Talk:Oppositional culture

Oppositional Culture Expansion Proposal
I am proposing to expand this article on oppositional culture for the following reasons:

1. The under-attainment of minority students, particularly African Americas, is a troubling issue because of the great influence education can have on decreasing racial disparities in income and overall achievement. Because of historic discrimination, the United States has made policies to ameliorate the differences in educational attainment within race. Racial disparities in education however continue to exist despite efforts to equalize opportunities. Theories explaining these persisting differences are important in understanding societal inequalities and how better to ameliorate its affects.

2. Oppositional culture is proposed as a possible explanation for this continued underachievement in the United States. Even when accounting for equal access and opportunities to educational resources, African American students seem to underachieve compared to their white counterparts. Oppositional culture suggests that societal culture of African American students dictates that normative behavior does not include educational achievement. Constrastingly, educational achievement, according this theory, is posed as a betrayal of their community. This theory has been studied and disputed for over thirty years in the study of sociology and has over the years accumulated a significant amount of supporting research as well as opposition. This theory not only explains the continuing trend of under-attainment of minority students but also suggests solutions that will decrease the gaps in education inequality. The amount of research done on this subject and its possible implications for societal reform, suggest that this will be a valuable expansion to this page.

3. Secondly I want to expand this page because of the extensive information on related issues. The pages describing "acting white" and the page on "John Ogbu," the originator of the theory in reference to education, both page a full page of information and resources. I think it will be beneficial to supplement these with this theory that has such a strong correlation with the material base of these pages.

4. Because this theory is highly debated, I will also introduce sociological studies that refute the findings of oppositional culture studies. This will include both research done that provides alternative explanation for the racial disparities as well as backlash to Ogbu's research. Alternate explanations to this theory are beneficial in understanding the complexity of social inequalities. This article will provide a better foundation for understanding educational disparities and will allow for revisions with more information to better understand American social problems.

Risadieken (talk) 05:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Review and Possible Edits
I love your additions to this page! This entry is quite informative and interesting. I really enjoyed reading your page and thought you brought some vital information to the Wikipedia community in your creation of the page.

I do have a few suggestions:

I wonder if your lead paragraph should be shortened and then the information could be expanded upon in an Overview or Background section. I don’t think this would be necessary, but I think that there may be a lot of information in your lead.

I also would recommend that you could add links to other Wikipedia pages. You do a very good job at doing this in the beginning in your lead paragraph, but I think you could do it more later on. I think this would be a good way to get your article more connected within the Wikipedia community.

Also, is “Stereotype Threat Assumption” is separate theory from “Stereotype Threat.” I noticed that “Stereotype Threat Assumption” does not have a Wikipedia entry and Stereotype threat does – I was curious to see if you wanted to link it to Stereotype threat.

Lastly, I think you could consolidate your references by coding which allows you to source to the same reference without creating a new number. Refer to: Same reference used more than once in Referencing for beginners.

Awesome article!

Juliabarrow3 (talk) 11:17, 7 April 2012 (UTC)\

Peer Review 2
This a a great article with lots of good information. I agree with all of the previous suggestions, and I would also suggest you add a bit more information about the pre-Brown racial disparities in education. A section analyzing attempts to implement Ogbu's suggestions and their outcomes would be great (if there have been attempts to implement them). My only other suggestions relate to unclear phrasing:

What classifies a group as a 'voluntary minority'- that they came to the U.S. by choice? Also, how does being a voluntary minority relate to collective identity?

"Ogbu suggests that educational efforts are concurrent with cultural practices."- is this an observation about current education efforts or a suggestion of what should be done with them? It's phrased as an observation, in which case it doesn't belong in the policy proposals section.

"A study by Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey assessed the hypotheses that black students are significantly more likely to believe that education increases the chances of finding a job, and that smart African American students are held in higher esteem by their peers for high academic achievement."- are these the hypotheses or the findings?

"...upwardly mobile minorities are more inclined to associate with individuals from their own similar class backgrounds"- does this mean that they associate with people from their class, from the class to which they aspire, or who are also upwardly mobile?

"The theory argues that African Americans are provided with an excuse that they did not perform well because they did not try and not because of trying and failing."- what do stereotypes have to do with this excuse?

Great job overall!! Nadhika99 (talk) 22:48, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review 3
This is a great article Risa, and here are some ways that you can make it even more super awesome....er(???)


 * I agree with Julia that the lead needs to be shortened. However, another suggestion I might add is that it seems to hover between the educational and non-educational aspects of oppositional culture too much. Since the article is mostly concerned with education, I feel that when shortening the introduction, focus on that and make your thesis clearer.


 * The historical section on your page needs to be expanded. I noticed you pick off right from "Brown v. Board of Education", but "Plessy v. Ferguson" was the trial that legalized racial separation between "colored" and white individuals in school and elsewhere. Therefore, I feel you should include some information there, too. And when you mention some the "racial gaps in academics" a couple stats or figures would also help.


 * I feel that since we're going to be talking about oppositional culture regarding education, then a small section should be devoted towards some of the different conditions that African Americans and Whites' schools were in. Give some funding figures, concrete examples of how the black schools were inferior, achievement results between white and black students, and so on.


 * I feel that far too much emphasis is given on John Ogbu's analyses. I understand that he has a lot of great and relevant information, but surely there have to be other scholars that you could discuss at length, too. I feel you should either increase the amount of information you have from other scholars, or decrease the amount of Ogbu info in relation to these other scholars. The "Prudence Carter" section was good, but we need more authors. And you also don't have to explicitly create a new section for the other authors. Just discuss them regularly and mention them in the citations.


 * Maybe you could join another Wikiproject in addition to education. Wikiproject Discrimination? Wikiproject Race?

I hope this helps and gets some ideas flowing. I'll be sure to add a copy of this contribution on the Wiki Education page, too, so that others in the Wikipedia community can see and hopefully help.

J hernan26 (talk) 04:01, 10 April 2012 (UTC)J hernan26

Suggestion Response
Thank you for your suggestions! I definitely will try to link more Wikipedia pages to my article. I think I meant to link stereotype threat to my page and just made a mistake when first linking all of the other pages. I will also try to work on consolidating my sources. These are great technical edits that I can easily fix and incorporate into my pages.

I will add to my history section to include the consequences of slavery on education inequality as well as the Plessy vs Furgeson Supreme Court case. I do not think Ogbu has had direct policy influence as of yet but I can definitely look into that as well. I will also try and reword some of the phrasing to make the article clearer and easier to understand as well as answer all the points you have brought up. I will also try and include more alternative explanations and critiques of John Ogbu so that his work does not overpower the article. His section however is the longest because he is the founder of the theory. I will also try and look up some figures and statistics but I am worried about the controversy it brings to this page.

Thank you again for all of your suggestions and I hope to incorporate them into an updated version of this article.

Risadieken (talk) 03:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Risadieken

Risadieken (talk) 02:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Risadieken

Transgressive art
Should the article mention, at least in a "See also" section, Transgressive art? Bus stop (talk) 04:34, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Split?
This article seems to be covering two topics both called "oppositional culture": a subculture or counterculture more broadly, or a specific topic in the sociology of education. There's some sort of relationship between the two topics, but ultimately, the article as it stands is conflating them. Depending on if we see a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, we could move this to Oppositional culture (education) and redirect the base title to Counterculture, or have a hatnote there. (The lede of Subculture simply says "Subcultures differ from countercultures", though I think it's more accurate to call counterculture a subcategory of subculture.) Any ideas welcome. --BDD (talk) 16:19, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Support any suggestions in nom. Libcub (talk) 23:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)