary or nonim-migrant minorities. Second, it explains Ogbu's cultural-ecological theory ofminority school performance. Finally, it suggests some implications of the theoryfor pedagogy. The authors regard the typology of minority groups as a heuristicdevice for analysis and interpretation of differences among minority groups inschool experience.

Ogbu has studied minority education in the United States and othersocieties for almost 28 years.1 During the first 15 years he concentratedon the differences in school performance between minority- and domi-nant-group students. He concluded that the differences were caused bythe treatment of minority groups in society at large and in school as wellas by the perceptions of the minorities and their responses to school dueto such treatment (Ogbu 1974,1978). In the early 1980s the focus of hisresearch shifted toward explaining differences in school performanceamong minority groups themselves (Ogbu 1987). The focus on differ-ences among minorities has generated a great deal of response fromeducational anthropologists and other researchers.2 Some have con-ducted important research that either supports or challenges his perspec-tive. But in reviewing these works one finds that some of his main ideasare not always understood.

Among those ideas is his classification of minority groups. One objec-tive of this article is to clarify the classification. Some have interpretedhis recent writing to mean that minority school performance is causedonly by sociocultural adaptation. This is a misinterpretation becauseOgbu has always said that "community forces" constitute one of two setsof factors influencing minority school performance (see Figure I).3 Thus,

Anthropology & Education Quarterly 29(2):155-188. Copyright © 1998, AmericanAnthropological Association.

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156 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 29,1998

THE SYSTEM1 'COMMUNITY FORCES1

Societal EducationalPolicies & Practices

Societal Rewards forEducationalAccomplishments orCredentials

Treatments ofMinorities in School

DUAL STATUS FRAME OFREFERENCE

Instrumental Beliefs aboutInterpretations of Schooling(e.g., Role of Credentialsin Getting Ahead)

Relational Beliefs about orInterpretations of Schooling (e.g.,Degree of Trusting Schools & Thosein Control; Schooling as a Process ofSubordination and Control)

Symbolic Beliefs aboutInterpretations of Schooling(e.g., Is learning curriculum,school cultural practices &language a threat to minoritycultural & language identity?)

MINORITY EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES

SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT & ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Figure 1Two parts of "the problem of minority" schooling.

another objective of this article is to clarify the role of community forces.Finally, we will address the issue that some have complained that Ogbu'swork does not address pedagogical issues, although Ogbu has said thathis work is not about pedagogy.

A Brief History

Phase One, 1968-1980

As we have already noted, during the first period of his research Ogbutried to explain why minority students perform less well in school thanmajority students. His search for an explanation began in 1968 with his

Ogbu and Simons Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities 157

Stockton, California, study (Ogbu 1974). A few years later, he publisheda major comparative work on the same problem in six countries: Britain,India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. The study dealtwith the education ofcastelike minorities. He classified these minorities ascastelike because in every case they were a subordinate group in astratification system more rigid than social class stratification. In everycase, the minorities were historically denied equal educational opportuni-ties in terms of access to educational resources, treatment in school, andrewards in employment and wages for educational accomplishments.Ogbu reached the same conclusion as in his Stockton study: namely, thattheir lower academic performance was a sort of adaptation to barriers inadult opportunity structure (Ogbu 1978).

Phase Two, 1980-1997

Although Ogbu continues to study structural barriers in minorityeducation, his research focus shifted at the beginning of the 1980s to"community forces/' which are products of sociocultural adaptation andare located within the minority community (Ogbu 1983, n.d.a). Hehypothesized that the study of community forces would shed light onwhy immigrant minorities do well in school while nonimmigrants doless well. It is true that during his research in Stockton he had observedthat immigrant and nonimmigrant minorities differed in socioculturaladaptation, but he did not explore the implications of this difference forschooling. He continued, however, to encounter the difference in theschool performance of immigrant and nonimmigrant minorities in al-most all of his subsequent comparative research. Ogbu is currentlyanalyzing the ethnographic data from a comparative study of commu-nity forces and educational strategies among African Americans, Chi-nese Americans, and Mexican Americans in Oakland and Union City, inthe San Francisco Bay area. He is also revising a book for publication bythe Russell Sage Foundation based on the quantitative part of the studythat included some 2,400 students (see also Ogbu 1995a, n.d.b).

Some of the questions that Ogbu asked himself and which othersasked him include the following: Why do some minorities do better inschool than others? Is it because they are more intelligent or geneticallysuperior? Is it because they come from cultures better at educating theirchildren? Is it because they possess languages or learning styles bettersuited to formal education?

From his comparative research Ogbu has concluded that (1) no minor-ity group does better in school because it is genetically superior thanothers; (2) no minority culture is better at educating its children; and (3)no minority language is better suited for learning in school (Simons etal. n.d.). He has argued that from a comparative perspective, one cannotattribute the differences in minority school performance to cultural,linguistic, or genetic differences. This is not to deny genetic differencesor to deny that cultural and language differences may have an adverse


or positive effect on minority school performance; but culture and lan-guage do not entirely determine the differences among minorities. Con-sider that some minority groups, like the Buraku outcast in Japan, dopoorly in school in their country of origin but do quite well in the UnitedStates, or that Koreans do well in school in China and in the United Statesbut do poorly in Japan. Comparative research suggests that we mightdiscover at least a part of the explanation by closely looking at thehistories and sociocultural adaptations of these minorities (Simons et al.n.d.). More specifically, to understand why minority groups differamong themselves in school performance we have to know two things:the first is their own responses to their history of incorporation into U.S.society and their subsequent treatment or mistreatment by white Ameri-cans. The second is how their responses to that history and treatmentaffect their perceptions of and responses to schooling.

Structural barriers and school factors affect minority school perfor-mance; however, minorities are also autonomous human beings whoactively interpret and respond to their situation. Minorities are nothelpless victims.

A Cultural-Ecological Theory of Minority School Performance

Ogbu calls his explanation of minority school performance a cultural-ecological theory. This theory considers the broad societal and schoolfactors as well as the dynamics within the minority communities. Ecologyis the "setting," "environment," or "world" of people (minorities), and"cultural," broadly, refers to the way people (in this case the minorities)see their world and behave in it.

The theory has two major parts (see Figure 1 above). One part is aboutthe way the minorities are treated or mistreated in education in terms ofeducational policies, pedagogy, and returns for their investment orschool credentials. Ogbu calls this the system. The second part is aboutthe way the minorities perceive and respond to schooling as a conse-quence of their treatment. Minority responses are also affected by howand why a group became a minority. This second set of factors isdesignated as community forces (Ogbu n.d.b).

Understanding how the system affects minority school performancecalls for an examination of the overall white treatment of minorities. Thelatter includes the barriers faced by minorities qua minorities. Thesebarriers are instrumental discrimination (e.g., in employment andwages), relational discrimination (such as social and residential segrega-tion), and symbolic discrimination (e.g., denigration of the minorityculture and language). Ogbu calls these discriminations collective prob-lems faced by minorities (see Figure 2).

To explain the minorities' perceptions of and responses to education,the theory explores the impact of the white treatment of the minorities.This impact is expressed in their responses, or their "collective solu-tions," to the collective problems (see Figure 3). Minorities usually

1.Initial Terms

ofIncorporation

2.

Subsequent Discriminatory Treatment of Minorities

B.Relational

Economic:Job Ceiling& ExclusionfromMainstreamStatusMobilitySystem

Political,Legal &RelatedBarriers

DiscriminatoryEducationalPolicies &Practices

" C.Symbolic/ Expressive

Subordination& Control;Exclusion fromTrue/RealAssimilationinto MainstreamSociety; Threats& Violence

Intellectual,Cultural &LinguisticDerogation,Denigration,Stereotyping

Educational Consequences: "The System"

Societal Factors Affecting Minority Educational Experience & Outcomes

Societal EducationalPolices & Practices

Wi thin-SchoolPolicies & Practices

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Inadequate Societal Rewards &Recognition for Academic Achievement

Minority School Orientations, Adjustment, Strategies & Performance

Figure 2. White treatment or "collective problems" faced by minorities. Hi

1. History: How a Group Acquired Minority Status &Subsequent Treatment by White Americans

ON

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2. Cultural Model of the U.S. / US. Society

3. Cultural Model of Minority Status

4. DUAL FRAMEOF REFERENCE

INSTRUMENTALADAPTATION

RELATIONALADAPTATION

SYMBOLICADAPTATION

HOW WELLTHEY THINKTHEYAREDOING BYCOMPARISONWITHOTHERS;AND WHOTHE"OTHERS"ARE

HOWTHEYTHINK THEYCAN GETAHEAD/"MAKE IT1

AS MINORITIES& BELIEFSABOUT SCHOOLCREDENTIALS

SURVIVALSTRATEGIESE.G.,"AMAN HASGOT TODO WHATHE HASTO DO" TO"SURVIVE11/"MAKEIT11

ROLEMODELSORPEOPLEONEWOULDLIKE TOBELIKE

ACCOMMODATION;COLLECTIVESTRUGGLE;DEGREE OFTRUST/DISTRUSTOF WHITES& THESYSTEM"

CULTURAL/LANGUAGEDIFFERENCES& BEHAVIOR

CULTURALFRAMEOFREFERENCE:GROUPIDEM1TY&BEHAVIOR

CULTURALFRAMEOFREFERENCE:GROUPMEMBERSHIP& BEHAVIOR

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COMMUNITYFORCES

CULTURAL MODEL OF SCHOOLING i.e.,BELIEFS ABOUT OR INTERPRETATIONS OF- Instrumental Value of Schooling- Relationship With Schools & Authorities- Cultural / Language Identity & Schooling

COMMUNITYFORCES

EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES

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B

Figure 3. Minorities' sodocultural adaptations or "collective solutions" to "collective problems."V0

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respond or develop collective solutions to the instrumental discrimi-nation (for example, they develop a folk theory of how they can "makeit" in the face of economic discrimination), relational discrimination (e.g.,they may resort to "collective struggle/' become mistrustful of whiteAmericans and their institutions), and symbolic discrimination (for ex-ample, they may develop an oppositional cultural and language frameof reference or selectively adopt "white ways") (Ogbu 1995a, 1995b).

Having examined the collective problems faced by the minorities andthe minorities' collective solutions to those problems, analysis nowfocuses on the implications of both for minority schooling. According tothe theory, the treatment of the minorities in the wider society is reflectedin their treatment in education. The latter takes three forms, all of whichaffect school adjustment and performance (see Figure 1 above). The firstis the overall educational policies and practices toward the minorities(for example, policy of school segregation, unequal school funding, andstaffing of minority schools, et cetera). The second is how minoritystudents are treated in schools and classrooms (e.g., level of teacherexpectations, teacher-student interaction patterns, grouping and track-ing, and so on). The third is the rewards, or lack of them, that societygives to minorities for their school credentials, especially in employmentand wages. All minorities studied by Ogbu have experienced thesediscriminatory treatments.4

Structural barriers or discriminations in society and school are impor-tant determinants of low school achievement among minorities. How-ever, they are not the sole cause of low school performance, otherwiseall minorities would not do well in school since all are faced with suchdiscriminations. Some educational anthropologists consider culturaland language differences the major cause of the problem (see Emihovich1995; Jacob and Jordan 1993). It is true that cultural and languagedifferences do cause learning problems. But cultural and language dif-ference explanations do not account for the school success of someminority groups that face similar discontinuities as do others that areless successful. Consider the variation in the school performance of theminorities in Table 1. It appears that the minorities who are doing betterare those most distant in culture and language from the public school. Itis for these reasons that Ogbu has suggested that the clue to the differ-ences among minorities in school performance may lie in the differencesin their community forces.

The study of the community forces is essentially the study of minorityperceptions of and responses to schooling. Four factors are hypothesizedto constitute the community forces: a frame of minority school compari-son (e.g., with schools "back home" or in white suburbs); beliefs aboutthe instrumental value of schooling (for example, role of school creden-tials in getting ahead); relational interpretations of schooling (e.g., de-gree of trust of schools and school personnel); and symbolic beliefs aboutschooling (for example, whether learning school curriculum, language,


Table 1.Ethnicity, cultural/language differences, and school performance in a junior

high school, Oakland, California, 1994-95 school year

Ethnic Group GPAVietnamese 3.2Chinese 3.0Mien 2.5Cambodians 2.2Latinos/Mexican Americans 2.0African Americans 2.6

Source: Yee et al. 1995

et cetera is considered harmful to minority cultural and language iden-tity) (see Figure 4). As already noted, these community forces tend to bedifferent for different types of minorities.

In developing this part of his theory, Ogbu has found his classificationof minority groups useful. The heuristic value of the classification hasfurther been enhanced by the concept of settler society. A settler societyis a society where the ruling or dominant group is made up of immi-grants from other societies who have come to settle there because theywant to improve their economic, political, and social status, and so on.White Americans, the dominant group in the United States, are almostentirely immigrants. Other settler societies include Australia, Canada,New Zealand, and Singapore. The dominant groups in settler societieshave certain beliefs and expectations in common, including the belief inopportunity in their appropriated territory for self-improvement, indi-vidual responsibility for self-improvement, and expectations that peoplein the society should more or less conform or "assimilate/' especially inlanguage and culture. Another feature of settler societies pertinent to thecultural-ecological theory is that within such a society there are often atleast two kinds of minorities: those who have come to settle for the samereasons as the dominant group and those who have been made a part ofthe society against their will.

We now turn to Ogbu's classification of the minority groups to clarifyit.5 Following this, we describe the patterns of adaptations of the minor-ity types and the educational consequences of the adaptations on com-munity forces. In the final part of the article, we suggest some implica-tions for educational practice.

Different Types of Minority Status

Ogbu defines minority status on the basis of power relations betweengroups, not in terms of numerical representation. A population is aminority if it occupies some form of subordinate power position inrelation to another population within the same country or society.

1. History: How a Group Acquired Minority Status &Subsequent Treatment by White Americans

2. Sodocultural Adaptations

3. Cultural Model of/Beliefs about Schooling

Beliefs about or Interpretations of• Instrumental Value of Schooling;• Relationship with Schools & School Authorities;• Cultural/Language Identity & Schooling

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DUAL FRAME OFREFERENCE

INSTRUMENTAL BELIEFSABOUT SCHOOLING

RELATIONAL BELIEFSABOUT SCHOOLING

SYMBOLIC BELIEFSABOUT SCHOOLING

Dual Frameof Reference:How goodtheireducationalopportunitiesare comparedto theeducationalopportunitiesof oners andwho theothers are.

l.FoIktheory ofSuccessandSchooling:Beliefsabout therole ofschoolcredentialsin gettingahead.

1 Survival/AlternativeStrategiesandSchooling:Beliefsabout otherways ofgettingahead matdo notrequiremucheducation.

3. RoleModels andSchooling:Bettersaboutpeople onewould liketo be likeand the roleof educationin makingthem whatthey are.

1. CollectiveStruggle forEqualEducation A

Z Trust/Mistrust of& ConflictswithSchool/Authorities

3. Beliefsabout the roleof schooling ingroupsubordinationand control.

1. Cultural/LanguageDifferences &SchoolBehavior:Beliefs aboutcultural andlanguagedifference asbarriers to beovercome or asmarkers ofcollectiveidentity to bemaintained.

2. GroupIdentity andSchoolBehaviors/Talk:Beliefs aboutwhether schoolcurriculum,behaviors andlanguage are athreat tominoritycultural andlanguageidentity.

3. GroupMenberahipand SchoolBehavior/Taft:BeMefs about

members whobehave andtalk the schoolways.

5. Minorities' Educational Strategies

±6. Sodal Adjustment & Academic Achievement I

Figure 4. Community forces influencing minorities' schooling. ONOJ


For the purpose of explaining differences in school performance,Ogbu classifies minority groups into autonomous, voluntary (immigrant),and involuntary (nonimmigrant) minorities. The different categories callattention to different histories of the people who make up the largercategory referred to as minorities.

The autonomous minorities are people who belong to groups that aresmall in number. They may be different in race, ethnicity, religion, orlanguage from the dominant group. In the United States some examplesare the Amish, Jews, and Mormons. Although these groups may sufferdiscrimination, they are not totally dominated and oppressed, and theirschool achievement is no different from the dominant group (Ogbu1978). There are no nonwhite autonomous minorities in the UnitedStates, and since we are concerned with people of color we will notdiscuss autonomous minorities further.

The classification of minorities into voluntary and involuntary groupsis determined mainly by (1) the nature of white American involvementwith their becoming minorities and (2) the reasons they came or werebrought to the United States.

Voluntary (Immigrant) Minorities

Voluntary (immigrant) minorities are those who have more or lesswillingly moved to the United States because they expect better oppor-tunities (better jobs, more political or religious freedom) than they hadin their homelands or places of origin. The people in this category maybe different from the majority in race and ethnicity or in religion orlanguage. The important distinguishing features are that (1) the peoplein this category voluntarily chose to move to U.S. society in the hope ofa better future, and (2) they do not interpret their presence in the UnitedStates as forced upon them by the U.S. government or by white Ameri-cans. Voluntary minorities usually experience some problems in school,especially when they first arrive, because of society's discriminatoryeducational policies and practices (ARC 1982; Low 1982; Wollenberg1995) and because of language and cultural differences (Wang 1995).However, immigrant minorities do not experience long-lasting schoolperformance difficulty and long-lasting cultural and language problems.Some examples of voluntary minorities in the United States are immi-grants from Africa, Cuba, China, India, Japan, Korea, Central and SouthAmerica, the Caribbean (Jamaica, Trinidad, the Dominican Republic),and Mexico.

Refugees, Migrant/Guest Workers, Undocumented Workers, and Binationals

Refugees who were forced to come to the United States because of civilwar or other crises in their places of origin are not immigrants orvoluntary minorities. They did not freely choose or plan to come to settlein the United States to improve their status. However, they share some


attitudes and behaviors of immigrant minorities which lead to schoolsuccess. For example, they come to the United States with alreadyexisting differences in languages and cultures and with a tourist attitudetoward the cultural and language differences. Like tourists, they knewbefore coming to the United States that to accomplish the goal of theiremigration they would have to learn new, that is, white American, waysof behaving and talking. The tourist attitude helps them to learn tobehave and talk like white Americans without fear of losing their culturaland language identity. Examples of refugees in the United States areCambodians, Ethiopians, Haitians, Hmong, and Vietnamese.

Migrant/guest workers are not immigrant or voluntary minoritiesbecause they usually do not plan to settle in the United States perma-nently. Like refugees, they bring with them pre-existing cultural andlanguage differences and are able to adopt the tourist attitude towardlearning the culture and language of their host society. However, sincethe sojourn of migrant workers is temporary, they tend to learn only asmuch of their host's culture and language as necessary to achieve theirtemporary goals, which may not include school credentials. In countrieswhere it is permitted, some migrant workers in due course may chooseto become immigrants (Hagan 1994).

Neither undocumented workers nor binationals are immigrants orvoluntary minorities as defined in the cultural-ecological theory. Sinceundocumented workers are not an easily identifiable population, wehave no way of knowing about whether they came to settle permanentlyin the United States or about their sociocultural adaptation and theirschool experience.

Some studies indicate that binationals maintain economic and otherties with their places of origin and that these ties make their socioculturaladaptation different from that of immigrants from the same places oforigin (Baca 1994). Thus, the community forces that influence the educa-tion of binationals appear to be different from those that influence theeducation of immigrants. For example, whereas immigrants often oper-ate on the belief that they are preparing their children to live and workin the United States, binationals are not always sure or clear about wherethey are preparing their children to have a future, in the United States orin their places of origin (Baca 1994).

Involuntary (Nonimmigrant) Minorities

Involuntary (nonimmigrant) minorities are people who have beenconquered, colonized, or enslaved. Unlike immigrant minorities, thenonimmigrants have been made to be a part of the U.S. society perma-nently against their will. Two distinguishing features of involuntaryminorities are that (1) they did not choose but were forced against theirwill to become a part of the United States, and (2) they themselvesusually interpret their presence in the United States as forced on themby white people. Again, the people in this category may be different from


the dominant group in race and ethnicity or in religion or language.Involuntary minorities are less economically successful than voluntaryminorities, usually experience greater and more persistent cultural andlanguage difficulties, and do less well in school.

Involuntary minorities in the United States are American Indians andAlaska Natives, the original owners of the land, who were conquered;early Mexican Americans in the Southwest who were also conquered;Native Hawaiians who were colonized; Puerto Ricans who considerthemselves a colonized people; and black Americans who were broughtto the United States as slaves.

Involuntary Minorities versus Castelike Minorities. Involuntary minori-ties are a part of what Ogbu called "castelike minorities" in his earlierwork (Ogbu 1978). Further research has shown, however, that someimmigrant minorities may also have castelike relationships with thedominant group. This seems to have been the case of Chinese immi-grants in the Mississippi Delta in the 19th century (Loewen 1988). Butunlike nonimmigrant castelike minorities, the Chinese were able toescape from their initial castelike status through beliefs and behaviorsmore or less typical of voluntary minorities.

Descendants or Later Generations

Children of immigrant minorities are voluntary minorities like theirforeign-born parents. For example, second-, third-, or fourth-generationU.S.-born Chinese are voluntary minorities. It does not matter that it wastheir forebears rather than themselves who made the decision to cometo settle in the United States. Ogbu has found that the education of thedescendants of immigrants continues to be influenced by the communityforces of their forebears.6

The exceptions are descendants of immigrants from groups who shareaffinity with nonimmigrant minorities, that is, with those minorities whowere originally incorporated into U.S. society against their will throughconquest, colonization, or slavery. Immigrants having such an affinityare usually treated by white Americans as a part of the pre-establishednonimmigrant groups. White Americans force such immigrants to resideand work alongside the nonimmigrant group through residential segre-gation, job discrimination, and other discriminatory treatments. Underthese circumstances the immigrants and nonimmigrants intermarry andtheir descendants grow up with their nonimmigrant peers, tend toidentify with them, and assume the same sense of peoplehood or collec-tive identity. This is what has been happening in the United States withblack immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Their descendantseventually become "Black American/'7 As a result of their assimilationinto the involuntary Black American minority group, some descendantsof the earlier Afro-Caribbean immigrants have become Black Americancivil rights leaders.


A similar process of assimilation takes place among Mexican immi-grants who, in subsequent generations, become a part of the involuntaryMexican American minority group. However, there is a difference be-tween descendants of Mexican immigrants and descendants of blackimmigrants: descendants of Mexican immigrants have options not avail-able to descendants of black immigrants. One such option is that anoffspring of Mexican-Anglo intermarriage with enough white featurescan "pass" and become a part of the white majority. One informant toldOgbu that since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, some Mexicanimmigrants have been using intermarriage with Anglos to enable theiroffspring to pass into white society and avoid membership in the invol-untary Mexican American minority group (David Garza, Personal com-munication, Austin, TX, November 1996).

Further Important Features of the Classification

The Classification Is Not Determined by Race. The distinction betweenvoluntary and involuntary minority status is not based on race. Rather,it is a part of a general framework that explains the beliefs and behaviorsof different minorities, regardless of race or ethnicity, and how thesebeliefs and behaviors contribute to school success or failure. It is notabout black Americans as an involuntary minority or Chinese Americansas a voluntary minority group. The distinction is based upon a carefulcomparative study of ethnic and racial minorities and how the status ofa group affects its economic progress and academic performance. Theframework is not specifically directed at any particular race or even atany particular country. For example, Koreans are voluntary minoritiesin the United States (Y. Lee 1991) and China (Weiwenand Qingnan 1993;Yin 1989) but are involuntary minorities in Japan (Y. Lee 1991; Lee andDeVos 1981); Maya Indians are voluntary minorities in the United Statesbut involuntary minorities in Mexico (Hagan 1994); and black Americansare voluntary minorities in Ghana, Japan, France, and other countriesbut are involuntary minorities in the United States.

It is a group's history—how and why a group became a minority andthe role of the dominant group in society in their acquisition of minoritystatus—that determines its voluntary or involuntary status rather thanits race and ethnicity.8 Chinese Americans are voluntary minoritiesbecause of the ways and reasons they came to the United States, notbecause of their Chinese ethnicity. Black Americans are involuntaryminorities in the United States because they were brought here as slavesagainst their will, not because they are black. The fact that black peoplefrom the Caribbean and Africa in the United States are voluntary minori-ties further demonstrates that it is history and not race that determinesvoluntary or involuntary status. Colin Powell makes this point veryclearly:


My Black ancestors may have been dragged to Jamaica in chains, but they werenot dragged to the United States. That is a far different emotional and psycho-logical beginning than that of American Blacks, whose ancestors were broughthere in chains. [Powell 1995]

Dominant Patterns of Belief and Behavior as Focus of Analysis. The frame-work is about how groups operate within a society. It focuses analysis onthe dominant patterns of belief and behavior within different minoritygroups. Ogbu's research suggests that some beliefs and behaviors applyto enough members of a minority group or a type of minority group toform a visible pattern. Not all members of a minority group believe thesame thing or behave the same way. Some individuals will alwaysbelieve or behave differently from the dominant pattern in their group.This point can be illustrated with findings from Ogbu's current researchin Oakland, California. He found in one black American community thatthe people speak an English dialect that they call their "regular English."But some members of the community speak standard English, or whitepeople's "regular English," at least when talking with outsiders. He alsodiscovered that Oakland Chinese more or less practice ancestor worship.It is customary for these Chinese to visit their family graves (ch'ing ming)to sweep the graves and pay respect to dead ancestors every yearbetween March and April. It does not follow that every Chinese Ameri-can in Oakland practices it, but enough of them do so for one to speakof Oakland Chinese as ancestor worshippers. There are also class andregional differences in beliefs and behaviors within each minority group.

What the theory does is to provide a framework for understanding thebeliefs and behaviors of members of minority groups, including thebeliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of minority students, who follow thedominant patterns of their groups. An analogy is speaking about differ-ences in social class beliefs and behaviors. When we refer to middle-classbeliefs or behaviors, we do not usually mean that among white, middle-class Americans everybody believes the same thing or behaves the sameway; nor does reference to the lower class mean that among white,lower-class Americans everyone acts alike. The same is true when wespeak of the beliefs and behaviors of voluntary and involuntary minori-ties.

Beliefs and Behaviors of Voluntary and Involuntary Minority Groups Rep-resent Ends of a Continuum. Furthermore, the distinguishing patterns ofbeliefs and behaviors of voluntary and involuntary minorities are moreof a continuum than a strict dichotomy. Some beliefs and behaviors thatare attributed to voluntary minorities are also found among involuntaryminorities, although to a lesser degree and vice versa.

Differences within Voluntary and Involuntary Categories. All voluntaryminority groups are not alike and all involuntary minority groups arenot alike. Among the groups that make up each type or category, thereare differences in the degree to which members of a given minority groupexhibit the dominant patterns of beliefs and behaviors characteristic of


that category. For example, among involuntary minority groups, blackAmericans are the most visible. Their beliefs and behaviors show themost conformity to the pattern characteristic of involuntary minorities.The beliefs and behaviors of Mexican Americans, a group with a differ-ent and more varied history, circumstances, and skin color, show lessconformity to the involuntary minority pattern.

Another source of difference among involuntary minority groups isthe degree to which individual members can leave the group and thusescape subordination, that is, the possibility of "passing." Passing ismost difficult for black Americans because the caste system under whichthey have existed defines any offspring of black and white mating, nomatter what his or her color, complexion, or physical features, as blackand thus prohibited from joining the white community (Burma 1947;Davis et al. 1942). Finally, for voluntary minorities the more recent theimmigration, the more they conform to the voluntary minority pattern.

The Same Treatment Elicits Different Interpretations. As was noted earlier,the same treatment can be interpreted differently by different minoritygroups, depending upon their history. For the same reason, when theyencounter similar cultural or language differences they tend to interpretand respond to them differently. For example, Ogbu has found in hisOakland study that when asked to learn standard English in school thetwo types of minorities seem to respond differently because they attachdifferent meanings to speaking standard English (Ogbu 1995b, n.d.d).

With these points in mind, we turn to how minorities, as active agents,interpret and respond to their treatment in U.S. society because ofdiffering histories. Following this, we examine how their interpretationsand responses (i.e., beliefs and behaviors) affect their schooling.

Minorities' Adaptations: Different Cultural Models(Interpretations) of and Responses to U.S. Society

Ogbu's research suggests that voluntary and involuntary minoritiesdevelop different cultural models of U.S. society. Cultural models are theways that members of a minority group understand or interpret theirworld and guide their actions in that world. This understanding falls intofour types in which voluntary and involuntary minorities differ: framesof reference, folk theories of "making it" (and role models), degree oftrust of white people and their institutions, and beliefs about the effectof adopting white ways on minority identity. The description of thegeneral responses of the minorities below follows the schematic repre-sentation in Figure 3 above; the description of their responses to educa-tion specifically is represented schematically in Figure 4 above.

It is important to keep in mind that the following discussion is aboutdominant patterns of beliefs and behaviors within each category or withineach minority group. As we stated before, not all members of a minoritygroup believe the same thing or behave the same way. Some individuals


and some subgroups believe or behave differently from the dominantpattern of the group.

Status Frame of Reference

A frame of reference is the way a person (or a group) looks at asituation. People in different situations differ in their frames of reference.Voluntary and involuntary minorities whose situations are differenttend to have differing frames of reference, which suggests why they alsodiffer in their attitudes and behaviors.

Voluntary minorities have a positive dual frame of reference, at leastduring the first generation. One frame of reference is based on theirsituation in the United States. The second frame of reference is based ontheir situation "back home/' or in their place of origin. For them thecomparison is a positive one because they see more opportunities forsuccess in the United States than back home. As a result, they are willingto accommodate and to accept less than equal treatment in order toimprove their chances for economic success (Ogbu 1978; Shibutani andKwan 1965).

Although many immigrants are conscious of the differences that existbetween them and white Americans, their comparative frame of refer-ence is the "back home" situation.9 They became immigrants becausethey hoped to do better than they did previously in their home countriesor places of origin. In comparing their situation in the United States tothat of family and friends back home, they often conclude that they aredoing better or are seeing better opportunities for their children in theUnited States. This provides them with motivation to work hard tosucceed. Immigrants think that discrimination is temporary and may bethe result of their "foreigner status" or because they do not speak Englishor do not speak it well (Gibson 1988; Ogbu n.d.b).

Although children of immigrants may not have a first-hand experi-ence of limited economic or other opportunities back home, they arelikely to have heard of such experiences from their parents and otheradults in their community. Consequently, they also tend to believe thatthere are more opportunities to succeed in the United States than backhome. In Ogbu's study of Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans, andblack Americans in Oakland, most students of immigrant descent re-ported that the opportunity to succeed or make "progress" is better inthe United States than elsewhere; equally important, they themselves aswell as people in their families and communities believed that whatmakes a person successful in the United States is education and hardwork, whereas back home a person succeeds by getting help from friendsand relatives, by using contacts ("whom you know"), through favorit-ism, or "because of your name" (Ogbu n.d.b; Suarez-Orozco 1989).

Voluntary minorities' attitude toward schools is influenced by the"back home" comparison. The immigrants believe that they have moreeducational opportunity in the United States than back home. Some


immigrated to the United States specifically for the opportunity to givetheir children an "American education/' especially higher education.They see higher education in the United States as providing a chance forprofessional careers they would not otherwise have attained back home.

Here is how some parents put it:

Oakland Chinese Parent #227C: It is very important [for my children to makegood grades] because the purpose for us to come is to let them have a goodfuture and become successful. I sacrificed everything for them [to come andget American education].

Interviewer: What did you tell your children about why they are going toschool?

Oakland Chinese Parent #223C: I told them to study hard and have a goodfuture. I always tell them I had sacrificed a lot. The reason for us to come hereis for them to have a good education. I always remind them about this.[Minority Education Project n.d.]

Involuntary minorities also have a dual frame of reference. However,their comparison is both different and negative, in contrast to that ofvoluntary minorities. The first frame of reference is their social andeconomic status in the United States. The second frame of reference isthe social and economic status of middle-class white Americans. Forinvoluntary minorities the comparison is a negative one because theysee their economic and social condition, as well as their schools, asinferior to those of middle-class white Americans. They believe andresent the fact that whites have more opportunities. They do not believestrongly that the United States is a land of great opportunity whereanyone who works hard and has a good education will succeed. Thisnegative comparison is also true for middle-class involuntary minorities.The latter do not believe that they are fully rewarded or accepted for theireducation and hard work when they compare their situation to that oftheir white peers (Benjamin 1992; Cose 1993; Matusow 1989). Becausediscrimination against them has existed for many generations, involun-tary minorities tend to believe that it appears to be a permanent featureof U.S. society.

Involuntary minorities' evaluation of their schools is influenced by thenegative comparison with white suburban schools. To begin with, theydo not consider their ghetto, barrio, or reservation schools "better"because they do not have the "back home" educational situation. In-stead, they think that their schools are "worse" because they are not likewhite schools in the suburbs. They see no justifiable reason for theinferior education—except discrimination. They tend to be more criticalof the school curriculum and mistrustful of teachers and the school thanthe immigrants.


Instrumental Responses

Instrumental responses have to do with the means necessary to suc-ceed in the United States; they include folk theories of "making it" androle models.

Folk Theory of "Making It." A group's ideas about how to achievesuccess, folk theories are not the official policies or beliefs of society butthe community's or peoples's ideas. They are orally transmitted beliefsabout the workings of society. Because of their differing histories andperceptions of opportunities, voluntary and involuntary minorities dif-fer in their views of making it in the United States.

Voluntary minorities' folk theory of making it involves the belief thathard work, following the rules, and most important, getting good edu-cation will lead to good employment and success in U.S. society. Whenthey first arrive they are optimistic that with education and hard workthey will make it. Their folk theory is partly the product of immigrants'belief about opportunities in the United States before emigration andpartly due to the fact that they, especially the most recent immigrants,have not yet been exposed to discrimination long enough to have inter-nalized its effects or have those effects become an ingrained part of theirthinking (Ogbu 1978). In Oakland, for example, immigrants are moreconcerned with "language problems" (e.g., not knowing English) thanwith "racial discrimination" (Ogbu n.d.b).

Immigrants see school success as a major route to making it in theUnited States. The community, family, and students believe stronglythat the same strategies that middle-class white Americans employ forsuccess, namely, hard work, following the rules, and getting goodgrades, will also work for them in school and in the future job market.

Involuntary minorities have an ambivalent folk theory of making it.True, they believe that hard work and education are necessary to succeedin the United States. But because they have faced employment and wagediscrimination as well as other barriers to making it in a white-controlledeconomy for many generations, they have come to believe that (1) joband wage discrimination is more or less institutionalized and perma-nent, and (2) individual effort, education, and hard work are importantbut not enough to overcome racism and discrimination. The ambiva-lence may not be conscious. Parents and other adults in the communitytell children to do well in school because that will help them get goodjobs and be successful adults. However, from their personal and groupexperiences with employment discrimination they know only too wellthat school success often does not lead to a good job. Moreover, theyoften engage in various forms of "collective struggle" with whites formore job opportunities. Involuntary minority children are affected bythis actual texture of their parents' lives: they observe and hear abouttheir parents' experiences. Eventually they share their parents' ambiva-lence. Thus, involuntary minorities are less sure that education leads tosuccess or helps to overcome barriers to upward mobility. The community,


families, and students are skeptical and ambivalent about the role ofeducation in getting ahead.

Some studies (such as Mickelson 1990) may provide a clue to thisambivalence. When asked, most involuntary minority parents and stu-dents say they believe that education and hard work are the ways tosucceed. However, their individual and community's concrete experi-ences with job and other economic discrimination, combined with theirawareness of historical segregation and racism in schools, contradict thisabstract belief and serve to reinforce the concrete belief that educationand hard work will not necessarily lead to economic success. Further-more, they believe that schools cannot be trusted to educate their chil-dren properly. Mickelson found in her research that parents' and stu-dents' concrete experiences predicted school performance, while theirabstract beliefs did not. This suggests that it is people's actual experi-ences with education and with opportunity structure or rewards ofeducation that influence their behavior much more than abstract beliefsabout the importance of education.

Role Models. Role models within the voluntary minority communitiesare usually people who have fully acculturated, attained a higher edu-cation, and achieved economic success. They are hard workers who haveplayed by the rules of the system and succeeded. Voluntary minoritiesare less conflicted about accommodating to white society, so their rolemodels include people who fully adopt white ways and language (seesection on symbolic interpretation). Among the Chinese Americans,successful members of earlier immigrants serve as role models for newerimmigrants.

Involuntary minorities' role models include conventional catego-ries—entertainers, athletes, professionals, and the wealthy—as well asnonconventional types—rebels against white society and people of ex-ceptional courage. Unlike voluntary minorities who admire conven-tional role models (e.g., minority doctors, engineers, executives, lawyers)for working their way up from the inside and playing by the rules,involuntary minorities tend to criticize minority professionals as "un-conventional" (from a minority perspective), rule-breakers, people whoachieved success because they worked twice as hard, were twice assmart, twice as strong, and sometimes were just lucky. Furthermore,minority professionals, businesspeople, and politicians are not veryinfluential as role models because it is suspected that for them to havesucceeded they probably have had to adopt white ways such as speakingstandard English, which is seen as giving in to the white oppressor andabandoning their identity (Taylor 1973). Moreover, the professionalsamong involuntary minorities have few ties to the community and arenot visible in it. Athletes and entertainers are admired, but often theseare people who did not use education but talent and physical strengthas a route to success.


There are interesting differences between black and Chinese parents in Ogbu'sOakland study in the choice of role models for their children. Asked whomthey would like their children to be when they grow up, Chinese parentsmentioned scientists, astronauts, lawyers, doctors, architects, and so on. Gen-erally they wanted their children to grow up as professionals in technicalfields. In contrast, only one black parent mentioned someone in a professionalfield, a brother whom she said was "a successful executive" with a majordepartment store (unnamed) in New York City. One parent mentioned JesusChrist; many others named famous celebrities (e.g., Michael Jackson, BillCosby, M. C. Hammer) and several athletes. [Minority Education Project n.d.]

Trust in White Institutions

Immigrants have an optimistic, practical attitude when they arrive.This leads them to trust white-controlled institutions like the publicschools; at least they trust what the institutions have to offer. Ogbu callsthis pragmatic trust (Ogbu n.d.c; see also Gibson 1988). But where immi-grants are blatantly denied educational opportunity, such as exclusionfrom or segregation in the public schools as was the case in San Francisco,they have challenged school authorities and become mistrustful of them(Low 1982; Wollenberg 1995). In general, immigrant minorities do notquestion the authority of schools and other institutions, and they tendto conform to the rules of the schools because they see them as providinga route to success in society. Some immigrants, such as Koreans in LosAngeles (Eu Yum Kim, Personal communication, Berkeley, CA, 1993)and Afro-Caribbeans in New York (Ksinitz 1992) establish their ownschools to supplement their children's education where they feel that itis inadequate in the public schools.

In the case of involuntary minorities, their long history of discrimina-tion, racism, and conflict leads them to distrust white-controlled institu-tions. The schools are treated with suspicion because the minorities, withjustification, believe that the public schools will not educate their chil-dren like they educate white children (Ogbu n.d.c). Some involuntaryminorities, such as black Muslims, have established their own schools,but their rationale differs from that of voluntary minorities (FrancineShakir, Personal communication, Berkeley, CA, 1996).

Symbolic Response and Collective Identity

Symbolic response has to do with the way minorities understand andinterpret the differences between their culture and language and whiteAmerican culture and language. Adopting white ways or crossing cul-tural/language boundaries has a very different meaning for voluntaryand involuntary minorities.10

Voluntary minorities come to the United States seeking a better life.They also come with the tourist model or attitude mentioned abovetoward learning the culture and language of their new society. For thisreason, they are willing to learn to speak standard English and to


conform to the rules and mores of the public schools and other societalinstitutions. This is particularly important because these things are therequirements of an institution, the school, which the immigrants see asholding the key to making it in the United States. However, as we willsee below, knowing that standard English and school rules are importantfor success is not sufficient to enable a minority group to actually learnand behave accordingly. What further helps the immigrants to crosscultural and language boundaries is that they define the cultural andlanguage differences they encounter as barriers to be overcome bylearning the differences. Furthermore, they are willing to accommodatebecause they do not imagine that learning mainstream white ways andlanguage will harm their group identity. They see it as additive, that is,they are learning new skills, behaviors, and language that will enablethem to succeed in society while still retaining their own culture andlanguage. For example, immigrants see learning English in school asadding another language rather than replacing their native language.

Involuntary minorities did not choose to become minorities in a newsociety to achieve a desired or better future (e.g., better education, betterjobs, et cetera). They do not, therefore, possess the tourist attitude aboutlearning how to behave and talk like white Americans. Like the immi-grants, they know and believe that to succeed in school and to get goodjobs they have to master standard English and master some whitepeople's ways of behaving. Thus, they consider the cultural and lan-guage differences as barriers to be overcome by learning the differences.Yet they have difficulty doing so for two reasons: One is that they feelthat these differences or requirements are imposed on them by whiteAmericans. The second and more serious reason is that involuntaryminorities interpret the cultural and language differences as markers ofcollective identity to be maintained, not merely barriers to be overcome.In responding to their forced incorporation into U.S. society and theirsubsequent mistreatment, they develop a collective identity defined toa great extent by its difference from and opposition to white Americanidentity. Given this interpretation, some individuals feel that if they learnwhite American ways or "white talk" they will lose their minorityidentity. For them, adopting white ways and language is a subtractiveor replacement process that threatens minority identity and therefore isresisted. The special problem of nonimmigrant minorities is that theyhold two incompatible beliefs about school cultural and language re-quirements (Ogbu n.d.c).

There are both ethnographic and nonethnographic data suggesting that invol-untary minorities equate learning white ways with losing their minorityidentity. Again, we are writing about a dominant pattern, not generalizing forevery individual. The dominant pattern existed in the Oakland black commu-nity studied by Ogbu. The following response by a black parent is typical:


Parent 25L: I think it's literally insane and stuff for a lot [of] black people whoare black [to] see black people who pretend to be white.

Interviewer: Um hum.

Parent 25L: They get very angry Angry... because they're proud of theirbeing black. And to see somebody else who is black actually put it down andtry to hide it. I mean if s like... because I feel that way, too. It's like... feelingthat bad about being black that you want to hide it.

Interviewer: Um hum.

Parent 25L: That's what you're gonna be from now until the day you die andain't nothing nobody gonna do to change it. [That is, you should retain yourblack identity]. [Minority Education Project n.d.]

A number of minority authors have also addressed the issue of theinterpretation of school requirements as a threat to minorities' collectiveidentities. For example, Luster (1992) discovered during her ethno-graphic study of black women in San Francisco who were attending aGED-preparatory school that the biggest signifier of "acting white" anda source of strong opposition was speaking standard English. Thisminority also opposes adopting white behaviors or ways of talkingbecause they think that the person doing so is denying his or her minorityidentity (see also Becknell 1987:36; David Garza, Personal communica-tion, Austin, TX, November 1996; Steele 1992; Taylor 1973).

Community Forces and Schooling: Attitudes and Behaviors in School

The beliefs and responses of the minorities discussed above affect theirattitudes and behaviors toward school. Voluntary and involuntary mi-norities differ in these attitudes and behaviors (see Figure 4 above).11

Once again, the reader should keep in mind that what we present in thissection are dominant patterns of attitudes and behaviors within eachcategory. There are both individual and subgroup variations in schoolattitudes and behaviors.

Voluntary Minorities

Due to the way and the reasons they became minorities, their prag-matically positive attitude toward U.S. society and institutions, and theway they interpret cultural and language differences, voluntary minor-ity communities and parents are strongly committed to their childrensucceeding in school. They have high academic expectations of theirchildren and tend to hold the children, rather than the schools, respon-sible for academic performance. Except where they encounter deliberateand blatant educational discrimination, as in San Francisco, immigrantsdo not usually blame or even question their children's teachers forproblems their children encounter. They are unequivocal in their support


of their children learning English as well as the rest of the curriculum(see the comments by a Chinese parent in the following excerpt). Thereason for this unequivocal support is that they see learning these things,especially English, as a necessary requirement for success in school andin the job market. This belief leads them to expect their children to gethigh grades. Immigrants also seem to have strong control of their chil-dren's time, which allows them to make sure that the children dohomework even when their parents are not able to help them.

Oakland Chinese Parent #279C: I don't know what they do in school. If theyare not good in English their teachers should help them more in English. I wishtheir teacher should help them as much as possible and encourage them more.Chinese students are usually very hardworking. The problem is that they can'tspeak English well. If they don't understand [English] they won't get goodgrades. Teachers should help them more so they can catch up with others.[Minority Education Project n.d.]

Voluntary minority students share their parents' and community'spositive attitudes and verbal commitment to school. They work hard,strive for high grades, pay attention in class, do their homework, andgenerally follow school rules. Immigrant minority students are rarelydisruptive in class, and they show respect for the teacher. They areanxious to learn English. Their peers support school success, so that theyexperience minimal peer pressures detrimental to academic achievement.

Involuntary Minorities

Involuntary minority communities and parents have ambivalent atti-tudes toward schools. On the one hand, they strongly endorse learningstandard English and other requirements for school success and futurejobs. On the other hand, their support for the abstract ideology thateducation is the key to success in life is contradicted by their concreteexperiences with society and by the failure of schooling to lead toeconomic rewards for them.

Consequently, involuntary minority parents seem to convey to theirchildren contradictory messages about education: they tell their childrento work hard in school, but then their own attitudes and comments showa mistrust of schools in terms of quality education and future economicrewards. They hold schools and teachers, rather than their children,responsible for poor academic performance. When their children receivepoor grades they blame teachers for not teaching their children properly,for not informing parents in time that their children are not doing wellin class, and for treating their children in a discriminatory manner.

In addition to their ambivalence about the instrumental value ofeducation and their mistrust of the schools, involuntary minorities alsoface identity problems. Ogbu has suggested that involuntary minoritieshave developed oppositional collective or group identities (i.e., the senseof who they are) in response to their treatment by white Americans. Their


identities are defined to some extent by their difference from the whitesociety (Ogbu 1995a). Because their identities were developed in responseto discrimination and racism, these minorities are not anxious to givethem up simply because their "oppressors" require them to do so.

Oppositional identity plays a major role in the attitudes of the com-munity, parents, and students toward school because they see the schoolas a white institution. The requirements for school success, which in-volve mastering the school curriculum, learning to speak and writestandard English, and exhibiting "good" school behaviors, are inter-preted as white society's requirements designed to deprive minorities oftheir identities. For example, teaching standard English at school maybe interpreted as a mechanism of language assimilation (Steele 1992).Thus, conforming to school requirements means "acting white" andgiving up one's minority identity. Behaving or talking in a manner thatleads to academic success is feared as likely to displace one's minorityidentity. These beliefs create two dilemmas for involuntary minoritystudents. First, they make the students feel that they have to choosebetween (1) conforming to the school demands and rewards for certainattitudes and behaviors that are definitely "white," especially the mas-tery and usage of standard English, and (2) the community interpretationsand disapproval of or ambivalence toward those attitudes and behaviors.

The second dilemma is that these beliefs make the students feel thatthey must choose between (1) an instrumental interpretation of school-ing as a route to future employment and upward social mobility, and (2)the suspicion of the community that the school curriculum is somethingdesigned to displace their minority identity. Steele clearly expresses thisidentity-transforming role of the curriculum of the public school:

One factor is the basic assimilationist offer that schools make to blacks: Youcan be valued and rewarded in school (and society), the schools say to thesestudents, but you must first master the culture and ways of the Americanmainstream, and since that mainstream (as it is represented in school) isessentially white, this means you must give up many particulars of beingblack—styles of speech and appearance, value priorities, preferences—at leastin [a] mainstream setting. This is asking a lot. [1992:68-75; see also Luster 1992;Ogbu 1995a]

Involuntary minorities see the curriculum as an attempt to imposewhite culture on them. This leads them to question the curriculum fornot including information about their minority history and experiences.They want their children to "talk proper" but are uncomfortable whenthe children speak standard English, because they see this as tending toseparate the children from the family and the community or to claim thatone is better than other members of the family and community. Thedouble message that involuntary minority parents and communitiessend to their children is to do well in school, but be wary of .your teachers,school officials, and the curriculum because they are a part of whiteinstitutions that cannot be trusted (Ogbu n.d.d).


The parents' and community's ambivalence is reflected in the attitudeand, most important, the behaviors of students in school. Like theirparents and members of their community, the students have an abstractbelief in the importance of "getting a good education/' However, theirattitudes and behaviors contradict their verbal assertions. The mixedfeelings lead to reduced efforts, which manifest themselves in failure topay attention in class, do homework, and keep up with school assign-ments, and in claims that the work is uninteresting and boring. Somestudents are openly defiant as they challenge the teachers' authority.They do not put much effort into learning standard English because theysee it as separating them from their peers, family, and community, thusthreatening their minority identity. There is a strong negative peer groupinfluence that more or less stigmatizes academic success and usingstandard English as "acting white." All of these attitudes and behaviorslead inevitably to poor academic performance.

Pedagogical Implications

One important objective of the cultural-ecological theory is to explainthe differences in school achievement between voluntary and involun-tary minorities. The theory is not a pedagogical one in that it does notdiscuss strategies for teachers of voluntary or involuntary minoritystudents. However, by explaining the nature of the problem, it leads tosome educational strategies for helping to improve learning.

One point must be kept in mind while thinking about teaching minor-ity students in light of the theory. The theory does not posit explicitly orimplicitly that group membership alone determines school success orfailure. For any individual student, being a member of a group that canbe characterized as voluntary or involuntary does not solely determinethat student's school success or failure. What the categories do is to helpeducators think about the differences that exist between groups, notamong individuals. Teachers should avoid basing expectations about anindividual's school performance and behavior on group membership.Students should be treated as individuals. The value of the theory is thatit will help educators understand why students may behave the waythey do inside and outside the classroom when they are following theirgroups' pattern of behavior. It follows from the cultural-ecological the-ory that in order to help involuntary minority students succeed in school,the problem of the mistrust of schools and the fear of being seen as actingwhite (and the subsequent lack of effort) must be recognized and ad-dressed.

Educating Involuntary Minority Students: Recognize and Deal withOpposition, Ambivalence, and Mistrust

As we have shown, the fundamental problem for educators is thatmany involuntary minorities do not trust "white" institutions such as


schools, courts, and government. As a result of a long history of racismand discrimination, many involuntary minorities have developed anoppositional identity to white mainstream society which makes themreluctant to cross cultural boundaries and adopt what they consider tobe "white ways" of talking, thinking, and behaving because they feardoing so will displace their own minority identity and alienate themfrom their peers, family, and community. This mistrust is often accompa-nied by an abstract belief in the importance of an education for successwhich is contradicted by their community's and parents' concrete expe-riences. The net result is ambivalence about the usefulness of school asa vehicle to success in life. This ambivalence makes it difficult for manyinvoluntary minority students to put in the full effort required for schoolsuccess.

What Teachers Can Do

Build Trust. Since many involuntary minority students come to schoolwith an ambivalence about the value of education and about conformingto the demands of a "white" institution, building trust needs to be thefirst priority for teachers. While it may not be an easy task to change thestudent's trust in "the system" as a whole, individual teachers can fostera trusting relationship between themselves and their students. As Erick-son (1987) points out, students will trust teachers when they believe that(1) the teacher has the student's best interests at heart and (2) thestudent's identity and self-esteem will not be harmed. Teachers need toshow students by word and deed that they believe in their students, thattheir culture is worthy of respect, and that succeeding in school will leavetheir identity intact.

Culturally Responsive Instruction. Culturally responsive or appropriateinstruction (Au and Mason 1981; Ladson-Billings 1994) is instruction thatacknowledges and accommodates students' culture, language, andlearning styles in the curriculum and classroom. It is a response designedto close the gap between the students' cultural patterns and the school'sinstitutional requirements and prevent the type of miscommunicationthat is caused by the conflict between teachers' and students' culturallydetermined interactional styles. Culturally responsive instruction willalso show the students that the teacher recognizes and honors theircultural and personal experiences and will help make school a less alienplace.

For black American students, for example, speaking standard Englishis a major characteristic of "acting white" which is to be resisted. Thus,acknowledging the validity of the use of black English in appropriatecontexts can help students acquire standard English without seeing it asthreatening their own language and ethnic identity. Students can betaught that different ways of speaking are considered appropriate indifferent situations. In school and in other formal situations standardEnglish is expected and rewarded, while at home and out of school their


own language is appropriate. Rather than trying to replace students'dialects with standard English, teachers need to encourage the use ofcode switching by showing them that appropriateness to the situationdetermines language use.

Culturally responsive instruction requires that teachers understandtheir students' culture and language. Bringing students' and their com-munity's folklore into the classroom is a particularly effective way tobridge the cultural gap (see Simons 1990). It helps teachers learn abouttheir students' culture and life experiences and communicates to thestudents that the teacher is interested in their world, which serves tovalidate their identity.

Culturally responsive pedagogy has been criticized on the groundsthat there are many examples of successful schools and teachers ofminority students who do not accommodate children's cultures, such asblack Muslim schools and Roman Catholic parochial schools (Erickson1987). There are also voluntary minority groups who are culturally verydifferent from the mainstream culture of the school yet succeed withoutculturally responsive instruction. Thus, closing the cultural gap does notappear to be a necessary condition for improving minority schoolachievement. It appears that the underlying factor in successful cultur-ally responsive and nonresponsive instruction is the building of trust.Any type of instruction that builds trust in one way or another, even ifnot "culturally responsive," between the teacher and the students willincrease the chances of improving student achievement.

Explicitly Deal with Opposition/Ambivalence. Involuntary minority stu-dents may not be fully conscious or have a fully articulated under-standing of their own ambivalence and resistance to school. But most areaware of the oppression their groups have faced and still face in life. Itis, therefore, important to raise the issue of ambivalence and resistancefor discussion because it will help students to think openly about theirbehaviors (so that they can critically evaluate their own actions). Read-ings from the autobiographies of involuntary minorities who have facedand resolved their ambivalence about schools and teachers can be usedas a basis for discussions and writing assignments.

Teachers can guide writing and discussion so that students can(1) begin thinking consciously about the purpose of schooling; (2) assesstheir behavior and see how this behavior may handicap them in theiracademic performance; (3) think about their ambivalence toward schoolsand teachers; and (4) start to see teachers as allies rather than adversariesin their education.

Another area for class discussion and writing is the equating of schoolsuccess with "acting white" in which there is peer pressure not to exhibitthe attitudes and behaviors that lead to school success. Teachers need tofind ways to help students see that they can be successful in school andmaintain their cultural identity.


Role Models. Role models play an important part in student motivationto succeed in school. Role models provide students with an adult toadmire and emulate. For many involuntary minorities, academically andeconomically successful role models are particularly important becausethey come from communities where, due to poverty and discrimination,there are not enough successful role models. Role models need to bechosen carefully. It is not enough to expose students to successfulmembers of their particular ethnic or racial group. Students need to beexposed through mentoring programs and other ways to members oftheir own groups who are academically and professionally successfuland who retain their minority identity. Successful minorities who areseen as having abandoned their cultural identity to succeed in the "whiteworld" will not be very useful role models because they may be seen asUncle Toms.

High Standards. Teachers should have clearly stated high standardsand expect students to meet these standards. By doing so the teacher willbuild trust by conveying the message that he or she believes studentshave the intellectual ability to do well and that he or she does not shareracist stereotypes about the inferior intellectual ability of minorities.

Parent and Community Involvement. Because much of the mistrust ofschools comes from the community and students' parents, teachers willneed to work hard to try enlist parent and community support of theirchildren's education. They need to show parents that they are respectedand needed to help their children succeed in school. Personal, individualcontacts can help overcome group and institutional stereotypes. Teach-ers need to try to find ways to make their contacts with parents positiveby notifying them about their children's success rather than limiting theircontact to informing parents about the students' problems. Enlisting thesupport of children's communities and parents presents hurdles that areextremely difficult to overcome because teachers are not generally trainedto engage in this type of activity and because, more importantly, accord-ing to the cultural-ecological theory the community and parents play asubstantial if not controlling role in producing the mistrust that studentsbring to school.

Voluntary Minority Students

For many voluntary minority students the problem of trust is less ofan issue. Their pragmatic attitude toward school, as well as high parentalexpectations, allow many of them to succeed even under poor instruc-tion. The less successful voluntary minority students have differentproblems than involuntary minority students. Their problems revolvearound the excessive pressure from high expectations that parents andteachers have for them. The difficulty of living up to these expectationscan result in poor school performance due to anxiety or as an act ofconscious or unconscious resistance. Even when school performancedoes not suffer, there are residual feelings of uneasiness and resentment


about the model minority stereotype and the pressure to succeed. Teach-ers need to find ways to reduce the pressure by providing opportunitiesto openly discuss them and to help students develop ways of dealingwith these pressures.

The Educational Value of the Ogbu Theory

While the Ogbu theory is not a theory of pedagogy and does notpropose educational strategies for teaching minority students, it doeshave educational value. First, it provides educators with an under-standing of some of the sociocultural dynamics affecting minority chil-dren's school performance and explains the differences in school perfor-mance between voluntary and involuntary minority groups. Second, ithighlights the central issues responsible for the school failure of manyinvoluntary minority students, namely mistrust, oppositional identity,and peer pressure not to "act white." Third, it explains in terms ofbuilding trust why some types of instruction succeed with involuntaryminorities while other types fail. Further, it provides criteria for evalu-ating the potential for success of educational strategies. Finally, it sug-gests some instructional strategies, as discussed above, that may workbecause they are designed to deal with the problems of mistrust, oppo-sitional identity, and peer pressure not to act white.

There is one point to keep in mind. The cultural-ecological theoryplaces great weight on formidable nonschool community forces thataffect school success. This focus on out-of-school forces may explain whyeducators have generally not attempted to use the theory in developinginstructional strategies. Since the out-of-school forces are so strong, it isnot clear how much can be accomplished in school without changingcommunity beliefs and attitudes. This is an area in which educators havenot been very successful in the past or which they see as their responsi-bility. It remains an open question whether changes in the schools andinstructional strategies alone can improve involuntary minority stu-dents' school success. It may be necessary, as many have advocated, toenlist the support of parents and the community, which will involveearning their trust.

John U. Ogbu is Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Anthropology,University of California, Berkeley. Herbert D. Simons is an associate professorin the Language, Literacy, and Culture area of the School of Education, Univer-sity of California, Berkeley.

Notes

Acknowledgments. The preparation of this article was supported by the Uni-versity of California faculty research funds and by grants from the NationalCenter for the Study of Writing, the California Policy Seminar, the Carnegie


Corporation of New York, the W. T. Grant Foundation, the Russell Sage Foun-dation, and the Spencer Foundation.

1. John U. Ogbu is primarily responsible for the description of the theory andHerbert D. Simons is primarily responsible for the part on the implications ofthe theory for educational practice.

2. Since 1987 there have been 24 doctoral dissertations, four masters theses,and over 20 other studies and articles based entirely or in part on Ogbu'scultural-ecological theory and writings on minority education. These includestudies and writers in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,Singapore, Taiwan, and elsewhere.

3. Ogbu initially suggested that there are three sets of factors influencingminority school performance: societal, school, and community (Ogbu1987:317-320). But in his recent writings, he talks about the "two parts" of theproblem, combining the school and societal forces as one part, the system, andretaining community forces as the second part (Ogbu 1990:17-18; 1995a). Nowherein his writings has he claimed that minority school performance is determinedonly or primarily by "community forces."

4. For the Chinese see Low 1982 and Wong 1989; for Mexican Americans seeBlair 1972 and Valencia 1991; and for Black Americans see Carnoy 1994 and Ogbu1978.

5. The clarification is necessary because some readers of AEQ continue tomisinterpret it. In a recent theme issue of AEQ (Gibson 1997), some authorslumped together "economic immigrants/' "refugees," "guest workers," "un-documented workers," and "migrants from former colonies" as "immigrants"and used this classification to evaluate Ogbu's theory!

6. Some Asian Americans are currently reassessing the experiences of theirforebears as well as writing on contemporary issues of culture, language, andidentity (Espiritu 1992; Juan 1994; Min 1995; Wei 1993). However, there is strongevidence that descendants of those immigrants continue to do well in schoolpartly because of community forces.

7. At a conference at Harvard University in July 1997, an immigrant fromJamaica told Ogbu that her son decided to become a "Black American" atadolescence and that he ceased to follow the educational strategies of herimmigrant community.

8. The low school performance and oppositional attitudes of Afro-Caribbeansin Canada (Solomon 1992) have been mentioned as challenging Ogbu's theory.On the contrary, their situation is consistent with the theory. Initially, Afro-Canadians were made minorities against their will through slavery. WhiteCanadians have forced subsequent black immigrants to become like the invol-untary group (Dei in press; Talbot 1984). Another case said to challenge thetheory is Stacey Lee's study of "Asians" and "Koreans" (Gibson 1997). Lee'sstudy is poor for two reasons. First, the study lumps "refugees" from Cambodiaand Vietnam together with "immigrants" from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwanas "Asians." Her examples of "Asian" students who are not doing well in schooland manifesting oppositional attitudes and behaviors are from the refugeegroup. The cultural-ecological theory is about "immigrants," not refugees. Sec-ond, she found that the "new wavers" were not doing particularly well in school.Again, the "new wavers" were not immigrants but "Southeast Asian refugeesfrom working-class and poor families" (Lee 1994:22).

9. Whites working in one woolen industry between 1873 and 1880 were paidthree dollars a day, while the Chinese doing the same job in the same factory


were paid one dollar a day. The Chinese felt they had to accept the lower wagespartly because it was better than what they would make "back home." (Coolidge1909:359).

10. Ogbu prefers to talk about "boundaries" in discussing cultural and lan-guage differences between mainstream white Americans and minorities. Heargues that it is not the "differences" in language and culture per se that are atissue; rather it is the relationship between a given minority's language andculture and mainstream white American language and culture.

11. The discussion in this section is not intended to mean that school and otherfactors do not contribute to students' positive or negative academic engagement.As we stated earlier, there are two parts to the problem of minority students'school adjustment and performance: "the system" (i.e., societal and schoolfactors) and community forces. However, the focus of the present article is theeffects of community forces on school attendance, achievement behavior, andacademic performance, since the theory predicts that differences among minori-ties in school performance are largely due to differences in community forces.

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Documents

Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural ... · A Cultural-Ecological Theory of Minority School Performance Ogbu calls his explanation of minority school performance a cultural-ecological