Race, Culture, and the Education of African Americans

Lynn, Marvin. “Race, Culture, and the Education of African Americans.” Educational 

Theory 56.1 (2006): 107-119. print.

Lynn analyzes three approaches to the study of African American education. In his analysis, he debunks ideologies developed by Elaine Richardon, Peter Murrell and John Ogbu, all respected scholars in the field of African American education. Lynn accuses the scholars of being guilty of sociologist Charles Valentine’s  “uses and abuses culture” theory (109). This theory simply states their is an overlapping of the terms “culture” and “society”. For example, Ogbu blames Black culture’s poor attitude about education as the cause for the achievement gap and suggests changing a cultural attitude to see results. Elaine Richardson suggests pedagogical practices that avoid “banking education (forcing students to learn skills without connecting them to broader social, political, and economic processes in society)” and address social and academic needs of students instead (110). Lastly, Peter Murrell believes pedagogy should draw primarily from the lived realities of African American learners. These ideologies are all considered abuses of “culture” and not a premise for pedagogical practice to stand on. 

Lynn later provides a solution that social scientist find far more practical than approaches of the aforementioned scholars. This solution is critical race theory (CRT). CRT is “a wider body of knowledge including ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, education and more (116). This approach is supposed to allow more flexibility to appropriately address African American learners. 

After thoroughly reading this article, I immediately began to think about classic Aristotle and Sophist practices, and how they can be useful for pedagogical strategy. As a rhetorician, how can I meet the needs of my audience? In this case the audience is African American learners who already have a distrust for “white supremacy” education. Do I think of rhetorical strategies as an educator or as a Black educator? Does my race give me an advantage in a rhetorical stand point in regards to ethos? Is this the Aristotelian practice educators need to think about when teaching minority students? It seems evident the distrust that is getting in the way of education is not one of logic but more so a judgement of intent. Findings in this article especially from Elaine Richardson and Peter Murrell suggest Black educators have an advantage over their counterparts pedagogically, although Valentine and other social scientist question the credibility of this belief. White educators may need to bring Sophist strategies to convince their audience to trust them. As a Black educator, it is important to me to maintain my credibility as a professional and would not want to rely solely on my common ground culturally as my only rhetorical resource. This article was a starting point for me to start researching rhetorical strategies I can use beyond ethos to motivate my disadvantaged, distrustful, uninterested African American learners. I must admit before reading this article I was comfortable with relying on my cultural common ground as my primary rhetorical strategy to motivate.