5 ms·

I'd agree that the US school system is not be the primary reason for education problems among blacks, but neither is the "extreme anti-education element." This

• endtime 16y ago
  Why do black people need their role models to be black? Plenty of white kids in my day looked up to Michael Jordan as an incredibly hardworking athlete. The "acting white" derision is pretty much exclusive to blacks, as far as I know. It's certainly not present among Asians or white people. I'm actually not sure about Hispanics but I've never heard of education being frowned upon by them. I don't know what you mean by "that's too easy", but I've heard it cited as the main problem in socio studies, by people like Bill Cosby, and in firsthand accounts in things like reddit AMAs.
  • roc 16y ago
    "Acting white" is a black concept by definition. But poor whites absolutely do have an analogous cultural stigma: the concept of 'showing up' your parents/family/friends by doing better than them. You may have also heard this expressed as 'thinking they're better', general discouragement of learning, some uses of 'putting on airs', etc. As for role models, it's more important for minorities to see people like themselves in those roles, strictly because culture is otherwise telling them there are things they cannot and/or are not allowed to do, because of who they are. It's not that a would-be black scientist needs a black scientist to be inspired to pursue science. Nor a would-be gay politician needs a gay politician to be inspired to pursue public service. It's that a would-be black scientist or gay politician benefits from seeing anyone like themselves doing what they want to do, so they can know our culture is full of shit when it says they can't. It's far, far easier for a child to believe the lies and be discouraged from a challenging path if there is no evidence out there to disprove what the culture is telling them.
    • endtime 16y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't trying to play semantics with the phrase "acting white" - I've never heard of the whole "showing up" thing. I'm surprised to learn of it. That, uh, sucks. The only similar meme in my memepool is rural people feeling a bit miffed/abandoned by relatives or friends who move to a big city, but I didn't get the impression that this had to do with money or education.
    • sidek 16y ago
      The tall stake gets hammered down. Happens in every culture.
    • alexqgb 16y ago
      In Australia, this is known as the 'Tall Poppy Theory'. The idea is that the tall poppy is the first one to get cut. Staying alive means staying at the exact same level as everyone else. It's an awful pattern, but is hardly restricted to one cultural or racial milieu. Class systems everywhere are predicated on the same basic idea: you're supposed to know your place, and you're not supposed to forget it.
  • airfoil 16y ago
    >Why do black people need their role models to be black? Plenty of white kids in my day looked up to Michael Jordan as an incredibly hardworking athlete. I didn't mean to say that their role models should only be black. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. For a black kid, I think the impact of seeing someone who's black and successful is huge. Think about the numbers of black kids who started playing golf because of Tiger Woods. Like I said, it's hard to quantify but it makes a difference. >The "acting white" derision is pretty much exclusive to blacks, as far as I know. It's certainly not present among Asians or white people. I'm actually not sure about Hispanics but I've never heard of education being frowned upon by them. I don't know what you mean by "that's too easy", but I've heard it cited as the main problem in socio studies, by people like Bill Cosby, and in firsthand accounts in things like reddit AMAs. The "acting white" derision most certainly exists in other minorities besides blacks. I've seen in it first hand in in some form or another. I'd contend that the "acting white" derision and the "extreme anti-education" sentiment are not necessarily the same thing.
  • smallblacksun 16y ago
    It exists in some Native American groups as well, where people who "act white" are called Apples (red on the outside, white on the inside), similar to how blacks who "act white" are called Oreos. Sadly, both groups often find it easier and more attractive to blame racism for all their problems than to actually consider that there culture is part of the problem.
    • endtime 16y ago
      Ah, I didn't know that and that is unfortunate. I've never really met any Native Americans or otherwise been exposed to their modern culture. I've heard an Asian friend jokingly refer to herself as a banana (yellow outside, white inside) but I got the impression that this was not a serious/pervasive thing in the same way as the Oreo slur. If the "apple" thing is that serious then that's very unfortunate.
      • Anechoic 16y ago
        serious/pervasive thing in the same way as the Oreo slur I don't know that "Oreo" is a pervasive slur. I've certainly never heard it IRL.
        • smallblacksun 16y ago
          I don't know if it is pervasive, but it certainly exists: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/nov/1/20051101-104932-4054r/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/nov/1/20051101-1049...
          • Anechoic 16y ago
            Oh, I'm not that it exists but the assertion was that the use of "oreo" was pervasive - I'm not convinced of that given thadisputingt I've never heard anyone use that term in real life.
            • yummyfajitas 16y ago
  • Anechoic 16y ago
    The "acting white" derision is pretty much exclusive to blacks, as far as I know "Acting white" by definition isn't going to be present among whites, but anti-intellectiolism certainly is. See: GOP 2008 presidential campaign. It's certainly not present among Asians You've never heard the insult "banana"?
    • endtime 16y ago
      Yeah, I actually have (though I didn't think of it when I wrote my previous comment). But I've heard it only in a joking fashion. And certainly not to do with education or success - more often to do with food or cartoon preferences than anything else, I think.
• ez77 16y ago
  How many blacks do you see out front in the most successful companies? The son of a black man who abandoned his child is running the country. That should be a start. Obama, for that matter, lacked a significant role model (i.e., his father) altogether. Fortunately, he told the NAACP to make up 'no excuses' [1]. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/us/politics/17obama.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/us/politics/17obama.html
• chaostheory 16y ago
  John Ogbu, a Nigerian-American anthropologist, conducted research on this subject. http://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Suburb/dp/080584516X http://www.amazon.com/Black-American-Students-Affluent-Subur... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/arts/why-are-black-students-lagging.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/arts/why-are-black-student... "No matter how you reform schools, it's not going to solve the problem," he said in an interview. "There are two parts of the problem, society and schools on one hand and the black community on the other hand." Professor Ogbu's latest conclusions are highlighted in a study of blacks in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent Cleveland suburb whose school district is equally divided between blacks and whites. As in many racially integrated school districts, the black students have lagged behind whites in grade-point averages, test scores and placement in high-level classes. Professor Ogbu was invited by black parents in 1997 to examine the district's 5,000 students to figure out why. "What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents; they don't know how their parents made it," Professor Ogbu said in an interview. "They are looking at rappers in ghettos as their role models, they are looking at entertainers. The parents work two jobs, three jobs, to give their children everything, but they are not guiding their children." For example, he said that middle-class black parents in general spent no more time on homework or tracking their children's schooling than poor white parents. And he said that while black students talked in detail about what efforts were needed to get an A and about their desire to achieve, too many nonetheless failed to put forth that effort. Those kinds of attitudes reflect a long history of adapting to oppression and stymied opportunities, said Professor Ogbu, a Nigerian immigrant who has written that involuntary black immigrants behave like low-status minorities in other societies. Not surprisingly, he said, the parents were disappointed when he turned the spotlight on them as well as the schools. Peggy Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Shaker Heights City School District, said that minority families cared deeply about their children's academic achievement and the district was working with education experts to reduce the racial achievement gap. She noted that while Professor Ogbu called most of the black families in the district middle class, 10 to 12 percent live in poverty.
  • Anechoic 16y ago
    John Ogbu, a Nigerian-American anthropologist, conducted research on this subject. And no one was able to replicate his findings. Even Roland Fryer, who is a proponent of the "acting white" theory concluded "We, like Ferguson (2001), Cook and Ludwig (1997), and Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey (1998), find scant empirical support for the oppositional culture hypothesis described in Fordham and Ogbu" in http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Empiriccal%2Banalysis%2Bof%2B%2527acting%2Bwhite%2527_final%2Bmanuscript.pdf http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Empiric...