OK. I think that there is a tendency for Black school children to disparage academic achievement (more so than with white and Asian children.) I think this situation could be improved if more attention were paid to Black intellectual heroes. I think many education leaders play politics with their power. Liberal Black intellectuals are given prominence. Apolitical ones, like David Blackwell, are ignored. And, conservatives like Walter Williams are shunned.
december: I think that there is a tendency for Black school children to disparage academic achievement (more so than with white and Asian children.)
Cite?
Liberal Black intellectuals are given prominence. Apolitical ones, like David Blackwell, are ignored.
Cite? (And for gracious’ sake, remember, David Blackwell is a mathematician. How many mathematicians of any race or gender are widely familiar to the general public? That’s part of the reason why mathematicians and other technical specialists in general aren’t usually referred to as “intellectuals” in the same way that policy pundits like Sowell and Gates and Williams are; it’s not that they’re being ignored for being apolitical, it’s simply that the stuff they work on is mostly far over the heads of a general audience and they do not get paid for popularizing it, the way that newspaper columnists do.)
And, conservatives like Walter Williams are shunned.
You mean Walter Williams the economist at George Mason University? Gee, if I had a tenured position at GMU and a well-known institution like Hoover was publishing my books, I’d have a hard time describing myself as “shunned”. Could we have a somewhat clearer indication of what you mean by this, and once again, could we have a cite? These all sound like fine debate topics, december, but it’s not enough just to make provocative assertions—you have to back them up with evidence!
Kimstu, I don’t have time for a complete answer to your post right now.
Regarding the shunning of Williams. You’ve described his academic success. He also has a long-time syndicated column. He sometimes substitutes for Rush Limbaugh, when Rush is on vacation.
But, is he featured in the schools as an example of Black success? Are his books and columns promoted on MLK day or during Black History Month? My children have been out of school for a long time, so I can’t directly answer these question, but I have my guesses. I do know that the media ignores Williams and Sowell, except for non-liberals like Bill O’Reilly, Bob Grant, and Rush.
Can any posters confirm what’s going on in the schools regarding conservative and apolitical Black intellectual role models?
OK. I think that there is a tendency for Black school children to disparage academic achievement (more so than with white and Asian children.) **
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Nope. Not true. Smart kids get picked on, no matter what color they are.
There is a tendency in the U.S. to distrust intellectualism. I think that blacks do more to spotlight this distrust in themselves and expose it as the utmost in stupidity (more than one black comedian have whole routines based on the idiocy of devaluing intelligence.)
What happens to the smart black kids is that the stupid black kids call them “Oreos” while the smart white kids get called something non-race specific-- like “Poindexter.” (although I, personally was also told in high school-- by white person-- that I think I’m “Chinese”.)
That intelligence is seen as a “white” characteristic by both blacks and whites speaks volumes about our culture and its ideas of race.
But remember, folks, when the count of African-American intellectual role models comes out at nine liberals for every one conservative, it is NOT evidence of the Giant Liberal Media Conspiracy. Black Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic, after all, and the most reasonable explanation is that the political beliefs of black intellectual role models simply reflect the belief systems in which they were raised. Just like the Kennedys are all liberal Democrats, and rich kids from Highland Park are all conservative Republicans.
My women’s bookgroup has a number of teachers in it, and we just did African American children’s literature (maybe a year ago) and had a conversation on this. This actually came up discussing why “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is not taught anymore in one of our local districts - too political, too controversial, too liberal. It seemed that black role models in the schools they teach in are the same when I was a kid - George Washington Carver, MLK, Harriet Tubman. Add Nelson Mandela to the mix I got as a kid. Non controversial, historical role models. They don’t even do Jesse Jackson (this conversation happened before his most recent fall from grace), Thurgood Marshall, or Clarence Thomas – too political. And I live in the fairly liberal Twin Cities.
The two teachers I know what they teach are both Junior High age in public schools. Not an age for deep thought mathematicians, philosophers, or political commentators. Although (and this is complete speculation) I wouldn’t be surprised if they were watching the Gates PBS specials on African American history.
december: But, is [Walter Williams] featured in the schools as an example of Black success? Are his books and columns promoted on MLK day or during Black History Month? My children have been out of school for a long time, so I can’t directly answer these question, but I have my guesses.
@##*%$#&#@!!! 
This is Great Debates, december! Kindly take your “guesses” over to MPSIMS or IMHO, because we have no use for them here!
*I do know that the media ignores Williams and Sowell, except for non-liberals like Bill O’Reilly, Bob Grant, and Rush. *
Ciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite? Here is what Capitalism Magazine has to say about Williams’ presence in the media:
And Sowell, of course, is a nationally syndicated columnist whose writings have appeared in papers all over the country. How does this qualify as being “ignored by the media”? I swear, december, I will break you of this goddamned habit of saying you “know” something for which you don’t provide any hard evidence if it’s the last thing I do on earth.
Biggirl replied to december: *“I think that there is a tendency for Black school children to disparage academic achievement (more so than with white and Asian children.)”
Nope. Not true. Smart kids get picked on, no matter what color they are. *
Though december’s viewpoint is widely-accepted conventional wisdom (among whites, at least), and it is certainly true that some black kids taunt successful students with “acting white”, Biggirl seems to be correct that there’s little or no hard evidence to support the conclusion that this sort of disparagement of academics is more prevalent among blacks than among whites. This Brookings Institution report studied this very phenomenon using National Education Longitudinal Survey data to investigate whether
- African-American adolescents really do report greater alienation from school than non-Hispanic whites;
- academic success really does lead to social ostracism among black adolescents;
- the social costs or benefits of academic success really do differ by race.
And in each case, the data did not support the conclusion being examined. As Biggirl says, smart kids always get picked on by others; there are plenty of anti-achievement white kids who sneer at their better-performing fellow students for being a “brain” or a “nerd”, after all. There is no solid evidence that the effect of this is substantially different from the effect of anti-achievement black kids accusing their peers of “acting white.”
Mind you, I’m all in favor of increasing respect for academic achievement among blacks and everybody else, and I’m happy to see more attention given to black intellectual achievements. I just don’t think you’ve adequately supported your assertion that black kids in general really do disparage academic achievement more than whites, or that such disparagement affects black students’ success more than similar forms of disparagement affect white students’ success.
BTW about Thomas Sowell I should mention that he isn’t really well-regarded as a professional economist. He has only a few publications and that too in the unfashionable area of the history of economic thought (mostly on Marxism IIRC).
If you want a black economist who is both extremely proficient technically and also a thoughtful social commentator Glenn Loury is a good example.
This is an article by Krugman about Loury’s intellectual history. For a period of time Loury was a conservative. The story about how he was shunned by conservatives the moment he began to question the party line is extremely illuminating.
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/loury.html
Thanks for the cite, CP. Krugman is such an ideologue that I approached his article with trepidation. However, it’s well-written and makes a strong case for Loury. When Loury wrote, “Each agent begins life with a random innate endowment. Q is the endowment set, taken to be a subset of an arbitrary, finite dimensional Euclidean space,” was thinking mathematically, the way I do.
Are there particular readings of Loury’s that you recommend?
Thanks for the cite, CP. Krugman is such an ideologue that I approached his article with trepidation. However, it’s well-written and makes a strong case for Loury. When Loury wrote, “Each agent begins life with a random innate endowment. Q is the endowment set, taken to be a subset of an arbitrary, finite dimensional Euclidean space,” was thinking mathematically, the way I do.
Are there particular readings of Loury’s that you recommend?
december,
I haven’t read that much by Loury, just the odd commentary here and there.
No particular piece jumps out but this is a useful collection of his non-academic articles:
http://www.bu.edu/irsd/articles.htm
BTW I wouldn’t call Krugman an ideologue as such. He is first of all a top-notch professional economist. His criticisms of Bush policies are usually rooted in solid economics. He was equally harsh about some Clinton-era policy-makers like Robert Reich.
Biggirl, thanks for your response. I think we both agree thant it’s unhelathy to have a prevailing idea that intelligence is a “white” characteristic. I have a cousin, also a smart Black woman, whose 3 kids are all top students. She put her youngest into a private high school for a number of reasons, one of which related to a peer group view of intelligence as “white.”
I wonder if the problem has gotten worse. When I was at New Rochelle (NY) High School in the late 1950’s, we smart kids didn’t get picked on. Maybe other kids called us names behind our backs, but we didn’t care. We had our own clique, where we felt superior to them. And, our clique was racially integrated. E.g., one member of our group was Drew Days, now a prominent Law School Preofessor. He was US Solicitor General a few years ago. Another member was a popular Chinese-American girl, who was an elected Class officer.
Kimstu I appreciate your reponse. I will try to respond point by point, re-stating your points in bold face.
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@##*%$#&#@!!!
Relax. It’s just a message board. -
**various cites showing that Prof. Williams and Dr. Sowell are widely published and that Williams has been on such TV shows as Milton Friedman’s “Free To Choose,” William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line,” “Face The Nation,” “Nightline” and “Crossfire.” Thanks for the cites. They support my point. These two prominent thinkers do NOT appear or get quoted in the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times and very seldom on mainstream TV shows. Almost all of their media attention has come from conservatives.
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Thanks for the Brookings cite. I was forbidden from opening the specific article paper, but I have confidence that you accurately reported its conclusions.
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I apprecite your well-meaning offer to break me of the habit of saying I “know” something for which I don’t provide any hard evidence." And, in exchange, I offer to teach you logic.
You wrote, **"Brookings Institution report studied this very phenomenon using National Education Longitudinal Survey data to investigate whether
- African-American adolescents really do report greater alienation from school than non-Hispanic whites;
- academic success really does lead to social ostracism among black adolescents;
- the social costs or benefits of academic success really do differ by race.
And in each case, the data did not support the conclusion being examined." **
There’s quite a difference between “the data did not support the conclusion being examined” versus “the data contradicted the conclusion being examined.” The former wording says the conclusion might be true, but that particular study didn’t prove it. The second case says that their study indicated that the conclusion was false.
You made a leap when you wrote, "There is** no solid evidence** that the effect of this is substantially different from the effect of anti-achievement black kids accusing their peers of “acting white.” Actually, all you demonstrated was that one study hadn’t found such evidence.
And, repeating my point above, I think that, even ignoring peer pressure, harm is done to children who perceive that “…intelligence is seen as a “white” characteristic by both blacks and whites…”