US Academic Calls for Halt on Cultural Blame in Education

Stop blaming culture alone for the struggles faced by Black students and start looking at the deeper histories and structures that shape schooling.

This was the challenge delivered to a packed University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) hall by alumnus Professor Derron Wallace during the South African launch of his award-winning book: The Culture Trap.

Professor Wallace – the Jacob S. Potofsky Chair in Sociology and Associate Professor of Sociology and Education at Brandeis University in Massachusetts – urged educators, policymakers and communities “to rethink familiar stories about achievement and behaviour in schools”.

Published by Oxford University Press, The Culture Trap argues that the overreliance on culture to explain Black students’ outcomes diverts attention from institutional and historical forces. The critique has earned widespread acclaim, with the work winning the 2024 Pierre Bourdieu Award for Best Book in Sociology of Education from the American Sociological Association and the 2024 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award for anti-racist scholarship.

Wallace’s ideas have circulated globally, including a 2023 talk at London’s Black Cultural Archives, highlighting the book’s comparative focus on Black Caribbean youth in London and New York City. Independent analyses underscore how “ethnic expectations” shape outcomes and reinforce inequality.

At the launch, Wallace stressed that while “culture has value” and teachers could use students’ cultural resources meaningfully, culture became dangerous when treated as “an essential, fixed explanation that pits groups against one another”. When culture was used this way, he warned, “Structural problems are turned into supposedly individual or community problems masking how histories of migration, colonial legacies, school policies and teacher expectations actually operate”.

Wallace outlined the book’s structure: the first half delves into historical and political context, while the second examines how Black Caribbean youth in London and New York deploy strategies of distinctiveness, deference and defiance to pursue success. His research found similar gendered patterns in both cities – girls expected to be deferential and praised mainly for high academic results, while boys sought praise for behaviour considered basic. These patterns, he argued, reveal how classroom scripts reinforce low expectations even without overt bias.

On parental strategies, Wallace noted that migration histories had profound impact. Caribbean parents in the United Kingdom (UK), shaped by colonial narratives of shared belonging, often arrived with high hopes that were quickly dashed by institutional realities. In the United States (US), media portrayals and longstanding racial politics led parents to distrust public schools and seek private lessons or selective placements. These examples, he emphasised, showed that “culture alone cannot explain how families respond to schooling”.

Wallace also warned that teacher-training programmes often devoted limited attention to race and cultural context, leaving educators unprepared for diverse classrooms. Without intentional preparation, “teachers may inadvertently teach simplified or harmful cultural ideas as virtues”.

He called on guests to carry forward the message that “culture matters, but only in relation to structure and history”. He urged a shift “from anger at individual remarks to concern about the systems that make such remarks possible and routine”.

A panel discussion chaired by Dr Crispin Hemson brought together Professor Rozena Maart, Professor Lesley le Grange and Wallace to examine how culture, language and power intersect in education and anti-racism. The panel shared personal experiences and sociological insights while calling for practical change – highlighting both the value of culture and the violence it could legitimise when invoked uncritically.

Wallace reiterated: “Culture holds resources teachers can draw on, but also underwrites violence when essentialised or divisive,” arguing that teacher training should intentionally teach what culture was and how to engage it anti-racistly, otherwise, “teachers may reproduce harmful simplifications by default”.

He also stressed that the moment was ripe for stronger leadership from the Global South on anti-racism and critical race theory, especially as some Northern contexts increasingly constrained such discourse.

Maart shared a stark example of culture being used to justify exclusion during xenophobic blockades at Addington Hospital in Durban, showing how cultural arguments could decide “which Black people count and which do not”. She also recounted the story of a rural teacher who was ambushed and shot yet survived and returned to work – a testament to community loyalty and resilience.

Language emerged as another battleground. Maart recalled being told to speak English at school, later recognising this as enforcement of a colonial power structure that classified home languages as inferior.

Hemson spoke about the warmth he felt when speaking isiZulu with shop assistants, contrasting it with the lack of similar warmth when Black people spoke English to white people – a reminder of ongoing inequalities in how language was received and valued.

Le Grange urged attention to ecological, material and technological factors that co-produce lived experience. She reminded the audience that culture and structure were entangled with material conditions, arguing that this broader perspective enriched anti-racist and educational work.

The panel agreed that culture is neither inherently good nor bad – it is a set of practices and meanings that can empower, connect and teach, but can also be used to exclude, essentialise or justify violence. Language, they noted, is a central arena where these dynamics play out.

In response, they called for intentional teacher education; transversal thinking that links cultural, material and ecological realities, and a broader global dialogue that uses culture thoughtfully rather than as a cover for structural injustice.

Words: Nombuso Dlamini

Photo: Sethu Dlamini