Student voice as agency: Resistance and accommodation in inner-city schools

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, toe describe how students' racial/ethnic identity to a greater or lesser degree becomes both a means of resistance and accommodation to white hegemony.