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...
