Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High

by Signithia Fordham

This innovative portrait of student life in an urban high school focuses on the academic success of African-American students, exploring the symbolic role of academic achievement within the Black community and investigating the price students pay for attaining it. Signithia Fordham's richly detailed ethnography reveals a deeply rooted cultural system that favors egalitarianism and group cohesion over the individualistic, competitive demands of academic success and sheds new light on the sources of academic performance. She also details the ways in which the achievements of sucessful African-Americans are "blacked out" of the public imagination and negative images are reflected onto black adolescents. A self-proclaimed "native" anthropologist, she chronicles the struggle of African-American students to construct an identity suitable to themselves, their peers, and their families within an arena of colliding ideals. This long-overdue contribution is of crucial importance to educators, policymakers, and ethnographers.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

426 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

Reviews

[Julia Bainbridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why do so many African-American adolescents fail academilcally? Why do some succeed? Fordham answers this in an original way.

[Karen]

I became very curious about where the idea that African American students equate academic success with "acting white" originated. I am told that this was the book that started it.