Oppositional Culture

The concept of oppositional culture has its roots in the work of anthropologist John Ogbu, whose research was primarily focused on educational achievement gaps between blacks and whites in the United States. According to Ogbu, minority groups become part of American society voluntarily or involuntarily. Both voluntary and involuntary minorities are likely to face various barriers, but involuntary minorities are at especially high risk of experiencing limited opportunities for success.

Ogbu further asserts that the various immigrant groups’ treatment at the hands of mainstream society, as well as the different beliefs that voluntary and involuntary immigrants hold regarding the host society, leads them to develop different survival strategies. For some immigrant groups, African Americans in particular, adaptation to this experience has led to the development of an oppositional culture, which Ogbu argues further disadvantages them.

The differences in life experiences and conditions that mirror the performance gap between minority children and children of the dominant culture are well documented. Much attention is also devoted to the understanding of minority immigrants in the United States, especially in light of the enormous demographic changes driven by the global migration flow over the past few decades. Until recently, much of the debate on life quality had been limited to the dominant group and their subordinate groups’ racial classification as the key determinants of various life outcomes.

According to Ogbu, contemporary theoretical explanations have failed to take into account that although race/ethnicity is an important predictor of life chances, the historical development and social forces that propel minority groups’ adaptations to immigrant experiences are important determinants of successes and failures in mainstream society. This major omission ultimately limits scholars’ abilities to understand the social realities of minority populations.

To counteract these shortcomings, Ogbu postulated two explanations that shape minority groups’ social adjustment in America—terms of incorporation and patterns of adaptation. Also formulated to distinguish the life outcomes of voluntary versus involuntary minorities, the oppositional culture theory postulates that some racial and ethnic groups underachieve not only because they face traditional structural barriers experienced by virtually all nonwhite immigrant groups but also because they culturally adapt to these structural disadvantages in ways that exacerbate, rather than narrow, gaps in achievement between whites and nonwhites. To express their antagonism toward the socially advantaged group, Ogbu claims that historically oppressed populations, particularly native-born blacks, develop a subculture in opposition to the dominant culture. Ogbu states that there is much within-group variation when discussing racial/ethnic/immigrant groups—but his interests lie in the dominant patterns of beliefs and behaviors across minority groups.