The culture trap: Ethnic expectations and unequal schooling for Black youthBy Derron Wallace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, pp. 296. £74.00. ISBN: 9780197531464

Abstract

The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth by Derron Wallace is a provocative, cohesive and deeply engrossing monograph. It is a powerful—and at times confronting—story which makes an important contribution to the scholarship on ethnicity and education. The research is steeped deeply in history with a clear agenda for the future. Effortlessly blending historical facts, government policies, sociological theory and insightful vignettes, Wallace presents a nuanced analysis which compels the reader to reflect on the interplay between ‘culture’, race and academic outcomes. It presents a dynamic argument regarding the need for more cross-national studies which challenge assumptions regarding cultural conditions. At the heart of the book is the voice of Black Caribbean young people navigating various cultural constraints, as well as the overt and subtle ethnic expectations, present in their lifeworlds.

The monograph provides a critical overview of the key debates regarding the role ethnicity (and ethnic profiling), has played in the schooling of the Black Caribbean diaspora, as an ethno-racial group. The data presented draws from a longitudinal comparative ethnographic research study conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom. When I first began reading The Culture Trap, what struck me is how assiduous Wallace is at navigating the tricky terrain of analysing ethnicity and learner identities while interweaving the voices of young people, teachers and parents. As we are all aware, the ethnicization of educational achievement can often be a muddled picture. It remains a notably difficult area to theorise. For Wallace, this is not the case. Building on definitive work by Stuart Hall, John Ogbu, Signithia Fordham and others, Wallace astutely hones his critique building an exacting picture of culture and anti-racism in the lives of the Black Caribbean diaspora. As I read, I was drawn into a narrative which vacillated between key historical moments and powerful ethnographic details as Wallace builds an evocative case for why we must take a closer look at the lives of the Black Caribbean diaspora and their relationship to education.

Ethnic Expectations centres around a key problematic: Black Caribbean students in the United States seemed to have quite different educational experiences than Black Caribbean students in the United Kingdom. What Wallace skilfully does is explore the phenomenon with an attention to culture(s)—the culture of schooling, racist societal cultural discourses, the culture of bigotry of low expectations in education, the culture present in Black supplementary schooling, the familial culture, etc. This is central to how he positions an argument where we must examine the situational contexts but also the cultural strategies Black Caribbean adopt to overcome structural disadvantage. Wallace defines this as the culture trap, an ‘alluring yet ensnaring set of logics that draws on ethnic culture to decipher ethno-racial minority students' success, but instead distorts and misinterprets it. The culture trap treats ethnic culture as group description and prescription’ (p. xx, italics in the original). As culture remains an appealing and largely convenient explanation regarding the achievement of certain populations, Wallace problematises this argument instead walking the reader through what he observed and documented about the dynamic interplay of race and schooling.

Part of what makes the work compelling and engaging is Wallace's own positionality and how it is layered throughout the book. As a Black Caribbean, who lived, worked and studied on both sides of the Atlantic, he speaks of operating in a third space as a researcher, straddling the boundary between outsider and insider. This adds an interesting analytical dimension where we, as the reader, are on an emotive journey with him. This journey is one of shock, alarm and pride as he highlights the way Black Caribbeans navigate structural disadvantage and resist racism.

After reading Ethnic Expectations, I have come to see ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ in new ways. We are all compliant in engaging in ethnic expectations and, as Wallace argues, they regulate what is knowable and possible, flattening varied and complex experiences informed by, in the case of Black Caribbeans, a powerful history of forced and voluntary migration. As the work seeks to unearth a more nuanced understanding of tropes commonly associated with ethnicity and culture, Wallace's argument concerning ethnic expectations becomes an essential theoretical lens. As scholarship that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, it will be interesting to see in the coming years how Wallace's ideas are taken up by other scholars.