DISPOSITIONS TOWARD (COLLECTIVE) STRUGGLE AND EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE IN THE INNER-CITY - A CASE ANALYSIS OF 6 AFRICAN-AMERICAN HIGH-SCHOOL-STUDENTS

For more than 20 years, researchers have shown that the recognition of a limited opportunity structure on the part of marginal youth circums cribes their optimism toward the future and hence increases their like lihood of disengaging from school. This article, however, focuses on s ix, low-income, African-American adolescents who expected to realize t heir ambitions and were high achieving, all the while articulating an acute recognition of how race and class (and, in two cases, gender) op erated to constrain the life chances of people like themselves. These students' familiarity with struggle, including collective struggle, wa s the only biographical factor which distinguished them from the other respondents in the larger project of which they were a part. Thus, in contrast to the findings of some, their knowledge of struggle did not curtail their academic success but may have contributed to their sens e of human agency and facilitated their academic motivation. Because t his knowledge derived from their interaction with significant others, this article also maintains that the meanings that arise from immediat e experiences and discourses are essential for understanding the diver se ways by which marginal people interpret and respond to their subjug ation.