Even though I believe black people aren’t as anti-intellectual as the mic holders would like us to believe, I am still annoyed when black people call others out for “acting white”. This phenomona is not a myth. It happens too often and its detrimental as anti-intellectualism.
I also think that while “acting white” is not universally used as an anti-intellectual stance, it can easily be mistaken as such by young people–who try so hard to fit in. They may stay away from certain activities or interests not because people will tease them, but because they are afraid of being teased. They may be avoid going to certain schools not because they will be teased, but because they are afraid of being teased. They may go out of their way to be rude to authority figures not because they will be teased if they don’t, but because they are afraid that they will be.
Someone once said that the hallmark of white culture is conformity. I would say the same thing about black people. If you don’t dress “black”, talk “black”, or wear your hair “black”, then you risk getting called “white”. And it extends to ideological differences. If you aren’t Christian or Muslim (heaven forbid if you’re atheist), if you vote Republican, if you are gay or gay-friendly…you risk that stinging label. Sometimes when I find myself doing something different–like sloshing around in alligator waters with water mocassins staring at me through the bushes–I hear a sista-girl voice in the back of my mind going, “Now you know only white folks do shit like this! Who are you tryin’ to fool?”
Sometimes the insult is implied. “I don’t know how you grew up, but my people don’t do [whatever it is you’re doing]”. I received this comment from an undergrad assistant who was helping me with my graduate project. We later became friends, but there was no doubt what she was hinting at. I was "suspect"off the bat, because I wasn’t cool enough. Fortunately, I’m beyond the impressionable stage and confident enough in my racial identity to not let that kind of insult bother me, but I have to wonder about the effects of that thinking on young black kids trying to break the mold.
So while I think there’s serious overstatement of the phenomona, I don’t think it’s nonexistent enough to be called a “myth”. It’s not anti-intellectual, per se. It’s “anti-different”.
As I said, it’s one thing to argue that the phenomena is less common than some might imagine; it’s a very different thing to say, as you did, that it is a complete myth.
I don’t disagree with most of the rest of the post, although I don’t see where anyone is trying to “put the blame on the kids.” Nobody thinks kids would come up with this ex nihilo; to the extent that is does happen, it’s obviously something they learned from adults.
And as said to Pizzabrat, the distinction as to whether its “academic success” or “a way of carrying oneself” is pretty much moot if the latter leads to the former.
Right. Agreed. That is a universal thing. Most cultures have situations like that with their youth.
I maintain that there is a myth in the media that black people have a culture that is ‘anti-education’ and that children who are deemed smart are ostracised for ‘acting white’.
I rail against this myth strongly, because I believe it is not good for us. It is an ugly lie.
I always enjoy your posts very much. I am afraid I cannot be swayed on this aspect of it though…I am certain that there exists a misconception that it is common in black culture (more so than in other cultures) to put eachother down as ‘acting white’ when we excell in school.
I maintain that this is* indeed * a misconception.
I will not beat a dead horse by repeating myself anymore. I apologize for being so repetitive already. It is just that dispelling myths about the black community has become a passion for me…it has dominated the poetry that I teach the children in my poetry group…because I am deathly afraid that the children will begin to buy the propaganda as I did. And that will be a very bad thing.
That’s really rotten of them to make your son cry. I’d have LOVED to have seen you go all medieval on their asses. People who bully kids-especially adults who should freaking know better-that’s unforgivable.
I’ve always seen “acting white” as a really hideous insult, when you think about it. It’s implying that being black means being ignorant, and well, stupid in some cases. And that’s racist-no matter who’s saying it.
Now, I’m white, so I don’t know if I’m off or not, but that’s how it always it came off to me.
And on a lighter note, change the expression from “where you at” to “where yinz at?” and you’re speaking Pittsburghese!
I doubt that there’s more anti-intellectualism or anti-educationalism or whatever in the vast majority of black subcultures than there is in the vast majority of white ones. I know that as a dorky white kid in mostly-white schools, I routinely got teased about being a “brain”, a “nerd”, a “teacher’s pet”, etc. I wasn’t complimented for getting answers right or getting good grades, but for the (very occasional) times when I blew off homework, broke rules, or sassed a teacher. Being smart and academically serious was not considered an admirable quality among my white peers (although to be fair, it was tolerated more willingly in kids who were less congenitally dorky than I was).
So if some black kids also put their classmates down for doing well in school, that doesn’t necessarily mean that blacks in general are more anti-intellectual than whites in general. Even if their disparaging name for doing well in school is “acting white”, that doesn’t mean that blacks in general are more anti-intellectual than whites.
It only means that those black students who use “acting white” as a term of contempt for their academically-successful black peers underestimate the anti-intellectualism of white people. Trust me, those white peers of mine didn’t feel that their racial background gave them any kind of a reason to care about school or to strive for good grades; on the contrary, they would have been downright insulted if it had been suggested to them that such behavior was a natural part of being white.
In fact, I think many white adults actually enjoy tut-tutting about the “acting white” thing, precisely because it allows them to believe that whites overall have more respect for education than blacks do (“because the black kids themselves acknowledge that respect for education is a ‘white’ thing, see, so it must be so!”). Those people obviously never met my white classmates.
I have to disagree completely with the OP. The word “dorky” does not even come close to expressing the same thing as “acting white.” Calling someone a dork does not challenge their racial authenticity. “Acting white” is a very different insult both in kind and in extremity. No comparison.
Also, I don’t think there is a media consensus that “acting white” specifically means “academic success.” The media does portray it as generally anti-intellectual… and it is. There are more ways to be anti-intellectual than hacking into the school computers to find everybody’s grades, then insulting the ones with the highest grades. Insulting people who use a wider vocabulary is anti-intellectual (God forbid someone accidentally uses a word they learned reading a book in casual conversation). Insulting people who are willing to occasionally raise their hand in class is anti-intellectual (as is portraying all such people as “eager”). Insulting people who spend time studying and care about their grades is anti-intellectual. “Acting white”, as an insult, is indeed highly anti-intellectual and nothing close to calling someone “dorky.”
Biggirl, as the prototypic ignorant White Boy, I have to chime in in that Nzinga has a point. Of course when you see it slap those committing the crime down hard. And make sure that people like me don’t believe (as I had to no small degree before this thread) that there is a pervasive anti-intellectualism within poor urban Black culture that is not present in other similar economic groups so long as that is the case.
Still I have to admit that I do see some evidence of some anti-intellectualism in my small and anecdotal personal experience that is hard for me to completely dismiss. My community is mixed. There are a sizable minority of professional class Black families and a larger contigency of lower SES Black families and a mix of middle to professional class White families. Grade schools are fairly segregated by SES and the kids of the the professional class Black parents are in with a lot of middle to professional class White kids. At Middle School and High School levels they all go to school together. In short the professional class Black parent are universally scared by the fact that their kids will be put into that mix, (especially for their boys). Their fear is that the lower SES Black kids will play that “acting White” card and that their kids will be afraid to continue to achieve, will try to fit in with lower achieving kids who look like them. Many a neighbor has refused to send their intelligent high achieving Black children to the High School for exactly that reason and instead pull out to a private school (and then to Brown and better).
Is this just a local phenomenum or a function of SES alone? Or have they subscribed to a myth themselves?
In conversations with the owner a local Black barbershop (a very intellectual and civically active man) about this very subject he states clearly that he would make sure that no one was looking when he turned in his homework as a kid. Was his personal perception false? Or atypical?
Very seriously I ask, is there any degree of an internalizatiion of diminished expectations within the urban Black culture more so than for other subcultures of similar SES? Or is it all a myth? And if it is a myth why has it become so widely held even by professional class Blacks (at least those that I personally know)?
Please note that I was a nerd wannabe hanging out on the fringes of the ubernerds who were not complimented for getting the right answers or good grades but admired for knowing it all. Including baseball stats and Bob Dylan lyrics. Yeah we drooled over that first calculator that used reverse Polish notation! I just wasn’t in their league.
If “acting white” is special and unique in its anti-intellectualism then why do race-neutral words like “nerd” and “geek” even exist? Blacks don’t hold a patent on ridiculing bookishness and social nonconformity, but that’s what overemphasizing the “acting white” phenomenon would lead one to believe.
I think another issue is class. The lower your SES, the more apt you are to use “nerd” and “acting white” as an insult. If your kid goes to a school that has a significant chunk of low income kids, then you’ll probably see a lot more of those kinds of taunts, regardless of race. It’s probable that middle-class black kids are more likely to share classrooms with their lower-class counterparts, than middle-class white kids are. That sets them up for more ridicule. So bookish black kids get teased more often than white kids, but only because they are more likely to be surrounded by poorer kids.
And that’s why America’s focus on race to the exclusion of everything else makes people seem more different than what they really are. Anti-intellectualism is rampant in the poor. There are proportionately more poor blacks than poor whites. So what is actually a class issue appears to be ethnic, but only because are eyes are trained to see race before class.
Do you ever feel like you are in the middle of two different wars with the same name?
One the one hand is, for wont of a better phrase, the world. The world constantly tells black folk that they are dumb, criminal, lazy, profane, overly sexualized. . . ad nauseum. Even worse, they like to imply that it is something inherent in black people that makes them this way. This, of course, is horseshit. Blacks are no more or less inherently dumb, criminal, lazy or sexualized than other human of any color.
On the gripping hand there are black folk. The ones who want to excuse stupid behavior by claiming the behavior doesn’t really happen or that it isn’t our fault we engage in stupid behavior or sssshhhhh! Don’t let whitey know about what we do!.
I fight both sides of this war with equal enthusiasm.
Dseid, I can only speak for the professional class blacks that I know…but a lot of the ones I know I think rather enjoy the idea that they had to overcome attacks by their peers and still they persevered. They don’t see the myth as something that they need to rail against. The myth paints those that succeed as ones that “somehow were able to escape the crab in the bucket syndrome that those self-loathing blacks struggle with”.
And I want to be clear about something, because despite my true desire to be very plain about it, I still seem to be misunderstood.
I am not saying it doesn’t happen. Every single person who has seen it happen with their very own eyes can stop telling me that now. I know. I know you have seen it with you eyes. I don’t doubt you. I have seen all sorts of horrible behavior by black people…unspeakable stuff that we sure do have to work on. I haven’t witnessed this “I call you white actin’ cause you are smart” stuff, but I have seen worse.
For everyone who has seen it happen with their own eyes, I don’t doubt you.
The myth that I feel desparately needs debunking is the myth that it is a staple of black culture that happens in the black community more so than in any other community. I know that every culture has its nerds that are teased for being so. I don’t dispute that.
And, of course, calling someone a nerd challenges their very racial authenticity and ostracizes them from their race.
You must be thinking of some definition of “nerd” I am unaware of.
Where I’m from, “nerd” is a very mild insult, and people will even call themselves nerds somewhat proudly. After all, the “nerds” are the ones the rest of us will probably be asking for jobs someday.
When is the last time you heard a black student describe themself proudly as being a race traitor?
“Acting white” is a vastly more hurtful insult, attacking racial identity, which “nerd” does not, and that alone makes it a much stronger force for anti-intellectualism. There really isn’t a similarly powerful racially-neutral insult that could be used to discourage academic success.
The myth that needs to be debunked is that there is anything wrong with, for example, learning a wide vocabulary or raising your hand in class.
Even in the OP, describing the “eagerness” to raise one’s hand gave a very bad vibe.
Why can’t a black student raise their hand simply because it is part of the class and they want to participate and learn? Do you necessarily have to present them as sitting there eager to show off? I think presenting them like that is part of the problem, and almost is an attempt to justify insulting them.
It is not a nice thing to claim someone is acting white. I have no idea what I wrote that makes you think that I think it is ok to challenge anyone’s racial authenticity and ostracize them from their race. I am seriously scratching my head over that.
It is true that people at my school did get told they were “acting white” sometimes. Usually it was a style of speech, (not proper English, just a certain style), or wearing their clothing “too tight” in the minds of black kids that favored a style of baggier clothing. There were other things that would get someone called ‘acting white’ too. Academic success was not one of those things. Plenty of cool ass kids were smart, and they didn’t get called “whitey”.
The ones who did say that certain kids were “acting white” were wrong for saying that. Completely wrong for saying that at all. But I never noticed that they said it because the children were smart.
I don’t see anyone is this thread doing that, to be honest. The point of the OP is not to say that anti-intellectualism doesn’t exist in the black community. It’s to challenge the meme that blacks are extra special in that regard because they happen to call nerds and geeks (or dorks, if you prefer) “whitey”. This name-calling is harmful and wrong and should not be excused, and no one is saying otherwise.
I do see somebody who tried to do exactly this in this thread, namely Nzinga. He/she (sorry) has since changed from “It’s a myth that black people do this” to “It’s a myth that black people do this more often than white people.”
Nzinga even went so far as to say that when this very thing happened to my daughter, I should have questioned my daughter about how she relates to black people-- as if it was my daughter’s fault for falling for the myth that doesn’t ever really happen.
I’m confused, though. Didn’t you say her grades appeared to be unrelated to the flak she took from her peers? Wouldn’t that suggest that it wasn’t so much her intelligence that was painting a bullseye on her back, but something else?
My niece has been accused of “acting white”, too. She’s a good student who gets excellent grades and is not the type to hold back in class, and it would be easy to think that this is why she gets teased sometimes. But honestly I don’t think that’s why she gets called “whitey”. I think it’s because she speaks differently (and not necessarily better) than the other kids. She has the habit of talking fast, saying “like” a lot, and exclaiming ohmygod! at the drop of a dime. To hear her speak without seeing her, you’d think she was the stereotypical white teenybopper who dances like Carlton on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it does make her different. It would be inaccurate to say that the only thing that sets her apart from her tormenters is her dedication to good grades and subject-verb agreement.
Not that this has to be the case with your daughter, Biggirl, but I think what happens a lot of time is that people attribute the reasons they got teased to good attributes (like intelligence) because it’s more painful or more difficult to think other factors are behind their ostracism. Kind of like the “le sigh, they hate me because I’m beautiful” syndrome. Yes, a lot of time the smart kid gets picked on because he is smart and likes “smart” things. But a lot of time, the smart kids gets picked on because he doesn’t know how to blend in with the rest of the hoi polloi. It happens to slow kids, too. They just don’t get called “whitey”. They get their own special insults.
