The Oppositional Culture Theory

Mocombe and Tomlin explore the black/white achievement gap in America and Great Britain, gaining understanding through black bourgeois living and the labeled pathologies of the black underclass. Within the class dualism of capitalist social relations, blacks throughout the Diaspora attempt to exist in the world. Furthermore, blacks must construct their identities and be in the world by choosing between the discursive practices of the Protestant and capitalist ideology of the black Protestant bourgeoisie, or the beliefs of the black underclass, which appear to dismiss these practices as 'acting-white' (John Ogbu's term). Presently, the practical consciousness (constituted as hip-hop culture) of the black underclass, supported by finance capital, have dominated the American and global social structure, and one of its (dys)functions is the black/white achievement gap, which is a global phenomenon emanating from black America and affecting blacks around the globe. Although the histories of blacks in America and in Great Britain are fundamentally different, Mocombe and Tomlin argue in this work that during the age of globalization, the social functions of the dominating black consciousness (hip-hop culture) coming out of America are the locus of causality for the black/white achievement gap in America and Great Britain. Tomlin highlights this problematic by analyzing effective strategies employed by high achieving blacks in Great Britain, and Mocombe does the same through an analysis of an effective reading curriculum in an American inner-city after-school program.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Acknowledgments Chapter 2 Chapter I. Introduction Chapter 3 Chapter II. The "Burden of Acting White" Hypothesis Chapter 4 Chapter III. Factors and Conditions that Affect the Achievenment Levels of High Attaining Black Students: A Case Study of Two Urban Secondary Schools in the UK Chapter 5 Chapter IV. The Effects of the Restructuring of Language in the Inner City Chapter 6 Chapter V. The Dysfuction of "bling bling": Black Consciousness and Black Achievement in the Age of Globalization Chapter 7 References Cited

About the Author :
Paul C. Mocombe is president/CEO of The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc., and assistant professor of sociology and philosophy at West Virginia State University. A social theorist interested in the application of social theory to contemporary issues such as race, class, and capitalism (globalization), he is the author of several books including The Liberal Black Protestant Heterosexual Bourgeois Male: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Barack Obama, The Soul-less Souls of Black Folk: A Sociological Reconsideration of Black Consciousness as Du Boisian Double Consciousness, and Education in Globalization. Carol Tomlin has teaching experiences both nationally and internationally. She is senior lecturer/assistant professor at the University of Wolverhampton and was awarded one of the University's Learning and Teaching Rewarding Excellence Awards (2005). Tomlin has a research background in the language and education. She is the author of Black Language Style is Sacred and Secular Contexts and The Urban Teacher Programme at Wheelock College in Boston Massachusetts: Models of Recruitment, Retention and Teacher Preparation, and is co-author of Writing Performances of African Heritage Students in two Urban Cities: Birmingham; England and Kingston.