Are black students really afraid of 'acting white'?

Okay, so black kids bully other black kids equally as whites with taunting names like "brainiac," "nerd," "geek,". What's the point? Black folks are so far behind that our children ought to be brought up to RESPECT not denigrate what used to be grounds for denial and even death; an education. What an ignorant piece of tripe this article is.

Give me a break, at these bad schools in the inner city, I doubt if anyone is called 'acting white" that is one played out theory. Now its everyone of all races 'acting black.' And, to keep it real, the educators of these children come in with stereotypes that black kids can't learn and are 'acting black' when they can't teach them. Being poor is only part of the issue. The only thing that is going to change education is better schools that are funded equally, and, the low expectations of black boys in particular dealt with. And, parents need to be involved from day one. It has nothing to do with 'acting white' it has to be doing the right thing for all kids, no matter the race, since getting a good education should have no labels and certainly not one with race attached to it.

Yawn, When I was in high school I was one of the only black students in all the Honors and AP classes. And you know what? It wasnt about acting white. It was about outshining white kids every chance I had and I did. If anything I knew I was "acting" just as black as I wanted to and that was super intelligent. Please acting white? If anything they were trying to act like me. And now that I attend an HBCU "acting white" is a concept that never even crosses my mind. Striving for academic excellence is not a tribute of one race or ethnicity buddy. PS: Go to most schools all of the smart kids are the COOL kids. Being a geek or a nerd is def not a liability these days. When everyone is trying to get in the top college of their choice.

excellent column sir! any teacher will tell you that MOST students of ALL races are anti-intellectual and underachieving...it is only the racist media that paint toxic students as exclusively black all american "students" are global jokes! and NCLB has dumbed down all students even further... thanks for debunking this racist myth! peace ab

Algernon, your article is a very good read. I much enjoy your sharing thoughts with readers. I will add some thoughts for you and will disagree with one point you make. Improving our peoples' average educational level and improving the quality of our educational system is an extremely complex task. We should not attempt to address specific issues rather we should attempt to address a myriad of issues. As a public school teacher and an English professor for many years, I can add some brief issues for you, keeping in mind I am only writing about a handful of issues out of my myriad of issues. Enjoying pre-school attendance, as you hint, is very critical. Providing a pre-school experience for a child makes a dramatic difference. Those kids who attend pre-school always, literally always perform much better in school. Your words, "...black-white achievement gap exists prior to first-grade...." are quite true but not quite accurate. Yes, there are gaps exhibited per ethnic background but more important is a gap in school performance between those children who attended pre-school and those who did not. Children who attend pre-school always do better regardless of culture. Your point is very important; once a child is behind at an early age, always behind from childhood to adulthood. Parental involvement is highly critical. Education begins at home, not at school. My experience is a large majority of parents are not willing or not able to participate in a child’s education. In more cases, though, parents are simply not willing to take part in a child’s education. During my teaching career, I developed a bad attitude, was always angry with so many parents unwilling to meet with me, unwilling to help me develop effective individual lesson plans for their children. My parent-teacher conference requests were almost always ignored by parents. Funding is laughable. Most teachers spend ten percent to twenty percent of their paychecks to buy school supplies for their students. As you know, teachers are sorely underpaid. A good chunk of my paycheck went to pencils, paper, copy supplies, even books. During my last ten years of teaching I only enjoyed about twenty-five books to service four to five classes. Students can no longer take school books home. Twenty-five books on the average and some of my classes averaged forty students per class. Obvious problem, yes? Shoot, I had to pay five cents per page for copying material for students. I ended up buying a refurbished old fashion “blue ink” ditto machine so I could afford to make copies of material for students to take home and keep. When a budget crunch, such as today, what is the first budget slashed? Education. Administrators are not friends to education. For each class, I would spend one-fourth of my class time taking care of administrative business. I had to take roll to be sure our school received money based on head count, had to give students “principal messages” to take home, had to read whatever announcements, then tackle a stack of paperwork from administration, nurse’s office, from counseling, on and on. The administration end of our schools is very hostile to teachers. Administers are thought to be traitors, thought to have gone over to the dark side. Administrators have absolutely no business being in a classroom; they are not teachers. Discipline is another critical problem. There was a day we could discipline students. Today, we are not allowed to even raise a voice to children, much less touch a student. Know what happens when a teacher sees a student fight? Teachers turn a blind eye and walk in different direction for fear of being sued because of touching students to break up a fight. Another fourth of classroom time is lost to discipline, better, a legally mandated lack of discipline. A majority of administrators, this is, a principal or a vice-principal, will refuse to support teacher discipline efforts for the same reason; fear of being sued. I could tell you horror stories about being brought before a school board, even being sued, for my working at effective firm but fair discipline. Home environment is a big issue. Today, so many dysfunctional families, so much alcoholism, so much abuse. The moment a child is born to this type of family, this child does not stand a chance in life, this child is forever damaged by a lack of a good loving family life. Algernon, I could continue listing literally thousands of issues like this which effect all children regardless of ethnic background. However, I will move to some issues important to your black community. During the latter years of my teaching career, I moved over to a district which was quickly growing through an influx of mostly black people from the Los Angeles region. These were people looking to escape urban strive of inner-city Los Angeles. My new district was a mix of suburban and rural which is a lifestyle quite alien to a previous urban lifestyle. Parents intended to escape from problems but ended up bringing problems with them. Teachers were overwhelmed with this new class of peoples; we did not well know how to deal with urban issues being so removed. Parents and students coming in from Los Angeles, soon created the same problems from which they wished to escape. Being candid, new arrivals could not shake off the behaviors learned while living within inner-city regions of Los Angeles. These are some points I learned from this inner-city influx. Black students who did not do well, tended to move into the rap-gangster type of behavior. Hispanic students who did not do well moved into the street gang type of behavior. White students who did not do well moved into the rock&roll-drug type of behavior. Point here is new arrivals who failed in school, fell back to learned behaviors of inner-city life; parents failed to provide good role models, failed to shield children from bad street behaviors. Those students who were successful, those who could adapt to a new lifestyle, well, you could look at grade books, look at essays, look at discipline records, and you could not spot any differences based on ethnic background. All students who did well all behaved much the same, no differences worthy of mention are found. Academic achievement is not based in ethnicity. All children are equally capable. Our problems are tied to living environment and tied to home environment. Our problems are tied to values taught or lack of values taught to children by parents. Algernon, I could drop a black kid, a Hispanic kid, an Asian kid, a white kid, drop any “color” of kid into a rough and disadvantaged inner-city lifestyle and all would suffer the same negative effects and all would turn out about the same. Ethnicity is not an issue in education. Environment is the issue. My disagreement with you, on a single point, is effecting a civil rights movement to better the lives of black children. I understand you represent Black America and I sincerely appreciate this. Nonetheless, we should not address a single ethnic group, we should address all of our American children. Our education system is broken, we need to fix our education system for all of our children. This is the only viable approach to resolution of these problems in education and these challenges which confront all children. We can begin to fix our education system by first solving poverty. The environment in which our children live is the most critical factor in education. We must solve poverty, we must educate parents, we must improve home life for all children, not just the few. We must break this generational cycle, break this hand-me-down poverty and ignorance cycle. Only after we defeat poverty and defeat bad living conditions, can we address problems in our educational system. We are not born racist, we are not born hateful, we are not born criminal, we are taught those notions by our parents. We must break this generational cycle of “hand-me-down” lifestyles. I much enjoy reading your articles, Algernon. Please keep contributing. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

What is "acting white"? This is the 21st Century. Please join us at your leisure.