In the United States, acting white is a pejorative term for white cultural appropriation usually applied to African-Americans, which refers to a person's perceived betrayal of their culture by assuming the social expectations of white society. Success in education in particular (depending on one's cultural background) can be seen as a form of selling out by being disloyal to one's culture. The term is controversial, and its precise meaning is hard to define. Nevertheless, the idea that minority students suffer from the negative prejudices of their ethnic peers is currently accepted as generally true in much of the American media—as expressed in articles in The New York Times, Time magazine, and The Wall Street Journal—and in American society.
Read more about Acting White: History of Usage, Case Studies and Research, Commentary
Famous quotes containing the words acting and/or white:
“Its idea of “production value” is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.”
—Chief Joseph (c. 1840–1904)