The Construction of Black High-Achiever Identities in a Predominantly White High School DORINDA J. CARTER ANDREWS Michigan State University In this article, I examine how black students construct their racial and achievement self- concepts in a predominantly white high school to enact a black achiever identity. By listening to these students talk about the importance of race and achievement to their lives, I came to understand how racialized the task of achieving was for them even though they often dera- cialized the characteristics of an achiever. I suggest that these students do not maintain school success by simply having a strong racial self-concept or a strong achievement self-concept; rather, they discuss achieving in the context of being black or African American. For these students, being a black or African American achiever in a predominantly white high school means embodying racial group pride as well as having a critical understanding of how race and racism operate to potentially constrain one’s success. It also means viewing achievement as a human, raceless trait that can be acquired by anyone. In their descriptions of themselves as black achievers, these students resist hegemonic notions that academic success is white property and cannot be attained by them. [self-concept, high achievers, black student achievement, achievement self-concept] For decades academic scholarship has focused on the underachievement of black students in the United States. 1 This discourse is important given the continuing academic disparities between many black and white youth; however, the conversa- tion also perpetuates the dominant societal narrative that African Americans are inherently intellectually inferior to whites. In fact, scholars have suggested that researchers focus more attention on black student academic success as a way to counter negative societal messages about these students’ intellectual ability (Fordham 2008; Perry 2003). The mainstream script on schooling in the United States often suggests that the cultural traits and behaviors necessary for academic success and success more broadly are white, middle-class behaviors. Thus, the task of achieving for nonwhite students becomes a racial (and social class) performance that is often equated with whiteness (Fordham 2008). For many students of color, these cultural traits and behaviors are in conflict with those typical to their racial or ethnic group. In various school contexts these youth experience the irreconcilable conflict between embodying cultural behaviors akin to their racial or ethnic group and those deemed necessary for acquiring academic success. Behaving in opposition to the racial or ethnic group accepted cultural norms can be seen as rejecting group affilia- tion, and succeeding in school becomes adversarial to maintaining racial or ethnic group acceptance by one’s peers. A large body of scholarship speaks to this dilemma and the negative effects it has on minority student achievement (e.g., Fordham and Ogbu 1986; Lee 1996; Lew 2006; Matute-Bianchi 1986; Ogbu 1991, 2003; Suárez- Orozco 1989); however, other scholarship highlights the strategies that black students employ to achieve in school when faced with this seemingly irreconcilable conflict. In Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 40, Issue 3, pp.297–317, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492. © 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1492.2009.01046.x. 297