John Ogbu

John Uzo Ogbu ( born May 9, 1939 in Ebonyi, † 20 August 2003 ) was an anthropologist and intelligence researchers. His particular interest was the issue of race and intelligence. His theories were controversial. Black civil rights activists accused him of racism, while conservatives see accused him of all blame for the problems of African Americans in the U.S. in the whites.

John Ogbu was of the opinion that they belong to a " box-like " minority IQ and school performance reduces. He defended the thesis that would provide good services are among African-Americans as "acting white".

Childhood and youth

John Ogbu was born in the village Umudomi in Onicha Government Area in Nigeria. His parents belonged to the local elite. Ogbu has studied and worked for several years as a teacher. He emigrated to the USA and started in 1961 to study at Princeton. After that he went to study anthropology at the University of California. In 1965 he received his Bachelor, 1960 his Masters degree in 1971 and his PhD degree. From 1970 until his death he taught at the University of California, Berkeley.

Scientific work

Ogbu was controversial as scientists; which he represents theses sparked strong reactions from across the political spectrum.

Box-like and voluntary minorities

In his book Minority Education and Caste (1978 ) Ogbu distinguished between box-like and voluntary minorities: Voluntary minorities come to a country to make their fortune there; usually they are performance- confident and successful. Box-like minorities, however, would often involuntarily deported to a country (such as slavery ), but could be excluded for other reasons by the Company (such as members of the lower sub- layer). Members of box-like minorities often rejected the values ​​of society. You are in the school system with little success, and believed not to be able to have success through their own efforts. This resultiere a low IQ

Acting White

In 1986, Ogbu together with Signithia Fordham a study of African American students at a school in a (mostly inhabited by white ) middle-class suburb by (Black American Students in Affluent Suburb of: A Study of Academic Disengagement ). He came to believe that blacks perform poorly in school, to avoid being accused of behaving like whites.

His theses were, among others, Karolyn Tyson and William Darity Jr. of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill criticized that showed in a study that do not differ in the settings of black and white students.

Roland G. Fryer of Harvard University, however, agreed to Ogbu. He noted that the public schools provide black poor performance, to avoid being suspected to behave as whites. However, this phenomenon did not show up at private schools.