Family (Dis)Advantage and the Educational Prospects of Better off African American Youth: How Race Still Matters

By T. Gosa, K. Alexander. Teachers College Record, 2007

91 citations recorded by the source corpus.

While the educational difficulties of poor black students are well documented and have been discussed extensively, the academic performance of well-off African American children has received much less attention. Even with economic and educational resources in the home, well-off African American youth are not achieving at the levels of their white peers. Why is this? A review of relevant literature identifies a set of social processes that pose formidable barriers to the academic and personal development of middle-class African American youth, the closing of the black-white achievement gap, and the preservation of African American family advantage across generations. Constituting a social ecology of African American family life, these processes emanate outward from the immediate home environment, through peers and friends, into neighborhoods and schools, and to society at large.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a2519a9f24bde39dd7426545c14379ab4ef11748

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Citations in the corpus

Students “at Risk” (2012, background): “Gosa and Alexander (2007) also said this of African American mothers, and they go on to point out that “there is great diversity in black family life . . . and wide variation in the socialization experiences of black children” (p. 295).”
After the Bell (2010, background): “Moreover, black families tend to have tighter connections to extended families compared with white families (Gosa and Alexander 2007). Combined with limited access to opportunities to participation in EAs, black children may be more likely to spend time with cousins and fictive kin. Although Lareau ”
Academic Vulnerability and Resilience during the Transition to High School (2010, background): “Moreover, black families tend to have tighter connections to extended families compared with white families (Gosa and Alexander 2007). Combined with limited access to opportunities to participation in EAs, black children may be more likely to spend time with cousins and fictive kin. Although Lareau ”
Robust and Fragile Mathematical Identities: A Framework for Exploring Racialized Experiences and High Achievement Among Black College Students (2015, background): “It also validates that race matters in terms of how most Black students either identify themselves or are identified and treated by others (Gosa & Alexander, 2007).”
Racial-Ethnic Differences at the Intersection of Math Course-taking and Achievement (2010, background): “While the reasons for such disparities are unclear, Gosa and Alexander (2007) offer several candidate explanations in their review of the literature.”