Free Republic

Research confirms that the “acting white” charge is a real problem that intimidates some black students. Our job is to confront it. As kids go back to school this week, when it comes to black ones, it’s time to do some myth-busting. This week’s topic: black teens calling their nerdy black peers “white” for liking school. It’s a problem, because too often, black kids who want to fit in end up letting their grades slip. The social scientists John Ogbu and Signithia Fordham first called attention to this phenomenon in the 1980s. But over the past 10 years, a myth...

<p>INDIANAPOLIS -- Across the nation, black males tend to lag behind their high school classmates. Washington Township Superintendent Eugene White is confronting the problem head on, singling out black male students and chastising them for their poor performance in school.</p>

He was one of the people who gave us "Ebonics" in the 1990s. But don't hold that against him. John U. Ogbu also helped bring attention to the self-destructive tendency that drives some black students to reject standard English and academic excellence as "acting white," as if ignorance were supposed to be a black thing. The distinguished University of California at Berkeley anthropologist most recently made news when a group of black middle-class parents hired him to examine why their teenagers were not succeeding academically as well as their white counterparts. After careful study, Ogbu concluded that the black parents...