It seems finally official that the mainstream media (and mainstream American) line is that black American youth insult each other for being academically successful by saying they’re “acting white”. Thus, I’ll do my part to add a voice of dissension to misinterpretation.
“White”, in this usage, doesn’t mean academically successful - it means dorky. Now dorkiness can obviously overlap with academic success (which is why this confusion arose) - eagerness to raise one’s hand every time the teacher asks a question or eschewing transient slang in favor of a practical, lifetime vocabulary are both dorky but will help your grades. But they’re still not synonymous, and a person can get straight A’s without being attracting a “dork” or “white” label.
This explanation is not an endorsement of the term. It’s clearly racist in a straightforward way. And the idea that being cool is a key component of a black identity is often destructive. But it’s needlessly insulting (and embarrassingly self-congratulatory on the part of whites who are quick to believe that incorrect interpretation) to imply that blacks are uniquely anti-intellectual to the extent of having our own put-down specifically for people who do well academically.
I thought making straight A’s would get you made fun of in certain black circles, regardless of the manner it was achieved. Chris Rock has a bit on this.
How widespread is this? Do we have a cite? I’m not doubting your assumptions, I just woudn’t mind looking at some literature on the subject.
I oft wondered of the minority youths who this applies to, do some of them feel the ignorance in the sentiments and rebel of their own accord? or are they ridiculed even more?
Because white people use “dorky”, and that would be acting white (a slightly different, more direct usage). Seriously, though, why use “asshole” when “jerk” would suffice?
Have you ever seen that old PBS show called “American Tongues”? It’s about the wonderful regional variety of American English – pronunciation, idioms, words peculiar to certain areas (the segment of earnestly puzzled Midwesterners trying to suss out the meaning of “schlepp” is hilarious) and so forth. One part looked at the incredible variations encompassed just in the various neighborhoods of Boston.
Yes, this does apply to your topic, dammit – stop tapping your foot! It’s the explanatory lead-in to my recollection of one segment, talking with a trio of black teenage girls in Roxbury. They were cheerfully discussing how they talk and teasing the hell out of one of them, who spoke “better” (less locally accented, more conventional) English, as “schoolgirl”. From the way the appellation was used it was clear this was not a complimentary term.
This documentary was produced in 1988. So this attitude, it seems to me, is not really a new invention of the (white) media.
Well my point was that the academics seem to get this wrong, but a quick search found this paper, in which students themselves are told to describe what “acting white” is. You’ll see it’s not a short list describing academic success. It’s a PDF, and the part I’m referencing starts on page 6 under “Results & Discussion”.
From personal experiences-- both mine and my children-- it wasn’t the good grades that got us called “oreo” and accused of “acting white”, nor was it any dorkiness-- it was the way we spoke. Which is funny, because white people think I talk like a black person (except when I’m on the phone at work. Then I use my “phone voice”. It is much more businesslike-- which also equals “white”).
I remember vividly my stepmother and her sisters teasing my son mercilessly and until he was in tears when he was 10-- calling him “Poindexter” and “Prince Justin” because he casually used the word “invariably”.
It would be interesting if you could provide actual evidence of tis claim. (I know: it’s a rant, not a debate.) Given that the phrase was coined by a black researcher studying unbalanced grades among kids in a school system where the economic and social levels of blacks and whites are the same, but black kids were doing substantially worse in grades, I am not sure that you are correct.
The phrase “acting white” was not something that was pulled out of the air by some white reporter with a tin ear; it came to the attention of the mainstream media when it was offered by black kids as a reason why their school grades were lower than their white classmates’ when their environment was the same. (See the numerous stories on the disparities in Shaker Heights as studied by John Ogbu.)
Now, Ogbu may have gotten it wrong, but he was not setting out to disparage black kids.
This is not to say that some whites are not overly willing to seize on the phrase as an example of what is “wrong” with black youth or black culture. I suspect that the issue is a lot more complex. However, a claim that “acting white” is only an attack on dorkiness and plays no part in black kids avoiding academic excellence is a cop out that is not supported by evidence.
Far more likely is that it is a matter of frame of reference. I suspect that kids in mostly black schools do use the phrase to mean simply dorky. However, kids in mixed schools appear to use it in the manner against which you are complaining. Fryer’s study (noted below) seems to indicate that it is not an issue in either predominantly black (or Hispanic) schools or in private schools (where, one presumes, every kid is bustinmg his (or her) butt to get ahead). However, the phrase was coined and publicized first in a school that met neither of those conditions.
I would agree that any generalization that foolishly claims that no black kid wants to do well for fear of “acting white” is wrong. Trying to spin the meaning of the phrase for all cases without taking the time to identify who is using it in what context also appears to be wrong.
The way someone speaks is a part dorkiness. There’s a cool way of speaking (an affected bassiness with a barking cadence and heavy, up-to-the-second slang, frex), and an uncool way (a nasal intonation with relatively precise enunciation and a moderate pace, perhaps).
I’ve never heard that definition either, pizzabrat, although to be fair I’ve never heard any black person use the expression “acting white.” Only heard it through the media, and I’ve always had lingering doubts about how widespread it really was.
I defer to your personal knowledge on the topic, but to an outsider the description that Biggirl provides seems to make more sense. Simply “acting dorky” seems a bit general a concept to become associated with “acting white.” Unless there are specific “dorky” behaviors you’re referring to that I’m missing.
I would agree that acting dorky and getting good grades would make one the subject of teasing, but I believe that getting good grades while acting cool would still get you teased- less because you act cool, but teased nonetheless.
The Ogbu hypothesis - “acting White” as a choice that academically successful students must make in order to be academically successful - is not only old (his work was in the 1980s and 1990s) but it has been debunked by Theresa Perry, Asa Hilliard, and a slew of sociologists and educational researchers. Most of the current research notes that “acting White” is only one strategy of adapting to an academically rigorous environment, and not a preferred one at that - but Black students tend to resist, and find ways of maintaining social relationships and peer acceptance while simultaneously striving for academic excellence.
There’s an emerging body of literature on high-achieving Black students that describes these students as successful and popular as well as smart. Intelligence and academic achievement have long traditions of respect in the Black American community - historian James Anderson notes that the first social, political, and economic investments that freed slaves made were in the founding of schools.
And of course, I can reflect on my years in the classroom. What was the one thing that once said would start a fight in my school, a 99% African American, 100% free lunch school? It wasn’t insults about someone’s family, or cracks about the clothes students wore. It was calling another student “stupid.” Kids would actually insult each other by bringing up low grades. That’s part of the reason it was so hard to get students to read aloud - the struggling readers were afraid of being insulted if their peers heard them reading poorly.
Exactly. There’s a huge difference between dorky vs. white and jerk vs. asshole.
If black people are bothered by this insult (as they should be), then why do they use it on each other? I don’t understand what’s wrong with wanting to better oneself, nor do I get how that is considered “white”. Aren’t they just perpetuating a stereotype against their own people?
Black researcher? You mean Ogbu (reads rest of the post. Yes you do.)? Why point out that he’s black? His being dark-skinned is meaningless - he’s an immigrant and thus more of a stranger to his subjects than even a white American would be.
And that was not my point at all. I made it clear that my point was simply that “acting white” is not synonymous with “being academically successful”
But it was not my son’s tonal dorkiness that earned him scorn from his own family, it was his word choice. As it was not my non-bassiness that got me called an oreo, but the fact that I didn’t say things like “I was sover” when I meant “I was sober” or “Where you at?” when I meant “Where are you?”
<pointless hijack>There was really no chance I’d ever use “Boost Mobile” anyway, but whatever minuscule chance existed was annihilated by their commericials that not only use that latter phase as their slogan, but repeat it again and again. Grrr!</pointless hijack>
It’s the explanatory lead-in to my recollection of one segment, talking with a trio of black teenage girls in Roxbury. They were cheerfully discussing how they talk and teasing the hell out of one of them, who spoke “better” (less locally accented, more conventional) English, as “schoolgirl”. From the way the appellation was used it was clear this was not a complimentary term.