Clarence Page- "What black parents must do now" |
By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 26 August 2003
BERKELEY - John Uzo Ogbu, professor of anthropology at the University
of California, Berkeley, and a path-breaking scholar in the fields of
minority education and identity, died of a heart attack after undergoing
back surgery on Wednesday Aug. 20, 2003. He was 64.
Ogbu is known for his work that attempted to understand how race
and ethnic differences played out in educational and economic achievement.
He stirred controversy in 1986 when he co-authored a study that concluded
African American students in a Washington, D.C., high school didn't
live up to their academic potential because of the fear of being accused
of "acting white."
His most recent book, "Black American Students in an Affluent
Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement" (Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers,
2003) also drew widespread attention. Concerned parents and other members
of the middle-class black community in Shaker Heights, Ohio, invited
Ogbu there to help them understand why some black students in their
highly regarded suburban school system were "disengaged" from
academic work and performed less well than their white counterparts.
He concluded that the black students' own cultural attitudes hindered
academic achievement and that these attitudes are too often neglected.
"In every article on the subject of minority education, inevitably
there are references to John's work," said Herbert D. Simons, a
UC Berkeley professor of education who co-authored a paper with Ogbu
about minority education and school performance.
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"He devoted his life to the study of a very difficult problem
- differential educational achievement among minority populations in
the United States," said Stanley Brandes, one of Ogbu's colleagues
in the UC Berkeley anthropology department. "He pursued this issue
from a wide variety of standpoints, despite the fact that it presented
no easy solutions."
At the heart of his work was the way Ogbu differentiated among minority
groups. "Voluntary minorities," he said, come to a new environment
with their collective identity intact. "Involuntary minorities,"
he said, such as African Americans, formed their collective identity
after coming to the New World and in the context of oppression by a
dominant society. His distinction became part of the groundwork for
understanding and debate on race and ethnic differences in educational
and economic achievement.
In the late 1990s, Ogbu played a prominent role in the debate about
the place of "ebonics" or black American English. As a member
of a task force on African American education in Oakland, Calif., he
stressed that beliefs held about "standard" or "proper"
English required in the classroom were incompatible with black vernacular
English that is spoken at home and outside school. Ogbu considered ebonics
a distinct and not inferior form of black English, and encouraged teaching
of ebonics as a way to help African American students transition to
traditional English.
Ogbu was repeatedly recognized for his work. "The Chronicle
of Higher Education" featured him in its 1997 article, "What
15 Top Anthropologists Are Working On Now." The same year, Ogbu
was elected to the International Academy of Education and was appointed
a Chancellor's Professor at UC Berkeley. Also in 1997, a special issue
of "Anthropology and Education Quarterly" was devoted to "Ogbu's
Theory," with contributions by an international group of scholars.
He received the American Educational Research Association's "Research
Contribution to Education" Award, and the Margaret Mead Award given
by the Society for Applied Anthropology.
Ogbu was born in 1939 in the small village of Umudomi in the Onicha
Government Area in Nigeria. The son of farmers, he attended Hope Waddell
Training Institute. He later went to Methodist Teachers' Training college
and taught Latin, mathematics and geography for two years in a missionary
high school. As part of his plan to become a minister, he attended the
theological seminary at Princeton University. There he realized that
he needed to know more about his own country, and turned to anthropology.
Transferring to UC Berkeley, Ogbu earned his BA in anthropology in
1965, his master's degree in 1969, and his Ph.D. in anthropology in
1971. He began teaching in UC Berkeley's Anthropology Department in
1970, was awarded tenure in 1976 and was promoted to full professor
in 1980.
Other than anthropology, his passions included reading and writing
poetry, remaining active with the Nigerian community in the U.S. and
in Africa, and his family, said wife, Marcellina Ogbu. In addition to
his wife, Ogbu's survivors include four daughters, Grace Ogbu, Christina
Ogbu, and Cecilia Ogbu, all of Oakland, and Elizabeth Ogbu of Cambridge,
Mass.; and a son, Nnanna Ogbu of Los Angeles. He also leaves several
brothers and sisters.
He was buried in Nigeria on Sept. 20, 2003. His family requests that donations be made to the John Ogbu Memorial Library Fund at P.O. Box 740, 6114 La Salle Ave., Oakland, CA. 94611. Ogbu Initiated the project to develop a library for scholars in Nigeria years ago.
https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/08/26_ogbu.shtml
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