Student Voice as Agency: Resistance and Accommodation in Inner‐City Schools

Abstract

In this article we describe the results of a comparative case study of two inner‐city high schools located in the southeastern United States. One school, a citywide school with high admission standards, enrolls an all‐African American lower‐to‐middle‐class population. The other school enrolls a more ethnically and racially diverse population of students from a single lower‐class neighborhood. Using Grossberg's notion of identity politics, we describe how students' racial/ ethnic identity to a greater or lesser degree becomes both a means of resistance and accommodation to white hegemony.