The Color of Success

Through students’ own voices and perspectives, this book reveals how and why some racial minorities achieve academic success, despite limited opportunity. Based on the experiences of Black, Latino, and Vietnamese urban high school students, the author provides a revealing comparative analysis that offers insight into how schools can create opportunities and safe learning environments where youth acquire real goals, expectations, and tangible pathways for success. Offering alternatives to current practices and structures of inequality that plague educational systems throughout the nation, this sociologically informed book:

• Takes a rare look at urban school success stories, instead of those depicting failure.
• Explores the social processes that enable racial minority youth to escape the unequal structures of urban schooling to perform well in school.
• Focuses on youth’s interpretations and reactions to the schooling process to determine how schools can empower youth and promote the social mobility of low-income urban populations.

Gilberto Q. Conchas is a faculty member in the Department of Education, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

“Conchas has shown us yet again that sometimes the answers to the questions that perplex us the most are right in front of our faces.”
— From the Foreword by Pedro Noguera, author of City Schools and the American Dream

“At last! Gilberto Conchas marshals the power of mixed-method research to examine and explain achievement in urban high schools.”
Jeannie Oakes, Presidential Professor and Director, UCLA's Institute for Democracy Education & Access (IDEA)

“This brilliant and important book sheds light on a phenomenon of great and growing importance: What works in the schooling of minority youth? The answers are riveting and a lasting tribute to the human spirit to reach higher.”
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, The Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education, New York University

“Going beyond conventional accounts of school failure, Gilberto Conchas provides insight into the cultural processes and structural forces that contribute to high achievement among urban youth.”
Hugh Mehan, Director, CREATE, University of California, San Diego

"A stereotype-breaking book that turns school failure on its head."
Patricia Gándara, University of California, Davis