Being an Asian American nerd is not going to get you called “white” amongst your peers. You might get get called a twinkie or a banana (Asian equivalent of oreo) if you dress a certain way (for girls, if you dress in a way that other people deem “slutty”), hang out with mostly white people, or otherwise behave like you are not particularly invested in being “Asian.” Nerds may get teased, but they’re not associated with being white.
Yes.
I think this is the answer, right here. You don’t get teased for being smart, you get teased for being a dork. In my experience, kids who aced everything and raised their hands for all the answers - even ones who had glasses! - did not get teased if they were also perceived as “cool,” a status including factors such as social confidence, good looks, athleticism, humor, edginess, or some combination of them. Kids who didn’t have any of these things, were “weird” in some outwardly noticeable way, and also lacked the confidence to stand up for themselves, got teased, sometimes (mostly joked about behind their backs, to be honest.)
My Dad was proud of having suceeded out of extreme poverty to successful business owner with kids who went to law, med and grad school. I even resented that I had no obstacles to overcome (in my young adulthood). But know that my Dad didn’t want to have the same obstacles to overcome that he had. Do your professional freinds want to have their kids exposed to the same challenges so that they too can enjoy overcoming them?
And clearly some cultures tease nerds with more uniformity and more viciousness than others. As a Jewish kid in a school with a sizable Jewish minority nerds were not often teased for being smart. For lots of other reasons but never for being smart. (Kids are generally teased for two reasons: they look or act different in some way, any way; and they react to teasing in someway that “amuses” the bully.) My father was clear that in his poor generation educational achievement was valued. He knew how to fight and did, but even his group of toughs respected the good students. The case for Asian Americans has just been made. Clearly there are different degrees of Poindexter antipathy in various subcultures, even at the same SES. Where does poor urban Black culture fall in that spectrum? I do not know. Probably less pervasively than mainstream media would portray it, but obviously more than some other subcultures.
Having had grown up as a poor, urban black; I have to disagree.
That is an outright lie. Wow. I am astonished that you just claimed that I changed my position. I am astonished because I actually have the *audacity * to consider myself something of a Black Myth Buster; so I am pretty clear about my stance on these matters.
Why would anyone in their right mind claim that this never, ever happens? That would make blacks completely different and alien to every other race and culture on the planet, if it never, ever happened.
I stated clearly from the beginning that I am railing against the myth that it is a staple of black culture! And that, by very definition, means that people are pretending that it happens more in black culture than in white culture, or any other.
Please never put you words in my mouth again. They taste bitter and disgusting.
Oh c’mon. The urban poor Black subculture has less anti-intellectualism than any other? I’m not claiming that it has more than average or less, just that it is somewhere on the spectrum, somewhere between the extreme painted by mainstream media and say, particular poor Asian immigrant communities. Now of course these are hard to quantify things but it is silly to say that all subcultures are the same. And it is just as presumptuous for you to claim knowledge of how another poor subculture treats its nerds as it would be for me to presume knowledge of how poor Black subculture treats its nerds.
At least I know that I don’t know.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Oh c’mon. The urban poor Black subculture has less anti-intellectualism than any other? QUOTE]
My apologies. I had promised myself that my passion for the topic would not prevent me from communicating clearly. I hate that I allow emotions to come into play.
What I meant to say was that as someone from poor, black America…I didn’t ever notice that we called it acting white when someone was smart or excelled in school. I never saw it happen. Not once. *Now, I know that it has happened. * But since I never saw it happen, I do not believe that it happens more with blacks than it would with whites or any other culture.
That is to say, I know that there are things about our very culture that is unique to black culture, (not exclusively unique. I realize I have to be super specific here.)
I know that there are things about our culture that is unique to us…but this “we don’t like you because you are smart. Stop actin’ white” thing is not an epidemic in our culture. Plain and simple. I deny the media myth that this is something that happens regularly.
If I ever said that I don’t think it happens at all, ever, not once to a black child ever; then I regret saying that.
I do not have first-hand experience with this particular term; my high school years were in the 70’s at a school that was about 50% black. In general the divisions were between those who performed well academically and those who did not, regardless of skin color or background. Those of us who excelled academically, black, white or whatever, were also bright enough to be uninterested in the opinions of poor performers.
I have only seen references to the “acting white” issue used in the mainstream media as an attempt to help provide explanation for the enormous gap between the academic performances of blacks and most other population groups, including asians and whites. There is a substantial interest in advancing explanations for this gap that do not involve any suggestion of inherent or inherited limitations in ability. It is in that spirit that this particular explanation is seized upon and promoted.
Are you deliberately missing the point?
Everyone here agrees that “acting white” is a far more hurtful insult than “nerd.” Nerd is so mild that I have heard many people describe themselves proudly as nerds. Nobody describes themselves proudly as a race traitor.
When kids get torn to shreds for using a big word they read in a book (their fault for accidentally letting it slip in, learning words is dangerous) in casual conversation or are too intimidated to raise their hand in class (their fault for being “eager”) or reveal that they care about homework and grades, that is a serious problem. And yes, it is a bigger problem for black students in large part because there is no comparably powerful race-neutral insult. Nobody is saying black people are inherently more anti-intellectual, but if their anti-intellectualism takes a much more vicious form then naturally it will be, and is, more prevalent. If one group ostracizes you from your own race, and the other just calls you a mild name like nerd, of course there is a difference in anti-intellectualism.
I am positive you are aware of the major differences, yet you continue to act as though “acting white” is the same thing as “nerd” or “dork.” They attack different things, with different levels of viciousness. They aren’t even close to the same thing, and I think you know that.
Alive, I promise you I have no idea what you are talking about right now. I don’t go around deliberately missing points.
I’m afraid I am unable to understand how anything that I said really relates to anything you just said.
I am just going to gracefully bow out now… because I do believe I am failing to communicate my point properly. I do still feel strongly about this. Maybe I need to brush up on how to express it better. Others here are a bit better at expressing the main point that I am trying to make, and I respect their posts a great deal. I think I will learn from them a bit before I even attempt to address this issue on this board again.
Well now, that’s a bunch of blame the victim poppycock, if you ask me. Do you think the children teasing my daughter were calling her “Professor Whitey” because she smoked a pipe and wore sweaters with leather patches at the elbow? No, she was called Professor Whitey because she was perceived as being smart.
But you are right about one thing-- the children who are perceived as stupid don’t get called ‘whitey’ when they get teased. Think about that.
Oh-- almost forgot.
My daughter did look at herself and question why she was getting teased. She came to the conclusion that it was because of her grades and did things to remedy the situation. The steps she used to try to fit in better with her peers was just as stupid and destructive as her peers’ teasing.
Just asa point of information: what was the rough proportion of black and white (and other) populations in her school or her class. (This relates to something posted earlier.)
According to this it’s 5% white, 59% black, 34% Hispanic and 3% Asian now. I don’t think it’s changed much in the 10 or so years since my children attended.
Too late to edit:
On further thought: My kids where in the gifted program where the classes were about 40% white, 40% black and 20% Hispanic.
What none of the Asians got in? 
Thoughts upon review of this thread:
The op’s claim that “acting White” does not mean exclusively being a good student seems justified, and pizzabrat’s and Nzinga’s protestation that anti-intellectualism is not a “staple” of urban poor Black culture, any moreso than in an average multigenerationally poor White community seems very likely true in the main. And the media’s implication that it is was the point of the op, I think.
And no one defends the use of the phrase, as if any subclass gets to decide what is authentically “Black” or especially the implication that “acting ghetto” would somehow be more truely “Black.”
Yet there is some anti-intellectualism and it greatly hurts when it occurs. And I’d suspect that it hurts smart poor Black kids differently than it hurts a smart poor White kid, especially when it gets lumped in with some racial implications. Hell, I’d suspect that it hurts well off Black kids differently than it hurts White kids.
Can those thoughts gain a consensus?
Just curious…were the kids who were teasing her in the gifted program?
It may have been that because she was seen associating with white kids, in addition to speaking differently and excelling academically, she became “white” in the bullies’ eyes. Take away the white peers and maybe she would have been labeled something else. Not excusing them, of course, but maybe that explains why she still continued to get teased even after her grades dropped.
Kids are stupid, though. All throughout seventh grade my nickname was Carol Burnette? Why? Because one day a classmate saw me scratch my lower back, and it reminded him of the cartoon janitor at the end of the Carol Burnette Show. And then when I ran for student council, my nickname became Hosea Williams, who was running for public office at that time (he was the very definition of “a fringe” candidate). So within the span of a year, I went from being a middle-aged white woman to an old black man. It’s frickin’ hilarious in retrospect, but at the time it really hurt.
No, this was happening at lunch and gym and not during class time.
The teasing my son endured just once at the hands of his family upset me, personally, far more than the teasing my daughter got at school. My son did not get teased at school-- at all. And he was (and is a proud nerd. He wears a t-shirt that shows a nerdy-type brandishing a lightsaber that says "Welcome to the Dorkside)
For the record: They are twins and went to the same class until middle school.
All I’m saying is that there could me more to it than that. It very well could be that she is called whitey for being smart. It could also have to do with other things, sorta like my niece. You and your daughter would be in a better position of knowing than I would. Since you said her grades didn’t seem to have anything to do with the name-calling, it’s not a forgone conclusion to me. That’s all. Not trying to “blame the victim” because even if she’s made fun of for talking like Steve Urkle, she’d still qualify as a victim.
Actually, I’ve seen stupid/average kids get their black cards revoked for acting in certain ways. It always seems to come back to their speech and slang and dress. When I said slow dorks get their own special insults, I was thinking more along the lines of “retard”. Nerdy dorks* get called “whitey”. Nerdy dorkishness =! smart.
Is it a problem that nerdy dorks get called white? Hell yes. Are blacks unique in making fun of nerdy dorks? No.
*Not that I think your daughter is a nerdy dork.
It’s always confused me why so many young (well with the exception of Al Sharpton who’s definitely old enough to know better) black people consider ebonics or AAVE (I’m guessing that’s African American Vernicular English?) to be “authentically black” or “being black”.
Please excuse my ignorance on this, but wouldn’t actual African or Jamaican etc., be the true “authentic” black language? Black people from my generation and my parent’s generation absolutely worshipped education. Again, I apologize for not understanding the cultural reasoning behind today’s youths’ insistance upon this type of speech, but how did this idea come into being? That is, that only ignorant poor english is “authentically black”?
My HS (70s) had a smallish number of black students. Not due to any snootiness or that it was hard to get into or anything, we just have a much smaller number of black people in Alaska per capita. Almost without fail those black students were the creme de la creme of the HS hierarchy. And not just in sports either, there were several eggheads (our name for nerdy smart types, but it was used across the board and was based upon their academics, not their skin color).
If education and proper english = bad and non-authentic ethnicity, wouldn’t that mean that all of us are not authentically who our respective races would have us be? That is, unless we make up our own jargon?