Acting White - Case Studies and Research

Case Studies and Research

Not all scholars define acting white in precisely the same way. However, most definitions include a reference to situations where some minority adolescents ridicule their minority peers for engaging in behaviors perceived to be characteristic of whites. "White behavior" as such is highly correlated with high grades in school, which is the effect that researchers focus on, but the two attributes are distinct.

In 1986, Signithia Fordham co-authored with Nigerian sociologist John Ogbu a study that concluded that high-performing African American students in a Washington, D.C., high school borrowed from hegemonic white culture as part of a strategy for achievement, while struggling to maintain a black identity. Ogbu made a related claim in his 2003 book, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement, concluding that black students' own cultural attitudes hindered academic achievement and that these attitudes are too often neglected. However, as Ogbu made clear in his seminal work Minority Education and Caste (1978), school disengagement among caste-like minorities occurs because of the glass ceiling placed by white society on the job-success of their parents and others in their communities. He reasoned that non-whites "failed to observe the link between educational achievement and access to jobs."

Though the study's conclusion gained a popular foothold and has been espoused by figures such as Bill Cosby in his famous May 2004 speech, a later study challenged its validity. In 2003, Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist, and William Darity, Jr., an economist, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, directed an 18 month study at eleven North Carolinian schools. The study concluded that white and black students have essentially the same attitudes about scholastic achievement; students in both groups want to succeed in school and show higher levels of self-esteem when they do better in school. They compared attitudes identified as acting white to the normal adolescent pains experienced in John Hughes' movies.

Academics Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig published a report in 1997 finding that blacks do not face any stronger social pressures for succeeding in school than whites, and that they have no greater feelings of alienation towards education in general either. They noted anecdotal and ethnographic research confirming that minority students hold these views, but they concluded that these are not inherently generalizable and do not substantially affect student behavior in the classroom. They labeled the issue "something of a distraction" from what they saw as more important educational reforms.

Stuart Buck, a lawyer, wrote Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation in 2010, published by Yale University Press. He argued that traditionally segregated black schools featured teachers, counselors, and others of the same race as the student population of the schools, who in many cases became mentors to the students. However, the integration of schools since the mid- to late-20th century may have caused schools to appear to some black students to be controlled or dominated by whites. Consequently, a black student trying to achieve high educational success may be seen primarily as trying to make him or herself appear superior to others.

A 2006 study titled An Empirical Analysis of "Acting White" by Roland G. Fryer, Jr., at Harvard University and Paul Torelli suggested that the phenomenon probably had little to no effect on students achieving at average levels, but might explain a significant role in the disparities between black and white students at high achievement levels. Fryer has also written that, in contrast to Fordham and Ogbu's theory, "acting white" prejudices are actually more common the more integrated the school, with historically black schools free of any effects. He found that groups such as Italian immigrants in Boston’s West End and the Maori of New Zealand display similar behaviors. He concluded, "There is necessarily a trade-off between doing well and rejection by your peers when you come from a traditionally low-achieving group, especially when that group comes into contact with more outsiders."

A fundamental drawback of much of the research so far is that the people studied have been asked to rate their own popularity in the eyes of others, which naturally brings those scores into question. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. has remarked, "Asking teenagers whether they’re popular is like asking them if they’re having sex."