[garbanzo]

There is much merit to this - it's not "acting white" per se, but rather the notion of "collective failure" - the idea that failures by blacks reflect on the entire black race and the converse that successes of blacks are in essence individual successes not related to the general ability of blacks as a whole. Contrasted with whites where failures are individual and successes are collectives. The recent example is Jayson Blair - the general meme on the right has made it a collective failure of blacks rather than the failure of an individual - something that didn't happen with Steven Glass for example.

This is idea of collective failure/individual success (especially among blacks) explains I think a lot of the hostility many blacks have toward the successful. If you see someone as successful because of some sort of dispensation of grace, especially someone who doesn't "give back" to the "less fortunate" that would certainly inspire a lot of jealously and resentment of someone who "lucked out" but pretends as if he deserved his position. If a close family member won the lottery but didn't give you a much as dinner, you'd probably feel some sense of resentment towards them.

On the flip side, if every failure of blacks is collective, you certainly have tendancy to "circle the wagons" when one of you fails. You pretend nothing happened or that the person was somehow wronged by larger forces, e.g. the rallying around OJ.

The tough question is how to reverse these attitudes. As a culture we have to start treating people as individuals, and seeing their successes and failures as individuals rather than as members of a race.

[PMCarey]

The recent example is Jayson Blair - the general meme on the right has made it a collective failure of blacks rather than the failure of an individual - something that didn't happen with Steven Glass for example.

Nonsense. The general meme on the right is that it was a failure of affirmative action policies which make it politically and culturally difficult, if not impossible, to fire a black worker even when it is widely known that the worker is filing false stories, abusing expense accounts, and so forth. I have never read a single column in which the right attacks blacks as the culprit in the Jayson Blair case. Their vitriol has been reserved exclusively for the NY Times editors.