OK, so now this article has set off a round of posts by people. I'll say it's about damn time.
I've been arguing for some time now, that based on some readings I've made, the "acting white" charge may be over blown. Note, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. And, to be sure, one charge is one charge too much. But from my experience, when it happened to me, it came from someone who was not performing well. I saw it as an obvious case of envy. That's a lot different from it being a "Black culture thang."
LaShawn, Booker Rising, LKSpence, and Ambra make comments on this report about "Acting White". Not that anyone cares, but I've been talking about this for a bit. I've done it on email lists and on USENET.
Here's a sample of my USENET efforts. I'm quoting a study:
Most important, the study found that black students who belonged in academic honor societies were more likely than other black students to perceive themselves as "popular." At predominantly black schools, students in honor societies were more popular than students who had not been so honored. Cook and Ludwig conclude that the evidence "is not compelling" that nationwide black students who aspire to educational pursuits are ridiculed by their peers.
If there are stronger antiacademic norms among black adults, black parents would be expected to have reduced involvement with their children's schools relative to white parents. Our analysis of the NELS data finds that, on average, African American parents are at least as involved in their children's educations as white parents of similar means.The NELS 10th graders reported the frequency of different interactions
between their parents and school. As seen in Table 5, African American
parents are more likely to telephone their child's teacher, a
difference that increases once family socioeconomic status is
controlled. A greater propensity for African American parents to
contact school staff by telephone would, of course, be of limited
vallue if phone calls were a substitute for, rather than a complements
to, other forms of involvement in their child's schooling. But
analysis of the NELS datasuggests that African American parents are at
least as involved as white parents in other ways, as well. The results
shown in Talbe 5 indicated that almost 65 percent of African American
parents were reported by their children as having attended at least
one schoo meeting in the 1990 fall semester, vs about 56 percent for
white parents. Once family SES is controlled, this difference
increases to almost 14 percentage-point advantage in favor of African
American parents. Similar results are found in Table 5 for aprental
attendance at school events.
Again, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I am saying that before people jump on the bash Black culture band wagon, get an idea of what you're speaking about. Is it "culture" or one on one envy?
And why doesn't the "sterotype threat" idea get more examination? After all, people swooned when George W. Bush used "bigotry of low expectations" and it's the same thing under a different name.
Have it both ways:
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/04/believeit.html
Posted by: True_Liberal at October 9, 2004 12:21 PMI am at a loss to see how the article you link to is related to the subject at hand. I don't get it.
Posted by: Lester Spence at October 9, 2004 01:51 PM
Well, when I faced a similar charge in the late 80's it unwittingly destroyed my vision of black women for nearly 10 years-but that is another story. Needless to say, in my mostly white school where I was one of the top minds at the school, the attacks came most vociferously from my black peers whom I supposed to be my brotha's and sista's .
The look in their eyes seemed to say 'why are you doing this to us? What you think you're better than us?' It seemed as thought they were saying that by my success they were in some way negatively affected. I could not then and still cannot figure out why they had those looks on their faces. And for some reason I felt this heavy weight of guilt and shame for doing well.
However, deep within me, I thought that this could not be a 'cultural thang' but that my experience had to be isolated. Then when I went on a college recruitment trip to Brown Univ. in 1994, my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
Here were black men and women, beautiful women I may add *wink*, who were just as smart and driven as I was. What this showed me was that indeed those in my town may have been somewhat jaded but that there were plenty of black folk out there who saw academic excellence as something to be achieved.
It saddens me to think of the many young people out there facing what I faced. I fear that when they have reached the 'prize' they will move out to the suburbs, never looking back on those who turned their backs on them as children.
Posted by: don at October 6, 2004 12:20 AM