Perceptions of Identity and Academic Ability Among African and Non-African Students in New York City

• In Event: Racialized and Gendered Constructions of Ability and Behavior

Abstract

Objectives

This paper focus on a small, but growing, population of Black immigrant students, West African immigrant students (WAISs), and investigates the relationship between their identities as Black and African and their perceived academic abilities in our racialized school system. It examines the ways in which distinctions such as African v. American and immigrant v. native are used to construct and reify perceptions of WAISs’ academic abilities and simultaneously that of their non-African counterparts. Specifically, it highlights the ways in which WAISs and their teachers and counselors’ perceptions of Blackness, Africanness, and Americanness shape their construction and understandings of African and non-African students’ academic abilities. Ultimately, it illustrates how perceived “cultural” distinctions between African and non-African students perpetuate immigrants’ success and further uphold troubling beliefs about Black and Latinx students’ academic abilities.

Data, Methods and Theoretical Framework

This paper draws from a larger multi-sited critical ethnographic study on how perceptions of Blackness and Africanness influence the school experiences and academic achievement of WAISs in high school. It was conducted at two New York City public non-charter high schools; Bronxville Academy and Bronxville International , from November 2016 to September 2017. The study includes a total of over 270 hours of participant observation in both schools, semi-structured interviews with 28 students and 16 staff, and an analysis of school demographics and student academic data. I transcribed all data collected in this project using MAXQDA. The study uses postcolonial theory and anti-Blackness as theoretical frameworks to understand the experiences of WAISs as past colonial subjects and current residents of a racist, anti-Black nation. The findings reported in this paper are based on data from one of the schools in this study, predominantly Black (teachers and students) Bronxville Academy, and involves 15 West African students and 10 teachers and counselors.

Findings and Significance

WAISs, teachers and counselors explicitly differentiated between the different racial-ethnic groups of students (African, African American, Black Caribbean, Latinx) at Bronxville Academy. Perceptions of these groups’ academic abilities, based on their racial-ethnic identities’, have been constructed in the school. In general, participants viewed WAISs and Black Caribbean students as “smart” and having a culture that views education as important, even though WAISs GPAs’ refute the former belief. These participants, however, viewed African Americans and Latinx students as lacking ambition, and inheriting innate social characteristics and the “genetic makeup” that prohibits them from academic success. The differentiated perceptions of WAISs’ academic abilities from that of African American and Latinx students is important to highlight because very little research focuses on the relationship, experiences, and achievements of Black and Latinx students in majority-minority schools. Moreover, in a school that is predominantly Black, this finding demonstrates how the increase in immigrant population complicates yet maintains dominate racial ideologies and structures in the U.S. While colonial ideologies and racial/ethnic prejudices have been studied at length as they relate to the school experiences of Black students (natives and immigrants), the findings here show the persistency of internalized racial beliefs in the United States.

Author

• Mercy Agyepong, New York University