Journal of Social Science for Policy Implications

A Structural Approach to Understanding Black British Caribbean Academic Underachievement in the United Kingdom
Carol Tomlin, Cecile Wright, Paul C. Mocombe

Abstract
The contemporary underachievement of black British Caribbean youth in the United Kingdom is an epiphenomenon of their historical racial-class experiences within the global capitalist social structure of class inequality under American hegemony. Against identity politics and John Ogbu’s burden of acting white hypothesis, in this article, we posit Paul C. Mocombe’s (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010) mismatch of linguistic structure and social class function hypothesis as a hermeneutical framework for understanding and explaining the underachievement of black British Caribbean youth vis-à-vis their white and Asian counterparts in the United Kingdom.

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