Prometheus 6

Though given its timeliness as regards an ongoing conversation in the comments I could understand the accusation…

After you read the article though, just to balance things out, you might want to consider this as-worthy-as-it-is-lengthy commentary. Then come back for mine.

'Acting White' Myth, The
By PAUL TOUGH

When Bill Cosby spoke out publicly in May against dysfunction and irresponsibility in black families, he identified one pervasive symptom: ''boys attacking other boys because the boys are studying and they say, 'You're acting white.''' This idea isn't new; it was first proposed formally in the mid-80's by John Ogbu, a Nigerian professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and it has since become almost a truism: when smart black kids try hard and do well, they are picked on by their less successful peers for ''acting white.''

The only problem with this theory, according to a research paper released in October, is that for the most part, it isn't true. Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and William Darity Jr., an economist at Duke and U.N.C., coordinated an 18-month ethnographic study at 11 schools in North Carolina. What they found was that black students basically have the same attitudes about achievement as their white counterparts do: they want to succeed, understand that doing well in school has important consequences in later life and feel better about themselves the better they do.

So where does the idea of the burden of ''acting white'' come from? One explanation the authors offer will make sense to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie: there's an ''oppositional peer culture'' in every high school -- the stoners and the jocks making fun of the nerds and the student-government types. When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis.

More insidiously, the authors say, the idea that failing black kids pull down successful black kids can be used as an excuse by administrators to conceal or justify discrimination in the public-education system. The one school where the researchers did find anxiety about ''acting white'' was the one in which black students were drastically underrepresented in the gifted-and-talented classes. And significantly, at this particular school, the notion of the burden of ''acting white'' was most pervasive not among the black students interviewed by the researchers, but among their teachers and administrators, who told researchers that blacks are ''averse to success'' and ''don't place a high value on education.''

Did you read the commentary I linked to? Because the only thing I'm going to say about it is my perceptions differ in detail but overall it models the situation well. My gut says he's emphasized the third meaning of "acting white" too much. But that may be me…I've never been told I act white. I've been offered the opportunity—literally told I could live the good life, "you don't have to hang out with the bebops." But in high school there were exactly two things about me that annoyed the crew: that they never saw me study but never saw me fail a test, and that when we got caught they got in MORE trouble for corrupting me.

Little personal history: they threw me out of kindergarten for reading out loud. Blame my sister…she taught me to read. Weird story. But she was five years older than me and taught me with her textbooks because we didn't have a lot of other books. So when I hit kindergarten I was reading at a fifth grade level. I didn't read a fiction book until I was in the fifth grade (Huckleberry Finn). Before that I read books with titles like "Ions and You." Swear to God, that was a real book. Herbert S. Zim was my fucking hero. If being smart or knowledgeable or whatever you want to call it was going to get anyone told they "act white" I should have caught it. What I got instead was my share of the Boones Farm Apple Wine, in the park at Stapleton projects.

See, I'm not sure anyone knew I was smart until after we were friends. As a kid I was just a kid. I knew the kids in the neighborhood, played, fought, normal kid stuff with normal kids. Then I went to school and found all these books. But when I went outside afterward I played, I fought, normal kid stuff.

There was a turning point. The teachers at one school had the practice of using me as a flail against the other kids - "I'll ask Earl, I bet he knows the answer." That shit wears thin on a class full of ten year olds really fast. And the toughest kid in the class, who had decided I was okay, pulled me aside and said…this is a quote…"Stop answering questions all the time. Don't you know nobody will like you?" And he wasn't specifying Black kids. NObody. And the teachers noticed I stopped volunteering and pulled me aside to ask what was wrong. I told them what was explained to me. I was asked who told me that but young does not equal stooopit. I was then told to ignore them they don't matter your education is more important than your friends and I wasn't having that.

I made a deal with the teachers: They can call on me if no one else has the answer, and I'll volunteer once in a while. Because I wanted friends. But I learned the primary rule of being social is allowing yourself to be taught things that are flat wrong. On occasion. Nothing deadly. That and respecting what a person feels is their area of expertise.

And I kept being me and I kept respecting my people. I hang with them when we do common things. It got to be the first thing anyone wanted to know is what weird-ass book I got with me today. Had friends, had enemies. Had people I really wanted to meet and never did.

And no one ever said "you think you're white."