The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth

In The Culture Trap, Derron Wallace argues that the overreliance on culture to explain Black students' achievement and behavior in schools is a trap that undermines the historical factors and school processes that shape how Black students experience schooling. This trap is consequential for racial and ethnic minority youth in schools, including Black Caribbean young people in the United States and Britain. Since the 1920s, Black Caribbeans in the United States have been considered a high-achieving Black model minority. Conversely, since the 1950s, Black Caribbeans in Britain have been regarded as a chronically underachieving minority. In both national contexts, however, it is often suggested that Caribbean culture informs their status, whether as a celebrated minority in the US or as a demoted minority in Britain. Using rich fieldwork, interview and archival data in London and New York City public schools, Wallace interrogates the fault lines of these claims, and highlights the influence of colonialism, class and context in shaping Black Caribbeans' outcomes. Wallace shows how culture is at times used as an alibi for racism in schools, and what educators, parents and students can do change it.