is mainly a phenomenon found in a sub-culture of black America. You only have to watch prime-time television to know that phenomenon is common amongst many dem

is mainly a phenomenon found in a sub-culture of black America. You only have to watch prime-time television to know that phenomenon is common amongst many demographics. Anyone who has been immersed in an African-American community for any length of time can tell you this. I'm black. I went to an upper-class mostly-white private school, and there was some pressure to "fail" but it came from both whites and blacks. One the other hand, my peers who went to the local inner city high schools found extremely supportive environments, so much so that I really regret that my parents sent me to the private school. The typical insult among school-children is "acting white" or "Oreo" It might be "typical" yet I never heard anyone say it out loud IRL. However terms like "nerd," "geek," "dweeb" etc were common occurrences IME. And it wasn't coming from black kids. it is widespread enough to warrant heavy discussion within the mainstream black community. Heavy discussion is not academic rigor. It's been studied by a lot of people (not just Ogbu) and as might be expected, the results are complicated. Quoting from an older post of mine: Tyson et al found that reduced academic achievement was generally for a variety of reasons ("fear of not doing well academically" being the biggest) and not "acting white": http://www.tc.columbia.edu/students/see/events/Darity_et_al_Understanding_Burden_Acting_White.pdf http://www.tc.columbia.edu/students/see/events/Darity_et_al_... Cook and Ludwig as well found that "acting white" was not much of a factor in academic perforamnce: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-6688%28199721%2916:2%3C256::AID-PAM4%3E3.0.CO;2-H/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-66... I had quoted from two other papers by Erika White and Roland Fryer (who is a proponent of the "acting white" hypothesis but had to adjust his definition to show any trends) but those links are dead now.