The Study of Racialism

Guilt Trip
John McWhorter June 24, 2010 | 12:00 am

Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation
by Stuart Buck
JOHN MCWHORTER on THE "ACTING WHITE" CHARGE AGAINST AFRICAN-AMERICANS

In 2000, in a book called Losing the Race, I argued that much of the reason for the gap between the grades and test scores of black students and white students was that black teens often equated doing well in school with “acting white.” I knew that a book which did not focus on racism’s role in this problem would attract bitter criticism. I was hardly surprised to be called a “sell-out” and “not really black” because I grew up middle class and thus had no understanding of black culture. But one of the few criticisms that I had not anticipated was that the “acting white” slam did not even exist.

I was hardly the first to bring up the “acting white” problem. An early description of the phenomenon comes from a paper by John Ogbu and Signithia Fordham in 1986, and their work was less a revelation of the counterintuitive than an airing of dirty laundry. You cannot grow up black in America and avoid the “acting white” notion, unless you by chance grow up around only white kids. Yet in the wake of Losing the Race, a leading scholar/activist on minority education insisted that he had never encountered the “acting white” slander—while shortly thereafter describing his own son doing poorly in school because of precisely what Ogbu, Fordham, myself, and others had written about. Jack White, formerly of Time, roasted me in a review for making up the notion out of whole cloth. Ogbu (with Astrid Davis) published an ethnological survey of Shaker Heights, Ohio describing the “acting white” problem’s effects there in detail, while a documentary on race and education in that town explicitly showed black students attesting to it. Both book and documentary have largely been ignored by the usual suspects.

Stuart Buck at last brings together all of the relevant evidence and puts paid to two myths. The first is that the “acting white” charge is a fiction or just pointless marginal static. The other slain myth, equally important, is that black kids reject school as alien out of some sort of ingrained stupidity; the fear of this conclusion lies at the root of the studious dismissal of the issue by so many black thinkers concerned about black children. Buck conclusively argues that the phenomenon is a recent and understandable outgrowth of a particular facet of black people’s unusual social history in America—and that facet is neither slavery nor Jim Crow.

As Buck notes, anecdotal accounts from blacks attacked for thinking they are “white” now constitute a crushing volume of testimony in countless newspaper articles over decades (as well as in the hundreds of unsolicited attestations I have received since Losing the Race). As Buck acknowledges, the plural of anecdote is not data, and yet we can be assured that certain parties would consider much less than this volume of testimonies of racist “slights” as invaluable evidence that America remains a deeply racist country.

Yet, over the past several years, a few academic studies have claimed that the “acting white” notion is a hoax, on the basis of the fact that black students who do well in school self-report being as popular as other black students. That is, apparently, they are not being rejected as “thinking they are white.” In that vein, one can only wonder what the people who wrote the studies against the importance of the “acting white” charge would think of studies “demonstrating” that Tea Partiers are not racist by simply asking them whether they think black people are inferior. In any case, the Harvard economist Roland Fryer has shown that when ninety-thousand students’social lives were analyzed according to friend networks, high-achieving black students have many fewer friends on average than high-achieving students of other colors.

Buck’s book gathers what I suspect is almost every relevant description or treatment of the “acting white” charge. No one could come away from his discussion believing that the issue is fictional or even unimportant. There is no other conceivable black problem for which such a weight of personal reportage and sober analysis over decades would be dismissed as an illusion. Any further such claims must now be judged as based at best on ignorance of the existence of Buck’s book, and at worst on a studious refusal to engage with it.

Why, though, do so many sane people treat any identification of this painfully obvious problem as if it were a moral outrage? The resistance is based on a tolerated cognitive dissonance: black kids telling each other to fail has no significant effect on performance, but the occasional racist “slight,” no matter how questionable or abstract, must be psychologically damaging enough to justify racial preferences in college admissions even for the children of PhDs. This is not necessarily a matter of being addicted to the victim complex. People of this frame of mind often worry that if the Establishment gets too comfortable with thinking that black students call each other “white” for liking school, then efforts to close the black-white score gap will be discontinued, and people may start believing that black students are just too dumb to be worth any further effort.

Buck’s historical chronicle demonstrates that the “acting white” charge dates only as far back as the 1960s, which is much too recent to qualify as a demonstration of blacks’ intelligence level or as an indication that black American culture has been opposed to “book learning” for the four hundred years of its existence. I even sense from the testimonials I have received that if one particular year could be pegged as the time in which “You think you’re white making those grades?” “tipped” as a community commonplace, it would be 1966—perhaps because this was the year that “black power” ideology went mainstream in the black community. Buck pulls back the camera and documents how we got from Brown v. the Board of Education to “acting white” just twelve years later.

Traditionally, anti-intellectualism was distributed in black American culture precisely the way it was distributed in general American culture, imputed partly to class and partly to individuality. During and after the Civil War, blacks were starved for education, and the idea that loving to learn was “white” was unknown. As the chaplain of a black Civil War regiment recounted, “A majority of the men seem to regard their books as an indispensable portion of their equipments, and the cartridge box and spelling book are attached to the same belt.” One Alabama observer recounted a rally to raise money for a schoolhouse: “One old man, who had seen slavery days, with all of his life’s earnings in an old greasy sack, slowly drew it from his pocket, and emptied it on the table,” saying “‘I want to see the children of my grandchildren have a chance, and so I am giving my all.’”

After this, there was no achievement gap of note between blacks and whites. Unsurprisingly, blacks who went to under-funded backwater schools tended not to come out as learned citizens. But when conditions between blacks and whites were equal, there was no problem. Thomas Sowell has noted that the University of Massachusetts at Amherst admitted thirty-four blacks between 1892 and 1954, and seven (more than a quarter) were Phi Beta Kappas. Up through the 1950s and beyond, black public schools were often excellent, as fondly recalled today by older blacks perplexed at the “acting white” charge. The most famous example was Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., where, in 1899, students outscored all-white schools in standardized tests.

It was the demise of segregation, of all things, that helped pave the way for the “acting white” charge. With the closing of black schools after desegregation orders, black students began going to school with white students in larger numbers than ever before. White students were often openly hostile, and white teachers only somewhat less so. Black teachers and administrators from the old black schools often lost their jobs. Unsurprisingly, black students started modeling themselves against white ones as a form of self-protection. This dovetailed nicely with the new open-ended wariness of whites that was the bedrock of “Black Power” identity.

As Buck rightly notes, humans seek group identity, and black teens passed on a sense that black identity did not include “white” scholarly achievement even as the old-fashioned bigotry receded. Hence the “acting white” charge now flung in plush schools like those in Shaker Heights, where racist hostility from whites is an affair of the past. Subtle interracial tensions surely exist—but students of other races cope with them without developing a sense that they are rejecting their heritage by making A's.

The tendency to reject the “acting white” charge as a myth is based on what we might call compassionate denial. It may seem to many that the problem is so subject to misinterpretation by whites that it would be better to pretend it doesn’t exist. Yet too often this compassion leads us, in our quest to help black students, to focus upon false leads and efforts that are more symbolic than constructive. Buck proposes that the roots of the “acting white” charge point us to two possible solutions for closing the black-white scholastic gap. The first is the elimination of grades in favor of having whole schools compete against one another, but this will take us only so far. Besides the unlikelihood of its adoption nationally, it would leave the possibility that black kids in integrated schools would continue to fashion themselves as a subgroup apart.

It is crucial to note that Roland Fryer’s work, as well as some of the studies claiming that “acting white” charges do not matter, have shown that the problem is largely limited to precisely the integrated schools, where there are white students for black ones to define themselves against. And this leads to Buck’s second suggestion, which runs up against the deeply entrenched impulse to decry “segregation”—namely, the establishment of all-black schools.

Buck does not mean that the notoriously lousy all-black inner-city schools should be our model for success. But in the increasing numbers of all-black charter schools, as well as public ones turned around by dynamic principals, students calling one another “white” for liking schools is as unheard of as it was in the black schools of yesteryear. Our visceral recoil today at any conception of an all-black school as reminiscent of shabby one-room schoolhouses in the segregated Deep South must be discontinued.

Buck’s terrific book is longer on analysis than prescription; but its analysis comprises such invaluable history, and so deftly counters any fears underlying the pretense that the “acting white” charge is fictitious, that I cannot imagine we will soon see another book so utterly necessary on what used to be called the Race Question. Buck has cleared the ground of many illusions and innuendos, and this can only help us to get closer to a solution for the vast problem that still remains.

John McWhorter teaches at Columbia University. He is the author of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English.

Yale University Press, 261 pp., $27.50
Book Cover:

Let's encourage Blacks and Hispanics to do THEIR best, and give them fair access to resources. Let's hold them to the same standards as everyone else. Let's not pretend that there are no present differences. Let's not blame "whitey" for the problem. Let's see what they can do. No affirmative action, no hand outs, no special consideration, no excuses. Fair play and honesty. This will encourage a positive, pro-achievement mentality in low performing minorities, because their self worth will no longer be riding on their achievement.

I think a major [reason] there is so much concern about the black-white academic gap is that it poses a threat to social stability.

The fact that racial differences correspond pretty well to socioeconomic differences ...

Works for me.

But apparently not for the rest of society which is too busy with covering up the "black truth" (no pun intended) to think about sensible social policies.

"Fair access to resouces?" That's what they don't have.

"Same standards as everyone else?" Whose everyone? Legacy offspring like D student George Bush?

"No affirmative action?" Oprah, Obama, Colin Powell and Condoleeza will be very upset.

"No hand outs?" Yeah, handouts are only for people who don't have glass ceilings to contend with eh? That whole, 'it's who you know,' and "networking," business -- that's got to be a myth. I was a corporate librarian for several years - and I have to tell you, I've never seen a white man get a job he didn't thoroughly deserve and was in fact over-qualified for. White people don't get handouts do they?

"Let's hold them to the same standards as everyone else?" It's like that old Chris Rock joke, you'll know society is equal when a black man who isn't editor of the Harvard Law Review, but was a fair to middlin' student whose well connected Dad carried him for half his life, gets to be President too.

"Blame whitey for the problem?" Oh, you mean institutionalized racism? That old myth?? lolol

"Let's see what they can do?" Well, read a history book, they can do plenty - the gaps you see today were virtually non-existent in the early 20th century.

Lastly, you say "let's give them a pro-achievement mentality," -- wow, great novel idea there. Might do some good in Appalachia and on a few Indian reservations too.

None of what you said is accurate. Keep it up, as long no one reads sociological reports they may actually believe you that it's all Whitey's fault, rather than negroes'.

"it's all whitey's fault?" That's not what I said.

"rather than negroes?" <-- ..and that is a suitable and acceptable response/position for this site Mr. Sweet?

These rantings to me are obviously racist and hostile, and yet are tolerated here. It's hard to comprehend that 'I'mback,' with his 'negroes are to blame,' commentary doesn't automatically break the policy rules of this site.

Odd that I was cautioned against falling into the 'racialism,' trap on this site, while apparently someone can consistently, with relish, call 'black' self-identified people "mulattoes and negroes," and not only be tolerated here, but engaged in conversation, as if rational.

I agree. It is a straw man on ImBack's part. He is hereby warned. Nevertheless, and this does not excuse ImBack's straw man, part of the problem is that it is hard to tell what your thesis is in your message starting with "Fair access to resources... etc." As already mentioned, I cannot tell if you are saying that "fair access... etc." is desirable, it is undesirable, or it is desirable but impossible. If you want to pursue this line of inquiry you must state your thesis in accordance with Rule 3.6. What exactly is your point? How does it relate to the peer-accusation of "acting white"?

Frank, it was 'Imback,' who said what is needed is "fair access to resources," not ME. I was quoting him. Like you, I wanted him to clarify HIS thesis. I was asking him what HIS point was and how he determines what "fair access to resources," is.


Yes. It is. You find the term "negro" offensive. So do I, prefering African American or A-A for short.

Again, I wasn't talking about the word 'negro,' I was talking about his statement that underachievement/perceived societal ills are the 'fault of the negro.' If 'Imback,' wants to speak in the vernacular of the 50's that's his prerogative - but it's the content of the statement, that I was questioning. What does he mean by that? He is saying that 'fault lies with negroes, rather than whites,' and in my estimation, this is not a clear thesis of anything, save a hostile blame game and rather pedestrian argument that I could hear on some obscure talk hate radio station.

But ImBack's thesis in that message is that peer-accusation of "acting white" is a destructive tactic imposed by A-As on other A-As. There is no doubt about this. The problem is that calling it someone's "fault" hinders rational discussion.

Thank you. Which is why I ask for clarification. No one disagrees that the mid to late 20th century socialization of socio-economically depressed urban black children made conditions right for them to stigmatize peers who managed to achieve.

For example, it is important to recognize and explain why the phenomenon appears only in integrated public schools. It does not arise in all-Black schools. It does not arise among home-schooled kids.

I would agree re 'home schooled' children, however, it has been MY experience that it certainly does arise in all-Black schools (K-12 public) and most probably -- this is where the practice of ridiculing those who "sound/acted 'white'," initially began. If you think about it -- that is the environment in which such stigmatization would make the most sense.

These are the sort of findings that we should be examining, not whose "fault" it is.

This is where I would agree.


Whether you consider the unassailable fact that peer-accusation of "acting white" is a destructive tactic imposed by A-As on other A-As as "racist" or "hostile" is irrelevant. If the topic makes you uncomfortable, stay out of it.

That's not what I said -- I absolutely DO think it's destructive, I did NOT say it made me "uncomfortable." It does not. Why are you missing my point. I was objecting to the pedestrian and quite literal 'negroes are to blame,' interjection by 'Imback.' Which should be obvious.


If your problem is merely the use of the word "Negro" versus A-A or Black, I would be happy discuss with the other moderators whether we should ban the word.

I find the word and the context in which it is used, which should be readily apparent to anyone, objectionable on it's face. This notion of 'Imbacks' that it's this 75% negroid who is the root of all ills. Again, why am I explaining this to you - I've anecdotally used the term, and of course when speaking in a context that is historical or discussing archival docs or research you can't help but NOT use it. But calling groups of people this, just based on one's own gross illogic is what I find disturbing. It would be like me calling a segment of the populace 'yellowbones,' or 'spotted browns.' It's abhorrent.


We are discussing a phenomenon of public education (the peer-accusation of "acting white"). Nowhere in this thread has anyone used the term "mulattoes." This is a straw man. Also, your implication that ImBack is irrational is ad hominem. Consider yourself warned on both counts.

Again, you find it fairly easy to sanction me, as well as misinterpret and misquote me consistently. I understand I'm an easier and less threatening target based on your own pathologies, than 'Imback' - but this regular practice you have of not only putting words in my mouth, but putting the words of others that YOU in fact find objectionable in my mouth, makes it doubly ridiculous. Grow some balls and get rid of the self-loathing racist in your ranks that your frightened of, I realize smacking down females is a lot easier - but it's quite cowardly.

it has been MY experience that it certainly does arise in all-Black schools (K-12 public) and most probably -- this is where the practice of ridiculing those who "sound/acted 'white'," initially began. If you think about it -- that is the environment in which such stigmatization would make the most sense.

... your own pathologies .... quite cowardly.

The last three messages are drifting off-topic (Stuart Buck's book). The book shows that what Ogbu called "oppositional culture" definitely exists; it has been measured and documented in numerous studies. The book shows that the phenomenon seriously damages A-A scholastic achievement. It shows that the phenomenon is greater in some environments (integrated schools) than in others (all-Black schools).

ImBack's suggestion (to eliminate racialism from schools) is a bit naive, but it is more-or-less on topic. Oconee's complaint (either that eliminating racialism would be harmful or that it would be impossible--I am not sure which is her thesis here) has wandered too far. Let's stick to the topic of oppositional culture: the peer-accusation that scholastic achievement is "acting White".