“Time is not on our side”: Cultural vs. structural explanations of black American women students' achievement in the urban,nonelite university

Drawing primarily on 42 in-depth interviews with working-, lower-, and underclass black American women students at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), this article challenges the cultural argument that credits black women students' lower educational achievement to their adherence to oppositionalcultural forms and a preindustrial time sense that inhibits success in higher educational contexts. It argues such an explanation gives too much autonomy to culture while failing to situate the everyday responses of working-class black women students within the complex of race, class, and gender forces that affect them. Documenting that urban, nonelite university black women students are bound up in that stratification complex such that they come to the university while attempting to cope with financial hardship and heavy employment loads, I suggest the individual costs they pay are much less time to devote to academic activities and, hence, lower academic achievement.