Posted on 06/17/2006 11:38:57 AM PDT by wagglebee
Courtney Smith figures she heard it nearly every day she was in public school:
“Courtney acts white.” “Courtney talks white.” “Courtney thinks she’s all that.”
Just because she did well in school and spoke proper English.
“The black friends I did have, we were the overachievers,” said Smith, now a 20-year-old journalism major at Norfolk State University who hopes to be a news anchor. “We knew that we 'talked white,’ and we were going to continue doing that. We didn’t care if we were teased.”
The “acting white” theory – that some black students are dissuaded from trying their hardest in school for fear of being teased by peers – has moved beyond academia and into public consciousness. It often comes up in discussion of the persistent gap in educational achievement between blacks and whites.
Now a group of researchers is saying the focus on the theory of acting white isn’t right.
“Somehow it has reached a level of prominence that is not warranted,” said Erin McNamara Horvat , one of the co-editors of “Beyond Acting White,” a collection of essays recently published by Rowman and Littlefield .
“It’s an explanation and it’s easy,” said Horvat, an associate professor of urban education at Temple University. “For some people, it puts the problem back on the students themselves.”
Horvat acknowledges that black students face pressure not to “act white.” She’s seen it in her own research. Yet she says it’s just one of many factors, including school financing and the distribution of top teachers, that could explain the “achievement gap.”
Plenty of high-achieving black students besides Smith have shrugged off the “acting white” comments.
“As I’ve gone through my whole school career, people have called me white because I’ve made good grades and didn’t conform to the stereotype,” said Ixavion Wright , 18, who graduated Thursday from Norfolk’s Lake Taylor High School. “My whole take on it was, I didn’t really care. I chose to be different. I just went to school and did what I had to do to make good grades.”
Wright graduated at the top of his class, with a 4.0-plus average – his only B was in calculus. He plans to begin pre-med studies at the University of California at San Diego in the fall. Wright, however, thinks the “acting white” pressure influenced other students: “They feel they’re supposed to be cool, and cool is not supposed to be making good grades in school.”
Douglas Reeves , an author and researcher on education in Boston, said a web of factors, including the availability of Advanced Placement courses and experienced teachers, influences the achievement of black and white students. “Acting white,” he said, shouldn’t be discounted.
“What we have is a generation of research and common sense that peer pressure is really important,” said Reeves, who is a paid consultant for Norfolk Public Schools. “Peers follow peer pressure for good and ill.”
He also noted the work of Harvard University researcher Roland Fryer , who examined thousands of teen responses to a national mental health survey. Fryer found that the popularity of white students soared, while the popularity of black and Hispanic students plummeted, when their grades rose above a 3.5 average .
The effect, he wrote, was more pronounced at integrated schools than at predominantly black schools. Fryer declined to be interviewed last week , saying in an e-mail that he didn’t want to “get into a back and forth discussion with other scholars on this.”
Horvat’s book, however, cites opposing research. One essay concluded that black students, particularly in the early grades, “value education and want to do well academically.” Another, interviewing black students in Charlotte, N.C., found that many avoided high-level courses not for fear of “acting white,” but because they saw too few blacks in them.
Yardan Shabazz , an English teacher at Indian River High in Chesapeake, can’t escape the “acting white” debate. He makes a speech at least once a year after a bright student gets mocked by another student. It goes like this: “What are you implying when you accuse this student of acting white? You’re saying that only whites should be able to speak clearly?”
“It has been my soapbox for so many years,” Shabazz said, but he acknowledges it probably has little effect.
The “acting white” theory originated 20 years ago with the doctoral dissertation of Signithia Fordham , who studied teens at a Washington high school. Now the Susan B. Anthony professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Rochester, she has complained that her work has been wrenched from its context and oversimplified.
“Acting white,” Fordham said Friday , is not limited to schools. Nor, she said, should black students be seen as the culprits; the issue stems in large part from experiences with racism.
Zina McGee , a sociology professor at Hampton University, agreed that the “acting white” phenomenon – which she termed “quite influential” – is linked to obstacles facing students, such as reduced expectations for blacks in the classroom.
The Rev. B. Courtney McBath , the senior pastor at Calvary Revival Church in Norfolk, got razzed for “acting white” when he was growing up in Tennessee. That didn’t stop him from attending MIT.
The best defense, McBath thinks, is “the environment of the home. If parents have taught their children that education can lead you to success in life, then the 'acting white’ idea is not as influential in the life of that child.”
And it doesn’t have to be parents. Daniel Davis , 19, a recent graduate of Princess Anne High in Virginia Beach, counts “older African Americans, teachers and counselors” as his inspiration. “A lot told me that I had potential and I could go far,” said Davis, who is headed to Norfolk State. “It stuck in my head.” So he turned the “acting white” insults into “a positive thing making me do better for my future.”
Some successful black students say they haven’t been plagued by “acting white” taunts. Darius Vines , 18, who will graduate Sunday from Kempsville High in Virginia Beach and enroll at Howard University, thinks he was shielded by hanging out with those of different races and immersing himself in a range of activities.
For Wright, the valedictorian at Lake Taylor, it was never a tough battle.
“I chose to break down the barriers, as far as the stereotypical African American male, and do well in school,” he said. “I think everyone else should achieve as high as they can, because in the end it’s all going to pay off.”
I work from time to time in Boston's great medical-educational complex, the center of which is on the edge of a black neighborhood. At work I have seen young adults who have pulled themselves up and moved out of the ghetto, and others who still live there and find themselves in a sort of bi-cultural bind--they "act white" at their jobs in the hospital, the jobs that are their keys out of Roxbury. But it is to Roxbury that they return at night, and they face the resentment of those who either haven't yet figured out a way to leave, or those who through weakness or pride or hatred would prefer to stay put.
When the cities were burning in the 60s, blacks and whites couldn't talk about this stuff. Now we can and do, and whenever there's anything that can be said to offer these kids encouragement and support, it is my observation that the conversation goes both ways, and no one resents any of it.
I suspect that the "multi-cultural" crowd prefers poverty to hope, so that they can keep their constituents in line.
I'm doing my part to attach a stigma to white kids acting black. It breaks my heart to see white people acting like ghetto trash...
You do get peer group pressures...some of it's based on kids sorting themselves out into groups on their own. Kids who've had problems in school tend to develop aversions to learning...they can be acted out in various ways, but kids who do poorly tend to hang together and reinforce each other's aversion, just like high performance students tend to reinforce the idea that it's just natural to do well.
If you asked me if I could make up a plan for an ideal world for adolescents, it would be to send them to work in apprenticeship/service work situations during the ages of 14-17, and only let them come back to school early if they tested well as being able to do well in an academic environment. And then when they reach college age, send them back to complete their education. What they need is more real-world interaction with adults and less crowding together in peer groups where they develop these "youth cultures" that doom a lot of them to unhappy years ahead.
Of course, that won't happen. But our ancestors had wisdom when they used to put their teens out to service (being servants or apprentices or squires or what have you). High school is bad for many people's mental health.
But then I'm a historical radical, I guess. Or is that ultra-conservative, since I would go back to something based on the 18th century model?
It is part and parcel of the entire inner-city culture of defeatism and victimhood.
It's like watching a barrel of crabs. One will try to climb out of the barrel and three will reach up and pull him back into the barrel.
I should have read through your post before I commented. I made the same barrel of crabs assessment that you did.
Great minds think alike.
A penny for your thoughts on this?
“For some people, it puts the problem back on the students themselves.”
What does acting black look like?
What is interesting is the "thug life" culture is hurting blacks in many sports. If you want to make NBA these days maybe you better act Virgin Islander, Canadian, Argentinian, French, Slavic or German as African Americans are no longer dominating the sport as they once did. If you want to make the Major Leagues, maybe you want to act Hispanic, African Americans in the majors are down significantly. The best African American non pitching prospect in the minors was recently suspended for hitting an umpire with a bat obviously if he had been a congresswoman he would have gotten a free pass.
Don't forget that it is OK to be stupid as long as you feel good about your self.
I believe that would be a good thing.
Courtney has a doctorate in physics, makes a moderate six figure income, drives a Bentley sports convertible, and can order in perfect English from her black friends when she stops by McDonald's.
You forgot owns a home, has money in the bank, has never been arrested and has two children by the same father who she is married to and has been since before her children were conceived.
"School boy"
"School girl"
I guess these are the same as "acting white."
:-( There's something inherently and deeply sad that SUCCESS is thought of as "acting white."
Yep, and the children are in PRIVATE school.
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