[/P]from Slate article said:
Not from a student, no. But I have an uncle who has occasionally made sarcastic remarks about my son's speech patterns to the effect of "You spent all that money teaching the boy to talk white and he can't even tie his shoes yet."The "acting white" thing in the African-American community always pissed me off something fierce.
Timbuktu is slang for something really far away in the English language. What's interesting is that it is slang for something really far away in a surprising number of languages. Why? Because at one time, people traveled from all over the Muslim world (which extended from Spain to China) for a chance to be educated at theUniversity of Timbuktu. In its heyday it was the most prestigious institution of higher learning in the Muslim world.
It was probably the first institution of higher learning that we in the modern world would call a university. It's not just the world's first university, it's the oldest continuously operated university. It's fallen on hard times (they're teaching on dirt floors), but it's still operating. The Boko Haram attacks certainly didn't help.
Whenever American TV bothers to cover anything in Africa, they always seem interested in northeast Africa (Egypt, and some of the ancient civilizations that bordered Egypt). I have to imagine that many African-American kids wonder if Africans from the places their ancestors came from did anything significant.
They built the first fucking university, dammit. That's what they fucking did.
That's why it's so horribly ironic to see so many African-Americans give credence to that "education is a white thing" nonsense. Education -- particularly higher education -- very much is part of their heritage, so this attitude is horrifyingly ironic given that people who say those things say it because they're ignorant of their own history.
Yeah, I know. It's debatable what you would call the "first university." Timbuktu certainly lacked some features of modern universities, but it certainly is among the schools worth considering for that title.
The whole thing just pisses me off. It makes me want to cry when kids say "Education is a white thing."
Fuck.
have you ever heard those words (Education is a white thing) come from an actual black student?
Every racial group has a similar distribution of ass-backwards ignoramuses. It's not so much about "acting white" so much as "Not acting like me" (because I think I'm awesome and you should too).
Narcissistic black people realizing that they themselves are not white?
So here is an article directly countering the OP and arguing against the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of the "acting white is a myth" proponents.
There appears to be no consensus that it is a myth. There is legit and widespread disagreement about it among relevant researchers (and if it matters, primarily black researchers arguing both sides).
Basically, the problem is really the general problem of ethnographic studies and sociology, which is inherently weak methods that do not allow strong inferences or a direct test of hypotheses either way. The OP article attacks the "anecdotal" nature of the evidence, which is actually ethnographic research using methods at or above what is pervasive in such fields. So, to reject the data as meaningless is to reject most of sociology, anthropology, and ethnographic studies (methods that the "mythers" rely almost exclusively upon to support theories they do want to believe in).
The Slate article points out that while attacking the quality of data in favor of the hypothesis, the "mythers" then rely upon their own data that is at least if not more weak, such as kids' self-reports made to researchers on how much they value education.
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The OP article also dismisses a study showing racial differences in the GPA - popularity relationship. The OP article claims:
Like the rhetoric of clever dishonest salemen and politicians, what they say is technically true, but intended to mislead by deliberate omission of other critical information that impact interpretation.
Here is the actual full results:
First, notice the drop in popularity among blacks with the highest GPA. The OP article conveniently does not point this out, and instead focusses only on the comparisons that it claims don't fit a "acting white" theory. More importantly, the meaningful interpretation requires comparing the patterns for whites and blacks (which the OP ignores). The OP takes the common tactic of building a straw man hypothesis about what the data should look like from the theory it wants to "debunk". In this case, they wrongly claim that the "acting-white" theory requires there to be an overall negative correlation between GPA and popularity. This is only predicted by the assumption that "acting white" is a view held by all blacks and is the sole or most impactful factor in determining popularity, which is not what any proponents of the theory claim. There are many things that impact popularity, GPA could be one, and it might also indirectly related to other factors that drive popularity, such as wealth (which would include having a car, trend-conforming/setting clothes, etc..). The acting white theory does not deny any of these other factors, and since all direct and indirect factors combine to determine a simple single correlation, the theory does not require an overall negative correlation. Instead, if a bunch of things positively related to GPA improve popularity, but then the "acting white" beliefs among some blacks works in the other direction for blacks but not for whites, then the expected result would be similar to what we see. GPA and indirectly related things all work together for whites to create a strong and consistent positive relation between GPA an popularity. However, for blacks GPA has opposing direct and indirect effects so the relationship is very weak and is inconsistent (goes slightly up then down again).
IOW, the data is highly consistent with a more plausible non-straw version of the "acting-white" theory. Sure, it isn't "proof", because their are other theories that could account for the pattern too. For example, maybe blacks value good grades and reward them just as much as whites, but they do not value the other things correlated with grades like wealth, good clothes, and a car. Its a matter of relative plausibility among the various models that could account for the pattern. But hypocritically, those who will jump on the limits of the data in order to discount the "acting white" theory, are the first to offer us far weaker social science methods as supposed proof of their preferred theories on racism. When anyone points to the weaknesses in those data, they are attacked as having an "anything but racism" bias, or their detailed analyses blindly dismissed as "something something stats".
There's disagreement as to the cause of the achievement gap, yes. But the "acting white theory" and the notion that fear of ostracism is a major factor in the achievement gap is, in fact, a myth. The theory has been proposed in the past but there is very little actual data supporting it.
That's actually EXACTLY what they're claiming if they are, in fact, "proponents of the theory." That is, the theory that the fear of social alienation is the primary factor in under-achievement for black students.
No, it merely claims that these factors are not as significant as the fear of alienation.
You shouldn't feel that way. Here's my perspective. I lived in Louisiana until age 14 then another 8 years as an adult. The rest of the time Seattle and California. I've had black roommates and ironically the times I had close friends that were black wasn't in Louisiana despite its far larger Black population. Anyway from what I've been told walking on eggshells regarding race or making a point to focus on it is patronizing to the black people I've known closely.
So here is an article directly countering the OP and arguing against the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of the "acting white is a myth" proponents.
There appears to be no consensus that it is a myth. There is legit and widespread disagreement about it among relevant researchers (and if it matters, primarily black researchers arguing both sides).
Basically, the problem is really the general problem of ethnographic studies and sociology, which is inherently weak methods that do not allow strong inferences or a direct test of hypotheses either way. The OP article attacks the "anecdotal" nature of the evidence, which is actually ethnographic research using methods at or above what is pervasive in such fields. So, to reject the data as meaningless is to reject most of sociology, anthropology, and ethnographic studies (methods that the "mythers" rely almost exclusively upon to support theories they do want to believe in).
The Slate article points out that while attacking the quality of data in favor of the hypothesis, the "mythers" then rely upon their own data that is at least if not more weak, such as kids' self-reports made to researchers on how much they value education.
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The OP article also dismisses a study showing racial differences in the GPA - popularity relationship. The OP article claims:
Like the rhetoric of clever dishonest salemen and politicians, what they say is technically true, but intended to mislead by deliberate omission of other critical information that impact interpretation.
Here is the actual full results:
First, notice the drop in popularity among blacks with the highest GPA. The OP article conveniently does not point this out, and instead focusses only on the comparisons that it claims don't fit a "acting white" theory. More importantly, the meaningful interpretation requires comparing the patterns for whites and blacks (which the OP ignores). The OP takes the common tactic of building a straw man hypothesis about what the data should look like from the theory it wants to "debunk". In this case, they wrongly claim that the "acting-white" theory requires there to be an overall negative correlation between GPA and popularity. This is only predicted by the assumption that "acting white" is a view held by all blacks and is the sole or most impactful factor in determining popularity, which is not what any proponents of the theory claim. There are many things that impact popularity, GPA could be one, and it might also indirectly related to other factors that drive popularity, such as wealth (which would include having a car, trend-conforming/setting clothes, etc..). The acting white theory does not deny any of these other factors, and since all direct and indirect factors combine to determine a simple single correlation, the theory does not require an overall negative correlation. Instead, if a bunch of things positively related to GPA improve popularity, but then the "acting white" beliefs among some blacks works in the other direction for blacks but not for whites, then the expected result would be similar to what we see. GPA and indirectly related things all work together for whites to create a strong and consistent positive relation between GPA an popularity. However, for blacks GPA has opposing direct and indirect effects so the relationship is very weak and is inconsistent (goes slightly up then down again).
IOW, the data is highly consistent with a more plausible non-straw version of the "acting-white" theory. Sure, it isn't "proof", because their are other theories that could account for the pattern too. For example, maybe blacks value good grades and reward them just as much as whites, but they do not value the other things correlated with grades like wealth, good clothes, and a car. Its a matter of relative plausibility among the various models that could account for the pattern. But hypocritically, those who will jump on the limits of the data in order to discount the "acting white" theory, are the first to offer us far weaker social science methods as supposed proof of their preferred theories on racism. When anyone points to the weaknesses in those data, they are attacked as having an "anything but racism" bias, or their detailed analyses blindly dismissed as "something something stats".
could not American anti-intellectualism also be a lens through which to interpret any such data?
Thus, it is not a myth in any reasonable use of the term.
That's actually EXACTLY what they're claiming if they are, in fact, "proponents of the theory." That is, the theory that the fear of social alienation is the primary factor in under-achievement for black students.
That is just what the label of "acting white myth" implies. The fact that dishonest people who use that term, will qualify that it is a real thing in the fine print is just a way to cover their ass when their unreasonable ideology is exposed.
Can you show me where the primary proponents of the theory claim that it is the sole causal factor creating the gap? (and yes, that is what you are claiming)
he OP article also dismisses a study showing racial differences in the GPA - popularity relationship. The OP article claims:
Like the rhetoric of clever dishonest salemen and politicians, what they say is technically true, but intended to mislead by deliberate omission of other critical information that impact interpretation.
Here is the actual full results:
First, notice the drop in popularity among blacks with the highest GPA. The OP article conveniently does not point this out, and instead focusses only on the comparisons that it claims don't fit a "acting white" theory.
