"Acting white" damage control

The BBQ Pit
21

[QUOTE=Biggirl]
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?”
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I think this might be more of an issue of knowing one’s audience and code-switching, which links back to Du Bois’ observation of the duality of Africans in America. When I first came to the States at the age of 14, I was pretty much shunned by the majority of my Black peers. I didn’t talk like them or dress like them. As I went through high school, I learned vernacular, how to adopt a “cool pose,” got into hip hop, played sports, and so on. Was I ever “the downest” brother in high school? No. But did I have respect among my Black peers and very close friendships with many of the Black kids in school? Yep.

College was almost completely the opposite. I really had two identities, probably because I was so adept at code-switching by this time. The leadership group and my honors program peers that I interacted with saw one aspect of me, while my friends in the dorm saw another. Neither was inauthentic, just different sides of the same person. Towards the end of my college years, I reconciled the two, to now where today I feel if you meet Hippy Hollow, you meet me in all of my identity. My experience parallels closely what racial identity theorists like William Cross and Janet Helm have described for African American youth.

Not knowing you IRL, Biggirl, I don’t know if that might explain the experience you’ve had in some situations. Don’t get me wrong - there are some ignorant mofos out there, Black or otherwise, but my experience has shown me that their is an emphasis on sounding a lot like your peers in those settings among Black youth. As my mom is a West Indian immigrant and I grew up in the UK, I wasn’t going to sound like that right off the bat. But once I learned it, I had much greater success reconciling the two identities - high achieving student and HH from 'round the way.

22

[QUOTE=Biggirl]
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?”
[/QUOTE]

Okay - I was just giving examples. You’re talking about a different usage anyway - you know, like “bitch” has different usages (it can mean either an aggressive woman or a weak, submissive man). A more direct usage.

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[QUOTE=Biggirl]
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”).
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This mirrors my own experience. I was always teased for speaking “proper”, not for getting good grades. Actually, my intelligence was something even my tormentors couldn’t deny, and on those rare occassions when they were feeling complimentary, they would say “monstro, you sure are smart.”

The most popular black kids at my high school (60% black enrollment) were not the dumbest ones. They were the smartest ones. BUT…they were also the most vocal, take-charge students. They were captains on sports teams and they ran for student council. Most importantly, they had both black and white friends. The kids who got labeled “acting white” were usually the kids who did not have black friends AND did not use AAVE. The same goes for college. Black students who only hung around white students weren’t considered “down”. Grades didn’t have anything to do with it.
About the phone voice thing, I use it too. I’ve been communicating with the property manager of an apartment I’m moving into in Richmond, VA. He’s only heard my voice on the phone. I’m hoping there’s no surprises when I stroll up into the office, 'cuz I will call the NAACP and Jesse and Al. And my mama.

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I agree very much with Hippy. The way I used language seemed off to my peers-- alien or ‘white’. Probably because I was raised by my Puerto Rican grandmother, whose English was very thickly accented but not AAV.

Oh, and I was a cool kid, believe it or not. I fit in fine and was one of those people who was a friend to everyone. It was just that everybody had to have something to goof on and with me it was the way I spoke.
But when my own family turned on my son (and they were rather vicious about it, too) I was surprised. Believe me, they all got a piece of my mind about diminished expectations or— how did december put it?-- the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Only I didn’t use those words. It sounded more like, “Just because you want to spend your life sounding like ignorant assholes, doesn’t mean you can bring my kid down with you. If you really want to play this stupid game: You think he’s sounds like a “Poindexter”? Well, I think you sound like Welfare Queens.”
It really annoys me when black people think that in order to “be black” you have to talk like an idiot.
Yeah, there was big fun at Biggirl’s daddy’s house that day.

25

I don’t know if I totally buy this as a purely racial issue despite the fact that the terminology employed is racial. As, as white kid going to an economically depressed public school in the deep south, I was mocked by other cool* white kids for excelling academically. “Not caring” was part of the ethos of “cool,” and someone who did well clearly “cared.” I can also say that when I transitioned into a prep school, success was expected. Everyone came from economically stable homes (as the child of two professors [squarely middle class], I was clearly the “poorest” kid at this school), and everyone went to top tier colleges. I think there is a universiality to teenage expereince of the economically disenfranchised, not quite sour grapes, but close. I should also point out, and with due respect, the OP is no better position to speak on behalf of America’s black youth than any other person who was once a black youth in America. This touches on what I perceive to be another problem with dealing with issues of race in the US. I do not believe there is a singular black American identity, at least not any longer. Telling us what all US black youths mean when they use an idiom is the sort of lumping that leads to stereotyping. By avoiding nuance, we don’t even begin to address the probelm.

Edited to add: well maybe there is a cultural, quasi-racial difference as the expereince of black posters seems to be the opposite of mine.

*kids who smoked, drank and had sex in midle school

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[QUOTE=Biggirl]
I agree very much with Hippy. The way I used language seemed off to my peers-- alien or ‘white’. Probably because I was raised by my Puerto Rican grandmother, whose English was very thickly accented but not AAV.

Oh, and I was a cool kid, believe it or not. I fit in fine and was one of those people who was a friend to everyone. It was just that everybody had to have something to goof on and with me it was the way I spoke.
But when my own family turned on my son (and they were rather vicious about it, too) I was surprised. Believe me, they all got a piece of my mind about diminished expectations or— how did december put it?-- the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Only I didn’t use those words. It sounded more like, “Just because you want to spend your life sounding like ignorant assholes, doesn’t mean you can bring my kid down with you. If you really want to play this stupid game: You think he’s sounds like a “Poindexter”? Well, I think you sound like Welfare Queens.”
It really annoys me when black people think that in order to “be black” you have to talk like an idiot.
Yeah, there was big fun at Biggirl’s daddy’s house that day.
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But isn’t there a middle ground there? When I’m speaking at a predominantly White group, such as an academic conference, I sound very different if I’m talking at a Black Student Association meeting. The people in the room have the same education, more or less. But to use the phrase that so many Black ministers use, there’s a real need to “make it plain” when talking to Black folks.

I would argue that African Americans have used this to our advantage over the years, and it’s highly unlikely that the streets and the 'hood will embrace the use of business-school English. So why not both? Reading one’s audience is a vital part of communication, and I feel it’s part of our heritage. Just know when to switch! I love the vibrancy of AAVE, and I certainly can’t keep up with all of the new words, but I love that I can walk into a Black neighborhood in Georgia, Texas, Massachusetts, or California, and be able to break the ice fairly quickly. And I don’t think code-switching is hard to master.

whole bean, I think the general things that I’ve observed are universals across race. Among the cool kids I’ve known in school, it’s fine to care about grades. It’s not fine to whine in class about them or appear to care too much. (Once in grad school a woman in my class had a meltdown because the prof canceled an assignment, which denied her the opportunity to be evaluated on what she knew. Those were her exact words, seriously! :eek:

Every student in that class, regardless of ethnicity, thought she was an incredible ass and a huge dork. If it meant that much to you, why not talk to the prof in office hours, instead of announcing to the world your dorkiness?

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Yeech - you call it “reading one’s audience”, I call it talking down to people.

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I agree with pizzabrat. In my experiences, “acting white” has been used in the exact same way that “nerd” and “geek” have been used. Which is why I’m always a bit :dubious: when I see a white person ragging on blacks for supposedly being so super duper anti-intellectual. The same behavior is seen in other groups, just with different terminology.

Just as you can be an average student and still be labeled a geek based on your interests (Star Trek trivia, D &D , etc), style of dress, and your lack of social sophistication, you can be accused of “acting white” by behaving in a way that other blacks deem uncool and not stereotypically black. That means speaking in a nasally tone of voice, using slang that is associated with white folks but not blacks, walking in a stiff manner, wearing docksiders and khakis, using formal vocabulary in casual situations (which is why I suspect Biggirl’s son might have been teased), etc.

I can’t remember ever being accused of “acting white”, and I never was one to conform to anyone’s idea of being black. My voice has been pretty much “raceless”, as has been my style of dress. Interestingly enough, the ghetto kids that rode my school bus did call me a nerd, though. What made them use “nerd” in lieu of “acting white” I will probably never know.

Related sidenote: when my white ex-boyfriend imitates me, he always makes my voice sound nasally the same way black comedians do when imitating whites. He’s always calling me a nerd (playfully, of course).

29

Well, I’m certainly not black, so take my anecdote with a grain of salt.

I went to a predominantly black and hispanic high school- I was, in fact ,the token white girl. Naturally, the vast majority of my friends were either (surprising, I know) black and hispanic. I also happened to be in an Honors engineering academy, so I ran with the “smart” kids.

My friends would regularly be made fun of by their non-Honors friends. My hispanic friends were regularly called coconuts (dark on the outside, white on the inside), while the black friends would be told they were acting stuck up and white.

Most of my friends were intelligent enough to see through the ignorance being thrown their way, but I can’t imagine it was easy for them. I remember one once telling me she was genuinely bothered by the fact that she was expected to choose between being black and being intelligent. Then she went on to explain that it was that attitude that was keeping people in bad stations in life, etc. etc. Can’t say she was wrong.

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[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Yeech - you call it “reading one’s audience”, I call it talking down to people.
[/QUOTE]

Only if you feel that one form of communication is superior to another, and if the conversational style is one you don’t feel comfortable with, or know very well. Context matters.

To me it’s a familiarity issue. And I don’t think I necessarily use different words, but I use a different tone. Eye contact and engaging the person I’m speaking with, with “you know what I mean?” and “you know what I’m saying?”

If I’m back in my neighborhood and someone started talking to me the way I talk at an academic conference, I’d think that person was crazy. Not just vocabulary, but body language and pacing… you know, like a nerd. :wink: YMMV.

31

Sure, I can and do code switch with the best of them. Well, not with the best of them because I still can’t bring myself to say “Where you at?” non-ironically.

There may be something to the smart thing. When my daughter was in 5th grade, her grades dropped sharply. When the citywide reading test showed her reading level fell from 4 grades above her grade level to 2 grades below, her teacher called me in. She was going to be removed from her accelerated class because of this.

We had a talk. She was being teased at school. Other children were calling her Professor Whitey or somesuch. She was getting the oreo treatment so she tried to play dumb. I asked her if the teasing had stopped once she started tanking in class. Nope. I asked her if she really believed black people have to talk a certain way in order to be black? Nope.

The tanking stopped. And, once she stopped being ashamed of being smart and black, most of the teasing stopped too.
You know what? Now that I’ve written that, I think that is still an example of the ribbing being because of the way she spoke and not how smart she was since the teasing did not stop when her grades fell.

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[QUOTE=Biggirl]
Other children were calling her Professor Whitey or somesuch. She was getting the oreo treatment so she tried to play dumb. I asked her if the teasing had stopped once she started tanking in class. Nope. I asked her if she really believed black people have to talk a certain way in order to be black? Nope.

The tanking stopped. And, once she stopped being ashamed of being smart and black, most of the teasing stopped too.
You know what? Now that I’ve written that, I think that is still an example of the ribbing being because of the way she spoke and not how smart she was since the teasing did not stop when her grades fell.
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I also think that it’s the dozens. Kids, especially Black kids, go at each other like this. If you show that it bothers you, the kids have something to dig into every single time. I remember that one kid wanted to call me Snoopy because I supposedly had a big nose. (I don’t. Kids just say stupid shit to get under your skin, just like the kid who called Biggirl’s daughter “Professor Whitey” probably had little to do with her actually emulating the behaviors of a White professor.) So I came at him and said something like, “Funny you’re talking about my nose, yours is twice as big as mine, Marmaduke!” (Marmaduke was kind of well known in the 80s.) Of course the group busted up and started calling him Marmaduke. (The kid actually gave me props for being smart a few years later in a science class.)

I hope your daughter latched on to the backhanded compliment (being called Professor) and gave those kids some fire back.

33

I’ve never heard the term code-switching before, but it totally fits something I observed happening with my Little Sister (Big Brothers/Big Sisters). I’m white, she’s black. She was 11 when we were first matched, and a willing student in a pretty chaotic school and home environment. When speaking, she didn’t use much slang at all, enunciated clearly and all her non-verbal communication showed her to be an outgoing, bubbly and open person.

When she hit 6th grade, she started getting shit every day about “acting white” – in part because she’s mixed race (black/hispanic, but identifies black) – but mostly over how she talked and how she carried herself. Pretty soon she was getting into physical fights regularly, with all the attendant suspensions, etc. I remember feeling helpless and irrelevant to everything she was going through; I couldn’t relate to it and couldn’t advise her on what to do.

She worked through it. And I think how she adapted was becoming adept at code-switching. If I picked her up from home and it was just us going out, she’d speak the way she did when we first met. If I picked her up from school or we took her friends somewhere, she’d speak a mile a minute with heavy slang and her posture would radiate that sublime mix of “don’t fuck with me / I don’t care.” I remember there was one time where we cracked up because she’d said something and I responded, “Oh my God, I am so white. I have no idea what you just said.” (We talked a lot about what it meant to be white and black.) To me it was especially interesting to listen to her speech shift gradually if she was spending time with me alone, and how lightning quick it would snap to her other mode when we came around her peers.

Anyway, ultimately she stopped getting in fights all the time and the brutal teasing stopped. Part of that was her natural self-confidence returning, and part of it was that she learned the social cues of how to behave around her peers vs. others. She’ll be 18 in July.

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[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
Only if you feel that one form of communication is superior to another, and if the conversational style is one you don’t feel comfortable with, or know very well. Context matters.
[/quote]

Exactly.

I think it’s easy to mistake “acting white” as a direct slam against intelligence if you think that only intelligent people sound stereotypically white. “Sounding black” is often equated with sounding dumb and uneducated, even when grammar and syntax is technically proper. Al Sharpton and Bryant Gumble could be saying the exact same thing, but Gumble’s recitation will probably be perceived as superior, because he lacks a blaccent.

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I don’t think it’s just blacks that “code switch” and change the way they speak to suit their audience.

My husband is from Long Island and lived and worked in NYC for most of his adult life. When conducting business here in FL he speaks very plainly and with almost no trace of his Long Island accent but get him on the phone with his cousins, his kids or his parents and you’d almost not believe it’s the same person. Not just the accent but the inflection and the phrasing…it all changes.

I think anyone with a cultural identity does this to some extent if that cultural identity is not the mainstream.

Me? I’m a middle class white woman who was born in the midwest. I’ve got no cultural identity to switch to.

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[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]

whole bean, I think the general things that I’ve observed are universals across race. Among the cool kids I’ve known in school, it’s fine to care about grades. It’s not fine to whine in class about them or appear to care too much. (Once in grad school a woman in my class had a meltdown because the prof canceled an assignment, which denied her the opportunity to be evaluated on what she knew. Those were her exact words, seriously! :eek:
[/quote]

This reminds me of the time a girl in my orchestra had a meltdown during juries. She was playing a complicated violin concerto by memory and lost her place. Ole girl flung herself on the ground, curled up into a fetal position, and let out an animal howl. Then, when people came to her assistance, she shouted out at them and scurried to a corner, where she commenced to rocking back and forth for the rest of the hour.

White kids were more likely to wig out like this than the black kids. Even the best players among us were still “cool” about it.

By the way, Farnsworth Bentley was in my high school orchestra. He was the concert master while I was a lowly freshman (but we were in the same section…and sometimes he even noticed me!) All the girls–black, white, crazy, or cool–had a giant crush on him. We all thought he was “foine”. Funny how I think he’s more cute than fine now.

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[QUOTE=velvetjones]
I don’t think it’s just blacks that “code switch” and change the way they speak to suit their audience.

My husband is from Long Island and lived and worked in NYC for most of his adult life. When conducting business here in FL he speaks very plainly and with almost no trace of his Long Island accent but get him on the phone with his cousins, his kids or his parents and you’d almost not believe it’s the same person. Not just the accent but the inflection and the phrasing…it all changes.

I think anyone with a cultural identity does this to some extent if that cultural identity is not the mainstream.

Me? I’m a middle class white woman who was born in the midwest. I’ve got no cultural identity to switch to.
[/QUOTE]

You’re right; code-switching is not a race-specific behavior and actually quite common. I do think that a lot of people commenting on African-Americans feel that the vernacular should be wiped out and suppressed, though. Similar to Latinos and the “English Only” crap-legislation that spread across the country over the past decade… but that’s worse, I think.

As long as you give props to W. E. B. Du Bois for theorizing about dual natures, I’m quite happy. :wink:

monstro, are you for real? Wow, that’s ignorant. That really is losing one’s cool pose. Sad that she had that much pressure. And thanks for nothing for referencing that Fonzworth dude… I went to his web page and was aurally assaulted with his attempt to rap/sing. :stuck_out_tongue:

“Since I was nine…”

38

[QUOTE=monstro]
This reminds me of the time a girl in my orchestra had a meltdown during juries. She was playing a complicated violin concerto by memory and lost her place. Ole girl flung herself on the ground, curled up into a fetal position, and let out an animal howl. Then, when people came to her assistance, she shouted out at them and scurried to a corner, where she commenced to rocking back and forth for the rest of the hour.

White kids were more likely to wig out like this than the black kids. Even the best players among us were still “cool” about it.

By the way, Farnsworth Bentley was in my high school orchestra. He was the concert master while I was a lowly freshman (but we were in the same section…and sometimes he even noticed me!) All the girls–black, white, crazy, or cool–had a giant crush on him. We all thought he was “foine”. Funny how I think he’s more cute than fine now.

[/QUOTE]

North Atlanta High, [checks location]. Weird. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about orchestra or grad school, I was talking about 6th grade. If you’re in orchestra or grad school you’ve presumably progressed past any self-conciousness associatd with bucking the “coolness” of caring given that you’ve sacrificed to get there (i.e. you don’t have to be in orchestra or grad school and there are opportunity costs associated with each). Also, I don’t think we’re talking about the difference between Al Sharpton and Bryant Gumble. We’re talking about:

‘yeah man, you know how we do it, now, you know just, uh, yeah, uh, that’s how we roll dog, you know, dirty souf, man, you know what I mean’

I pretty sure Reverend Al doesn’t say “durrin” for doing, “chirrens” for children, “ficcuna” for fixing to, “skreet” for street.

FWIW, there is a definite poor (or poorly educated) southern white “vernacular” full of “sho nuff” “I ain’t bullshittin neither” and “I been knowing him” “I’s fixin to ast you sumpin”

I still think there is a larger economic component to this.

39

[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Yeech - you call it “reading one’s audience”, I call it talking down to people.
[/QUOTE]

I agree

40

[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
whole bean, I think the general things that I’ve observed are universals across race. Among the cool kids I’ve known in school, it’s fine to care about grades. It’s not fine to whine in class about them or appear to care too much. (Once in grad school a woman in my class had a meltdown because the prof canceled an assignment, which denied her the opportunity to be evaluated on what she knew. Those were her exact words, seriously! :eek:

[/QUOTE]

Grad school, sure. I am telling you that at an economically depressed public middle school in lower Alabama in the mid 1980s, it was not cool to do well in school. It was “cool” to skip class, smoke pot, have sex and steal bikes.