The Mocombeian Strategy

About the Book

The intention of this work is to offer a sociolinguistic understanding of black failure in education as an ideological apparatus for today's dominant bourgeois capitalist class, by re-interpreting Noam Chomsky's "deep structure" concept in sociolinguistic terms that diametrically opposes William Labov's conclusion, from the same concept, that black academic failure is solely a result of the cultural and political conflicts in the classroom brought on by the structural differentiation of the capitalist (racist) social structure, rather than "a mismatch in linguistic structure" between Black English Vernacular (BEV) and Standard English (SE). In other words, my hermeneutical analysis seeks to demonstrate the necessary relationship between the normative and systemic origins of black academic failure in capitalist America: black students exhibit lower educational achievement and attainment than do majority whites not because of their distinct cultural or normative processes, but because of either the lack of inherent ability, or the structural differentiation engendered by the educational system as an ideological apparatus for the capitalist social relation of production, which gives rise to a sociolinguistic community (i.e., the black underclass) which has come to serve as the bearers of ideological and linguistic domination for the majority of black students.

About the Author

Paul C. Mocombe is the President/CEO of The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc. A social theorist interested in the application of social theory to contemporary issues such as race, class, and capitalism (globalization), he is the author of, A labor Approach to the Development of the Self or Modern Personality: The Case of Public Education, Education in Globalization, Mocombe’s Reading Room Series, and The Mocombeian Strategy: The Reason for, and Answer to Black Failure in Capitalist Education.