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Half right on acting white

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on June 9, 2005 - 3:51am.
on People of the Word | Race and Identity

Brad Plumer has a grip,

A few comments. Obviously the "acting white" phenomenon only has a strong effect on achievement if the loss of friends is high enough to act as a deterrent on doing well in school. Intuitively, I'm not sure it does. A black student with a 4.0 has, on average, 1.5 fewer same-race friends than a similar white student. Friends are nice and all, but that's not a huge difference. It's also possible that the causal arrow is all wrong here. The "acting white" thesis suggests that smart black students get scorned by their peers, but it could simply be that black students who are unpopular for other reasons just end up spending more time in the library and hence, get higher grades.

but slips:

(That doesn't explain why smart black students are more unpopular than their white counterparts, though.)

Is "not as popular" the same thing as "unpopular"?

Half-Sigma is more than half right:

But I think that the really interesting finding, which was hardly discussed at all, is that at private schools the most popular white students have a GPA of 2.0, and as GPA increases above 2.0 popularity drops.

What s going on here? My take is that high GPA has a negative effect on popularity for students of all races at all schools. High grades are not valued at all in the school aged community. But there exists another factor, one which causes both higher GPAs and higher popularity. This other factor is the student s family's social and economic status (SES).

...because (keeping in mind we're commenting on a bogus issue) he gets another major point correct.

Going back to the issue of why blacks have a drop-off in same-race popularity when their GPA exceeds 3.5, it should be obvious that such high ability blacks have little in common with the other blacks in their school and more in common with the whites (who score a standard deviation higher in most measures of academic achievement), so they will have more white friends and less black friends. There is no evidence from the statistics in the paper that this has anything to do with being shunned for 'acting white.'

(Without going too deeply into the site, my observations

  1. there is no activity in any extant human society that is beyond the capabilities of a minimally configured human brain, and
  2. no one knows what those genetic factors are anyway

leads me to give less weight to genetic factors that influence intelligence than I believe Half-Sigma does.)

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Submitted by kspence on June 9, 2005 - 4:36pm.

Ok, so we come to an agreement about our roles, then you don't link me?  : )

That private school finding slipped by me.  I see that Fryer and Torelli didn't control for group size in school.  If they looked at same race friends, and blacks are a minority, wouldn't blacks as a rule have fewer friends to choose from?  and again, if they are in classes where there aren't a significant number of kids like them (because of self-selection, AND TEACHER SELECTION), then wouldn't it make sense that they don't have the same number of friends?  
the ses variable might not soak up that much variance as to make the finding disappear.  i wonder if he's talking about interacting ses with grades?  
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Submitted by cnulan on June 9, 2005 - 6:48pm.

half-sigma spoke so well - even acknowledging that $$$ equal a signifier of sexual appeal in this culture - until he dropped that big baby-ruth looking blob genetic intelligence into the punchbowl - pure howler time from then till the end, oh well...,

when I use the term neurotype, I refer to a whole host of neurological, hormonal, and electrochemical characteristics which have a direct bearing on individual social performance. leaving aside purely aesthetic characteristics - knowing full well that these have an immense influence on social performance and are largely genetically determined - there remain an immense number of characteristics with a direct bearing on social outcomes. do you remember how a few years ago every other drug commercial on teevee was for Paxil or some or another serotonin reuptake inhibitor that would decrease social anxiety? wonder whatever happened to those droogy woogs? and of course we live in a Prozac nation in which millions of Murkan women are drooging themselves into contentment with their social lots in life - so extensively in fact that Murkan fresh water fish are turning up with measurable amounts of prozac in their tissues (again, a mild serotonin reuptake inhibitor)...,

I would argue that how well a student does in the overwhelming majority of schools has far less to do with raw deftness in negotiating complex problem spaces than it does with a cluster of social performance characteristics including tolerance for boredom and tendency toward compliance with authority...,

(after all - upwards of 5 million Ritalin prescribed boys with higher than average intellect has GOT to mean something.)

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Submitted by DarkStar on June 9, 2005 - 7:10pm.

OK, this is good.

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Submitted by kspence on June 9, 2005 - 9:17pm.

the latest American Political Science Review has an article arguing for the genetic determinants of conservatism.  times are a changin'.

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on June 9, 2005 - 9:24pm.

Genetic determinants of conservatism??

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on June 9, 2005 - 9:38pm.

half-sigma spoke so well - even acknowledging that $$$ equal a signifier of sexual appeal in this culture - until he dropped that big baby-ruth looking blob genetic intelligence into the punchbowl - pure howler time from then till the end, oh well...,

His observations earned him the benefit of the doubt...but I chose not to go looking for trouble.

 

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Submitted by cnulan on June 14, 2005 - 4:32pm.

Here's an angle of engagement I've not formed the habit of considering.

Of course, Blacks are classified as a threat to national security - and have been since the formation of the nation. Educators act as if there is no accord on this...Americans have never been so united on any topic as the idea that Blacks constitute the principal danger in America. Therefore, can you rightly conceive of schools providing a dangerous group with keys to succeed in math and science. Nothing could be more preposterous.

Of Chancellors, Education and Threats..,

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on June 14, 2005 - 4:48pm.

You know what?

The paradox of America's present dilemma is hilarious...there will be no salvation in the academic dedication of white students. The sense of urgency cannot be implanted into this generation.

Roland Fryer's research actually supports this statement, as white private school students...the cream of America's crop...doesn't like to "act white."

Not surprising when you conside who supports the gangster rap industry...

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