From my new VDARE.com column:
It’s widely argued that the reason that blacks tend to perform poorly in schools and jobs is their fear of being accused by other blacks of "acting white." Thus, in the current issue of The New Republic, linguist John McWhorter, the celebrated black intellectual associated with New York’s Manhattan Institute, lauds the new book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation by Stuart Buck. McWhorter argues, "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.’"
In an interview with Buck about his book, Rod Dreher defines "acting white" as when "academically accomplished black students are often accused of being traitors to their race (‘acting white’) because of their good grades and study habits."
Buck’s main argument: blame black underperformance on the paradoxical consequences of integration. He explains:"An integrated school can often appear to black students to be controlled by whites, or to be run in a way that benefits white students. Thus, the black student who tries to curry favor from the white authorities is seen as saying, ‘I'm better than you.’"
... Are blacks held back by fear of "acting white"?
No doubt this is often true. Yet the benefits that whites bestow upon blacks for acting reassuringly white (for example, the White House itself) are so lavish that it’s hardly certain what the net effect is. ...
One peculiarity of this popular "acting white" theory: there is significantly stronger evidence that a lack of intellectual ambition holds back otherwise capable Hispanics (especially Mexican-Americans) than that it greatly debilitates African-Americans. But that never seems to come up in public discussion—probably because, as I’ve argued before, Anglos just find blacks much more interesting than Latinos.
Google finds 14 times as many pages featuring the phrases "African American" and "acting white" as it does "Mexican American" and "acting white." An expensive Harvard study by economist Roland Fryer intended to confirm the "acting white" hypothesis by showing that black students lost friends as they earned higher grades actually wound up demonstrating that this problem is much worse among Latinos.
Read the rest there and comment upon it below.
Posts
88 comments:
How is having good grades and studying hard "betraying" your race? This is the most bizarre thing I have ever heard.
What about Asians "acting white"?
I think you underestimate the time value of sex, and the ability to gain superior sex by eschewing education for more macho endeavors such as gang membership.
Students in the barrio who do good have to conceal it, otherwise they are beaten by gang members (if they are boys, no one cares about girls). Why? Because it is a signal of dominance. Football players who do well grade-wise of course are left alone. I personally have seen this in action as a barrio teacher.
Meanwhile, being a top HS football player OR gang member will get you a very hot girlfriend. Lets not be shy, for a 13 year old kid, the prospect of a really, really hot girlfriend three years out as an up and coming gang member, versus a ten year slog of almost total celibacy, and another ten years of near monk-like study, to finally get a girlfriend at age 30, is not an easy sale.
A boy that age is looking at twenty years of hard work. Without much reward, as he can see. Versus the guys he sees in the neighborhood, with girls and even kids. Yes the risk is greater (being shot) but he can run that risk just being a studios nose-to-the-grindstone kid. For a slightly enhanced (as he sees it) risk he gets much greater rewards.
Just as a dollar today is worth more than one ten years out, so too is a beautiful teenager to a teenage boy himself worth more than a prospective 30 year old twenty years from now. Particularly since he won't be a provider, instead "spread your seed" type of guy.
Its not as if the White/Anglo culture values guys as providers (no fantasies about hunky beta guys that some lucky woman lands) and Mexican culture is even worse.
there is significantly stronger evidence that a lack of intellectual ambition holds back otherwise capable Hispanics...
How do we know that the mestizos and indios are smart? Something like 1/2 of Mexican teenagers are illiterate. It does not take much money to learn to read, nor does Spanish phonics take incredible brain power to master.
Now that isn't to say that indios and mestizos are also a particularly undynamic, boring group. Just that they're even less likely to have the minimal brain power required to benefit from acting white.
The rare as hens teeth slightly above average hispanic student has no hispanic friends because frienship is pretty much impossible across a 30 point (say ~110 for the bright aborigine and ~80 for his co-ethnics) IQ gap.
"Acting white" points towards the real personality differences between human groups that also matter. Whites aren't just smarter than blacks, the behavioral differences are tremendous. Sailer himself has noted that more whites have IQ below 85 than blacks, but less intelligent whites don't act like blacks. Why? because they're acting white.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgz9v0TbE5w
-
What a country this is becoming, thanks to Diversity and Affirmative Action. About a month ago, Dallas hired a new police chief, David Brown, a black man. Last week, his 27 year old son David Brown, Jr killed a man, and then killed a cop who responded to the scene. Yesterday was David Brown, Jr’s funeral, and the cop killer’s funeral was given a police escort “out of respect for the chief.”
Don’t you just love multi-cultural America, where police chief’s sons are cop killers, and cop killers get police escorts for their funeral? - h/t James Edwards
Whiskey, I have been there and done that. Living on the Arabian Peninsula I have concluded that the imposition of strict shariah law is the only practicle solution. Nothing like knowing you will receive a hundred lashes for talking to a girl or boy not related to you to change a gangbanger's attitude.
Anonymous said..."What about Asians 'acting white'?"
When Asians act white, it's called "underachieving".
So that's why there's such a large and intractable Dancing Gap between blacks and whites -- the pales who could actually cut a little rug fear being ostracized by fair-skinned fuddy-duddies for "acting black."
I also wrote about this myth awhile back:
Acting White
How is having good grades and studying hard "betraying" your race? This is the most bizarre thing I have ever heard.
People from less study obsessed groups quite understandably don't like others raising the stakes with the amount of time they have to invest in education, generally because they'd rather enjoy life.
And if they're already insulated from competition, their quality of life is good and they have no prospect of being placed in a situation where it's bad if they use their political leverage successfully (to prevent immigration, for'ex), who can really blame them for wanting to have more time to relax and goof off?
Certainly, I think most iSteve readers would not be that sympathetic to the behaviour of White people who adopt the "work ethic" (put euphemistically) of an Asian peasant and who would advocate this for all Whites rather than simply excluding the Asian peasant competition.
I'm not sure I'd intuitively say that Black people have a bad attitude to education relative to all White people. That group always seems to have an optimistic "Yeah, my people are comin' up! Got to get myself a 'heducation!" (to use a mismash of the phraseology I hear from African and West indian immigrants) attitude to them.
There's a big mythology they have (from their own community and from the nation) about how their group has been traditionally excluded from education, so I actually don't think they really acknowledge poor past performance or come up with the rationalization that it's meaningless because it's all just a combination of bourgeois conventions, manufacturing consent and rigged tests meant to preserve privilege, relative to White working class folks (even though White middle class folks love them some education).
This is all UK based stuff though and we have a strong streak of Marxism in our political thought, that the US doesn't really have outside a few elite universities.
... and don't forget the legacy of slavery.
Is not trying in school really a race-based thing in the USA? In the UK you can see it among White boys (mostly but not all from manual-worker or non-worker families) who do badly in school because (a) they'd rather mess around with their mates (b) it hurts their brains to try to think (c) if they tried they might fail. As described here for Black Americans, WWC boys who do want to learn are derided and intimidated by their peers. Sometimes the won't-learners gain control of the classroom and prevent anyone from learning - an enjoyable exercise of power.
They're not getting hot girlfrieds, either. They mostly hang around in all-male groups and any girls with them are almost always fat.
The abolition of selective state schools in the UK was probably harmful for working class and lower middle class kids who want to learn - leaving a clear field for the privately-educated children of the elite.
The alpha/beta hypostasization is really getting creepy.
What about Asians "acting white"?
I think it's hard to say that they're "acting white" in the same sense as is meant here; the Chinese and other Asian societies have a long history of valuing academics and literacy, quite independent of European influences, and sometimes, especially before the mid-19th century, rather opposed to European influences.
This "acting white" angle is old by now, I'm surprised a book would come out rehashing it and actually sell. Various fashions have come and gone: the kids eat lead paint;they're undernourished and need school lunches;Operation Head Start will close all gaps;the murder rate drives down test scores;and yada yada. It's really quite simple; blacks (and Amerindians, aborigines,etc.)don't have the inherent brainpower needed for the more advanced positions in a modern world. Getting absorbed in these trendy explanations of the moment just clouds the picture.
I've watched this phenomenon my entire career. The treatment of good students by their peers ranges from ostracism to out and out persecution, sometimes violent.
I've mostly taught in rural schools that were almost entirely black, and pretty much everyone was on Free and reduced lunch.
Since gangs essentially run these schools (everything in Chicago migrates back to Mississippi), I sense an added incentive on top of the oft-discussed reasons for the "acting white" phenomenon, at least in rural areas. The academic students represent competition with the gang way of life. In some of these small villages, gangs have become the only real social institution. The studious kid represents a disruption of the transgressive, initiatory behavior that gangs continuously reinforce that is known as "the game".
Another deep psychological factor that can be at play is that studiousness usually implies a somewhat stable home life, and the presence of a male role model (even though he's often a grandfather, rather than a father). This is an affront to the tormentor, who constantly has to reinforce his chaotic existence through disrupting class, mindlessly reciting rap lyrics, and displaying gang affiliations, no matter how absurd it is (I've had students who literally spent all day rerolling a shirt sleeve and pants leg on the left or right side, depending on their Chicago-based gang affiliation).
How does the Fear of Acting White as an explanation of black academic performance fit with Stereotype Threat? If one is generally true, then how can the other. Or did one theory used to explain it and now the other does. Was there a time when black kids were switching to one (de)motivator to the other.
I've said this before, is there anywhere, anywhere a Grand Unified Theory that addresses this issue?
Essentially if one is true, how the other be true?
Any attempt to formulate such a GUT would surely be fatal to these environmental explanations. I'm assuming that if Fear of Acting White is now the officially sanctioned explanation, then Stereotype Threat is simply forgotten out of existence.
Sailer bait at the NYT. Noah Feldman celebrates the decline...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28feldman.html?hp
Buck’s main argument: blame black underperformance on the paradoxical consequences of integration.
Solution: segregation. Paradoxically integration is imposed on Whites who are portrayed as "racists" and "anti-semites" for not wanting it.
Actually, there is a similar attitude among some Irish Catholics, that doing well academically is 'acting Protestant'. Then again, those most eager to embrace this mentality do so because the rewards of its rejection can and will never be known by them. So ditto here. It's just another excuse, another ethereal explanation that requires more research, ad infinitum.
But even if it were true, exactly what percentage of blacks are being affected by this? Even if 'the culture' was changed, to what extent would the acheivement gap be closed? Do they even try to calculate this? Or do they dangle this out there as the alleviation of all inequality?
@ Steve Sailer
Some German's right-wing politicians are asking for IQ test for new immigrants...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,703328,00.html
When high IQ white children go to school with asian children the whites and the asians intermarry.
When low IQ white children and latino children go to school together, the groups intermarry.
This doesn’t happen all at once, but it certainly becomes pervasive when the groups attend the same schools for two generations.
A good example here in California – massive numbers of people moved from Japan to California a long time ago – perhaps 100 or more years ago. The older generation worked very hard to preserve a separate cultural identity, teaching the children and grandchildren Japanese, trying to keep them interested in eating Japanese foods, some even at great expense arranged for the young ones to spend summers in Japan.
Despite the best efforts of the older generation, the Japanese in California married in to the larger white community. In fact, if you look at Japanese families that have been living in California for more than 100 years, more than 80% have intermarried with the white population to some extent.
Japanese and Whites in California have just melted in to one high IQ successful lump. “Japanese survivalists” that tell the young to preserve their culture by not intermarrying are laughed at the same way that “white survivalists” telling whites not to intermarry are laughed at.
You can’t tell what culture someone has just by looking at their skin. I am surprised that the rapper Drake hasn’t gotten more press in the HBD blog-o-sphere. Drake is culturally very jewish, he grew up in a majority jewish neighborhood, went to a jewish religious school, goes to shul for Yom Kipur and wears talit – the whole nine yards. Drake’s mom is 100% ashkenazi and his dad is 100% black and if you were to just look at his photos you would see a big muscular scowling black guy.
In many parts of california things are changing – the old rigid racial lines are sort of an artifact of the past – not relevant to the young.
High IQ whites and asians that attend the UC schools together find they have so much in common that there is no way to keep them from getting together.
Low IQ whites and latinos in the inland Empire find they have so much in common that there is no way to keep them from getting together.
I believe that California is the future of the USA and that race will melt away.
However, I don't know how things work in the rest of the USA - can other people give me examples that prove me wrong? Is there a place in the USA where low IQ whites have been going to public school with latinos for 100 years where the two groups have NOT merged in to one?
Is there ia place in the USA where high IQ whites have been going to school with asians for 100 years and the groups have not melted in to one?
When high IQ white children go to school with asian children the whites and the asians intermarry.
When low IQ white children and latino children go to school together, the groups intermarry.
This doesn’t happen all at once, but it certainly becomes pervasive when the groups attend the same schools for two generations.
A good example here in California – massive numbers of people moved from Japan to California a long time ago – perhaps 100 or more years ago. The older generation worked very hard to preserve a separate cultural identity, teaching the children and grandchildren Japanese, trying to keep them interested in eating Japanese foods, some even at great expense arranged for the young ones to spend summers in Japan.
Despite the best efforts of the older generation, the Japanese in California married in to the larger white community. In fact, if you look at Japanese families that have been living in California for more than 100 years, more than 80% have intermarried with the white population to some extent.
Japanese and Whites in California have just melted in to one high IQ successful lump. “Japanese survivalists” that tell the young to preserve their culture by not intermarrying are laughed at the same way that “white survivalists” telling whites not to intermarry are laughed at.
You can’t tell what culture someone has just by looking at their skin. I am surprised that the rapper Drake hasn’t gotten more press in the HBD blog-o-sphere. Drake is culturally very jewish, he grew up in a majority jewish neighborhood, went to a jewish religious school, goes to shul for Yom Kipur and wears talit – the whole nine yards. Drake’s mom is 100% ashkenazi and his dad is 100% black and if you were to just look at his photos you would see a big muscular scowling black guy.
In many parts of california things are changing – the old rigid racial lines are sort of an artifact of the past – not relevant to the young.
High IQ whites and asians that attend the UC schools together find they have so much in common that there is no way to keep them from getting together.
Low IQ whites and latinos in the inland Empire find they have so much in common that there is no way to keep them from getting together.
I believe that California is the future of the USA and that race will melt away.
However, I don't know how things work in the rest of the USA - can other people give me examples that prove me wrong? Is there a place in the USA where low IQ whites have been going to public school with latinos for 100 years where the two groups have NOT merged in to one?
Is there ia place in the USA where high IQ whites have been going to school with asians for 100 years and the groups have not melted in to one?
Truth should know all about this.
I don't understand. "Acting White" means emulating Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, Lancelot, Napoleon, William Wallace, Robert E Lee, Patton, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Stanley McChrystal. Or emulating an artist who celebrates the hero: Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Walter Scott, Wagner, John Ford (Perhaps the greatest novelist of the 19th century, Gustave Flaubert, was reduced to writing a novel about a provincial adulterous who would rather kill herself than live in a world without heroes but full of Whiskey's "studios nose-to-the-grindstone" types).
Getting good grades in schools is more properly termed "acting Jewish."
Tears run down my cheeks and stain my keyboard as I write this. Oh why cant our black brothers understand that education is not "white"!Education is for everyone!Blacks have a long history of seeking education. Blacks have a passion for education. They are very conservative. They may vote Republican--if we can reach out to them. (as should the NHL!)(And of course reach out to our dear Latino Americans by "fixing" the "broken" immigration system so they too will vote Republican. ) How could the Black Inventors have invented their inventions without education? How could blacks have built the civilizations of Ancient Egypt without education?? The pyramids? the flyingm machines?? How could hannibal conquoer Rome without education?? We must come together and see that race is meaningless and we are all AMERICANS! I have just finalized my adoption of a black Katrina baby! I love him so!
Does that mean good white students aren't nerds anymore? They're just white?
My three teens have not encountered this problem, mainly because the majority of their friends are not black. The 1 or 2 black friends they have are studious, "preppy", and also speak proper English.
I think the matter of why liberals seem to be more interested in black/white relations than latino/white relations is quite simple.
The history of blacks and whites in this country supports what they want to believe: that white America is evil, imperialistic, and exploitative. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow must be kept front and center in order to be sure that the generations of white young people coming along behind give sufficient deference to black people and that black people are kept sufficiently convinced that they are victims.
Liberalism needs victims (and enough people feeling sufficiently guilty) to flourish. They keep the engine running in the same way gasoline makes a car run.
The few of us who refuse to buy into the narrative do pay a nominal price in our relationships with black family, friends, and coworkers. But we pay it gladly.
The price of being a perpetual victim is too great, and from where we sit, yields no benefit.
Please forgive me if I have repeated another's sentiments. I tend not to read the other comments on articles like this for numerous reasons.
Intersting piece. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
And black girls, median IQ ca 87, do better academically than WWC boys, median IQ ca 98.
Supposedly IQ only explains 25% of variation in grades in North American studies (I was surprised too, though I did read this on La Wik, so take perhaps it's utter mendacity).
Maybe in the US, the non-IQ stuff is probably relatively without difference between racial groups, but it might not be the same elsewhere.
John McWhorter is one of the very few honest black public intellectuals and his words should not be so easily dismssed here. For example, he may be the first to suggest, in his book "Losing the Race" that many black people feel the rules just don't apply to them. This is the best explanation for the Seattle jaywalking contretemps, and the now seemingly commonplace incidence of blacks fighting cops for routine traffic stops. As to educational performance, let's remember that the "Acting White" theory was first published in the '90's by a sociologist named John Ogbu, who got this answer while interviewing black kids from an affluent school district in/near Shaker Heights. Whiskey's sex explanation fails to account for the fact that with white kids, the studs getting the prime pussy are often both athletes AND good students. For example, at Cal, the water polo team, prime cocksmen all, frequently has an average GPA of 3.7.
Whiskey,
at least around here, there is no such thing as a "really hot" gangbanger girl. Like 13-year old boys care about that anyway, all they want is action.
The "acting white" thesis doesn't explain away the insights of HBD, but it does point out one thing: black Americans are far and away the victims of the loosening of cultural mores and the collapse of institutions that happened in the 60s.
White liberals, at best, made a world on the assumption that everyone more or less was a white liberal at heart; at worst, they burned down a world that worked for the non- white liberals because it didn't suit their convenience. They replaced that old world with ashes.
"the pales who could actually cut a little rug fear being ostracized by fair-skinned fuddy-duddies for "acting black.""
Well, yes, but we don't call it "acting black," we call it "gay."
Article that mirrors Steve's '20 years of work' idea:
The Sting of Poverty
- that, being so far down, makes working /up/ daunting.
What does "WWC" stand for? I must confess I've bever heard it before...
Maybe they are putting the cart in front of the donkey. Maybe it's not that blacks fail in school because they denigrate 'acting white' but they denigrate 'acting white' because they fail in school.
Steve, I'm disappointed that you wrote "Before McWhorter’s turning point year of 1966, African-Americans had been in America long enough for a class structure to emerge, with people of mixed-race descent largely on top" without a parenthetical note about McWhorter's melanin deficiency.
@Simon in UK: 30 minutes after reading your comment, I observe the following in Marin County, California. I'm in McDonald's getting coffee. Enter two teenaged, obviously lower class whites with tatoos. So far no problem. As I leave store, wiggers get into 25 year old, paint-peeling Chrysler, parked in zone reserved for handicapped. At wheel of car is young black guy. I believe that in the U.S., the attraction for wiggers is the opportunity to piggyback on blacks' immunity to the rules.
Culture does matter in social achievement. Cultures that look down upon education for women will have ignorant women.
Italian-American parents have been less academically supportive of their kids than Jewish parents. Jewish parents took pride in their kids doing better. Italian-American parents--at least long ago--took offense when their kids did better; they took it personally, as if their kids were putting them down. The movie PADRE PADRONE shows what Italian youth were up against.
Also, we know from ultra-orthodox Jews that culture can narrowly define intellectual endeavor. Orthodox rabbis and scholars may be smart and knowledgable about the Talmud and Torah but they aint gonna become great scientists.
And in the American South, being smart or intellectual can get you called 'liberal' or 'gay'. Even within the White Right community, you get called a 'neocon', a 'zog', 'negrophile homo', 'lesbian', etc, etc if you go against white nationalist orthodoxy. Try to have an open debate with morons at Stormfront, and it is impossible. If you say the Holocaust happened, you're a 'zog homo negrophile'.
And the equivalent of 'acting white' in white schools is called being 'geeky' or 'nerdy'--like Anthony Michael in Breakfast Club. Geeks are not popular but they are tolerated in most white schools.
And try to argue for evolution among white Christian Southerners, and they look at you like you're a 'communist'. So, cultural stupidity holds a lot of white conservatives from achieving more in cultural and intellectual endeavors. Anti-intellectual bible thumping, flag waving, gun-hugging, and beer guzzling have made lots of conservatives stay stoooooopid.
So, culture does matter.
But culture is shaped to an extent by biology. Dumb people tend to have dumber cultures. If you got a people with IQ of 150 and a people with IQ of 85 and told each to edit and publish a journal of ideas, the 150 IQ group is gonna come up with more interesting ideas and views than 85 IQ group.
Much of black culture is dumb because too many blacks aren't too smart. And even the smart ones tend to lack wisdom cuz blacks are by nature more uppity, self-centered, arrogant, and aggressive. Mike Dyson, Cornel West, and Henry Louis Gates may be smart guys but they are soooo full of themselves--always posing, preaching, and self-promoting--that they sound like bratty children then real scholars. They lack dignity and depth. They are slickity and slackity, like jazz musicians. All style, no substance.
The fact is many blacks don't like 'acting white' because it feels alien to what their natural soul rhythm tells them--to git down and funky!! Basketball and football are games created by white men--as is the Olympics--,but blacks have no problem with doing that. Guns and beer were created by whites, but blacks love that too. Whites created the boombox and other musical stuff, but blacks love that too. So, it doesn't matter if it was created by whites as long it's fun and thrilling to the bouncy wouncy black butt. It feels natural to the black butt. But sitting still, being patient, and thinking quietly just aint natural to the black man. He starts asking, 'what is this shit, man?'
Btw, the whole black-kids-getting-hurt-because-they-act-white is way overhyped. It's just another excuse for black academic failure.
I'd wager a black-kid-acting-black has a greater chance of getting beat up, killed, or behind bars than a black-kid-acting-white.
A black kid who minds his own business, goes straight home after school, and does homework is less likely to end up dead than a black kid who fools around in school, acts badass and punkass, and acts all macho and shit. He's much more likely to end up dead. At least that is from my personal observation.
Latinos may not be as amusing to whites, but white folks hire Latinos more readily than they do blacks, or so it seems to me.
The "acting white" meme has it backwards. It's something made up in the face of wretched black academic performance to explain it away. It's a result, not a cause.
The rare as hens teeth slightly above average hispanic student has no hispanic friends because frienship is pretty much impossible across a 30 point (say ~110 for the bright aborigine and ~80 for his co-ethnics) IQ gap.
Bingo.
One of the strongest correlations in all of the social sciences is between the IQs of husbands and their wives.
Once the IQ difference gets too large, folks just can't relate to one another.
IQ <= 90 folks can't understand Fawlty Towers.
IQ >= 120 folks can't understand OW MY BALLS.
I sometimes get in trouble with Komment Kontrol when I try to broach this topic, but I don't think that folks like us [who enjoy typing reasonably grammatical replies to internet bulletin board discussion groups] have any earthly idea what goes on in the minds of folks with IQs in the 80s and 70s and 60s [and the part that usually gets me in particularly bad trouble with Komment Kontrol is when I wonder whether ANYTHING AT ALL even transpires in their minds].
If we're gonna talk about starchily upper-crust African American TV characters, don't forget Dexter Stuffins (the black accountant on Silver Spoons). And in real life what about Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes: black, Ivy league, gay, former-Republican (in the sense that many SWPL-types feel the Republican Party ceased to represent them during the Bush II years). Talk about acting white!
What a country this is becoming, thanks to Diversity and Affirmative Action. About a month ago, Dallas hired a new police chief, David Brown, a black man. Last week, his 27 year old son David Brown, Jr killed a man, and then killed a cop who responded to the scene. Yesterday was David Brown, Jr’s funeral, and the cop killer’s funeral was given a police escort “out of respect for the chief.”
Don’t you just love multi-cultural America, where police chief’s sons are cop killers, and cop killers get police escorts for their funeral? - h/t James Edwards
It's not the police chief who murdered the officer, so what's your point? This isn't the first time a senior police figure's son has committed a serious crime, nor the last.
Before the real reason is known and understood there are a plethora of silly hypotheses. Such is the case now with black school achievement or Mexican school achievement. We have "the legacy of slavery explanation" and we have the "acting white" explanation.
Not so very long ago the cause of tuberculosis was unknown but that didn't keep people from speculating. My favorite theory before Pasteur and Koch was that TB was caused by vampires.
Black people have about 70cc less gray matter in their frontal lobes. That accounts for their poor school performance. Period full stop.
People do indeed tend to impugn the mental acuity of slaves. But that prejudice evaporates like dew in the desert if the former slaves are normally intelligent. The Germans were Roman slaves for a millennium.
Similarly if almost all your friends are stupid and do poorly in school you may come up with a fanciful explanation. This is to confuse effect with cause. Better to blame the vampires.
Albertosaurus
OneSTDV said: I also wrote about this myth awhile back:
Acting White
There is nothing mythical about what the Left has done to persuade blacks to reject, hate and ultimately undermine traditional western culture (educational, artistic, et al). Casting it off as some sort of typical peer pressure is just complete idiocy, if not downright mendacity on your own part.
How is having good grades and studying hard "betraying" your race? This is the most bizarre thing I have ever heard.
I assume you are speaking ironically, but in case you really don't understand ... THE LEFT HAS CONVINCED MINORITIES THAT GETTING GOOD GRADES IS A FORM OF RACIAL OPPRESSION.
(and maybe yelling that will get the attention of some of the non-US posters who seem ignorant of this fact)
If I were George W Bush I would have spent ever single day of my four year term (with no goal of being re-elected) hammering home the disasterous circumstances that blacks and latinos have allowed themselved to be duped into. And at the end of those four years I would have said "if you don't get it by now, then you really are hopeless. Goodbye and God Bless"
This phenomenon is all about class culture. I grew up in an Asian country and saw the same attitude among underclass kids: celebration of mediocrity, anti-education gang violence etc. This attitude persists to adulthood. And we have virtually no welfare state to speak of.
Thousands of years of Confucian culture and whatever genetic predisposition exists trumped by underclass culture... Depressing.
"WWC"
I'm guessing white working class.
"I grew up in an Asian country and saw the same attitude among underclass kids"
Which country? I'd guess South Korea, but that's purely an uninformed guess based on the fact that they tend to have a lot of messed up, violent, hard smoking, gel cropped hair, designer gear clad, I-don't-give-a-fuck lumpenproles in their films in a way that reminds me of Britain (though of course I'm sure that's more cultural signalling and movie convention than reality).
Oh, a timely note on "acting white."
First of all, congratulations to the Ghanaians. I'm so happy for them. And in case you didn't know, Ghanains are amongst the blackest of Africans.
No Ghanaian would ever say you were "acting white" for studying and working hard.
I've spoken to a number of African Americans who don't like going to Ghana. They go there expecting dreads and hanging out. Instead, they find a land of self-discipline, understatedness, short hair and determination.
Congratulations to Ghana!
-pd in sf
"How do we know that the mestizos and indios are smart?"
No one is saying they are geniuses. The point is they could be smarter if they tried harder. But they don't.
Steve, one of the previous posters said the following:
One of the strongest correlations in all of the social sciences is between the IQs of husbands and their wives
__
Can this be one of the things that slows down social mobility?
If a young man from a backwoods, trailer park West Virginia background happens to be born with very high IQ and happens to go to a prestige university and major in something useful like engineering, how likely is he to marry a high IQ female?
My understanding is that white prole culture tells young men to marry the best looking virtuous female they can get, and not to select on the basis of IQ.
On the other hand, Brahmin culture, Northeast Asian culture, Ashekenazi culture all stress over and over again to young men the truth that their sons' IQ depends on the IQ of their wife's family.
I have noticed that white Americans of European ancestry that grow up in neighborhoods with Brahmins, Northeast Asians, and Ashkenazi know that their sons will only succeed in life if their sons are born with high IQ, and that the only way to get high IQ for their sons is to marry a female from a very high IQ family.
On the other hand, white Americans who grow up isolated from Asians, Brahmins, Ashkenazi don't seem to care how high the IQ is of the females they marry. Is the problem that no one has ever taught these young men that their sons need high IQ in order to succeed, or is the problem that these young men don't understand the correlation between IQ of his wife and IQ of his sons?
What is going on? What is causing white american young men to make such poor choices ?
10 years ago, when i was wrenching on old corvettes built in the 1970s, i talked to a lot of old timers who were retired. these guys were like 65 years old in 2000. they told me before 1970, black americans were much different in general. they tried harder in school, they got married before having kids, they were better behaved.
personally i'm guessing this is because euro americans exerted tremendous social pressure on black americans between 1870 and 1960. they responded fairly well to these high expectations placed on them. but today, this pressure is viewed as oppression instead of as helpful or contructive. in 2010, after euro americans have been beaten over the head for decades to not tell black americans to do anything, black americans get to act however they want with almost no social pressure. now very few of them get married and the high school dropout rate is very high.
in college, i met several africans and they did not exhibit any of the reservations or concerns which black americans often operate under. doing good in college was a goal, not something to avoid. this is an attitude which american educators should seek to restore. i've posted several times that i think black americans can do better in high school. in general, i do not think they are trying very hard right now, a situation which is only made much worse by euro american educators being positively terrified of demanding better behavior and performance from them. by far the prevailing attitude is to treat the black students much differently than all the other students. they are to be handled with kids gloves and to be barely disciplined for bad behavior, lest the lawsuits fly.
"I think you underestimate the time value of sex, and the ability to gain superior sex by eschewing education for more macho endeavors such as gang membership."
This is all very true, and we have plenty of that in white schools too. The main issue here is not that macho guys seek popularity and sex through sports but why tough guys in black schools are so INTOLERANT of 'geeks'.
Geeks are pushed around in all schools, but they are more or less tolerated or left alone in non-black(and non-Latino)schools. McWhorter's point is that smart blacks are not left alone in black schools.
But if this is true, how come bleeks--black geeks--like Spike Lee, Cornel West, and others don't have a chip on their shoulder about what might have happened to them back in school?
At any rate, it could be the black guys like to pick on weaker dudes whether they be smart or dumb, but we only hear of the cases where the smart ones get hurt. I mean if some guy built like Mike Tyson liked poetry and math, who's gonna pick on him?
There's a scene in the movie COOLEY HIGH where a bunch of black guys crack up at the main character's love of poetry, but it was more mocking than bullying.
Speaking of black bullying, I highly doubt if the main victims are smart blacks; rather, they are whites, Asians, Hispanics, etc.
Blacks no doubt used to kick Jewish ass too, one reason why Norman Podhed always nursed bitterness about blacks. And I suspect one of David Horowitz's reasons for leaving the radical left was being pushed around by big muscular black panther thugs.
And Howard Stern, in his joking way, wrote about his youth where integration led to black guys bullying whites and Jews.
Yet, we hear NOTHING of this in MSM or public discourse. Part of the reason is it doesn't fit into the liberal narrative of blacks-as-victims-of-white-thugs.
In a Hollywood movie like Green Mile, there's a mountain sized black guy who weeps over his poor wittle mouse. No matter how big and strong his body, his soul is soooo pure and saintly. Many white people watch this crap and don't know the real reality.
But another reason is white males can't swallow the pride and admit they'd gotten their butts kicked by blacks.
Just look at crime stats. Just look at stats on school bullying. Look at most racial violence in prison. It's blacks raping whites.
Yet, we are supposed to give a hoot about brothas pushing bleeks around? Let blacks fix their own stupid problem. We should be looking out for OUR interests first!!! When blacks are attacking and beating whites all over the place, the hell do we care about bleeks.
This is the kind of reality we should be calling to attention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d9UdVpf0UM
The fact is that a bright individual will almost helplessly be drawn toward that which stimulates and challenges his intellect. You can't keep the bright ones from the attraction of science and the humanities, the two great poles of learning, as they enter their teen years. The inevitable conclusion is that the percentage of bright blacks is lower, much lower than the percentage of bright whites.
I'd wager a black-kid-acting-black has a greater chance of getting beat up, killed, or behind bars than a black-kid-acting-white.
That may be true, but it's far from obvious for any black kid.
Kids, whether black, white, Armenian, Jewish, rarely look so far ahead. This applies even to Harvard WASPs; few of them think of the status they will enjoy in 10-20 years. Rather, they spend their lives with other WASPs who come from a youth culture in which an MBA from Harvard or Yale is ultra-cool. If black ghetto kids felt the same way, then more of them would be going to Harvard and Yale, or even the local community college.
A black kid who minds his own business, goes straight home after school, and does homework is less likely to end up dead
Everyone has exactly the same chance to "end up dead" - 100%.
I know that's not what you meant, but it's true, and strangely enough, underclass people are more aware of their mortality (and fatalistic about it) than middle-class ones.
For underclass kids, really nobody they know will "live long and prosper". Life is short, nasty, and brutish - so why waste it going to school and/or college? It's not as though these kids are natural commies; they love success and money as much as anyone else. To them, success means getting rich quickly by selling drugs and having money to spend, rather than "wasting" their short time on earth investing in anything.
than a black kid who fools around in school, acts badass and punkass, and acts all macho and shit. He's much more likely to end up dead.
And pro athletes are more likely to get their brains addled by concussions, and their joints all banged up, than any accountant. So why are jocks so popular?
Again, it's a matter of adolescent power and status. Gangbangers don't usually end up dead or in jail until after they graduate (or drop out) from high school. Similarly superjocks wait till their 40s or older for arthritis, cirrhosis, and AIDS to catch up to them.
Nerds, "white actors", and other studious types often face daily persecution and even violence while still in school. And they can be at the "untouchables" at the very bottom of the social totem pole, with no tribe to help them out. That matters much in the typical school atmosphere, where socialization is all-important.
One can even argue that Eric Harris had an easier time at Columbine than a typical superfly ethnic gang leader at P.S. 666 - but it doesn't change the fact that one of them shot up the school and himself, and the other didn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfW9inRkTpU
Blacks bully a gay guy. He probably voted for Obama so no sympathy from me.
jody!
"when i was wrenching on old corvettes built in the 1970s"
i just knew there was a tech head in there somewhere!
-pd in sf
"They lack dignity and depth. They are slickity and slackity, like jazz musicians. All style, no substance."
Are you sure you weren't describing your own posts?
Anonymous said...
Sailer bait at the NYT. Noah Feldman celebrates the decline...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28feldman.html
Dr. Feldman's piece reminded me of Dr. Gottfried's piece:
Clearly we’re not all WASPs now; and in my book Encounters I described in detail how differently the WASP gentry behaved when I was at Yale in the 1960s as compared to the Jews and even Irish Catholics. The WASP gentry were noticeable for their lack of élan and for their overpowering desire to be non-controversial. The Jews, by contrast, were conspicuously nasty. They had chips on their shoulders, and profoundly loathed the group they were destined to replace. Once they took over academic and journalistic posts these parvenus left no doubt who was in charge. They behaved with an ideological and sociological intolerance that was truly breath-taking.
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_decrepit_new_wasps/
"if you were to just look at his photos you would see a big muscular scowling black guy."
Exactly right, except for the
'big', 'muscular', 'scowling', and 'black' parts.
Better put another jacket on, there, Sport, you're revealing the deep, inner reaches of your soul.
Greenriverman, Gomes is as high yella as a brother can get. A Cape Verdean, he has Portuguese Jews in his family tree.
He does, though, make weenie guys like Island Boy Holder and Obama look like Panthers!
Brutus
"They lack dignity and depth. They are slickity and slackity, like jazz musicians. All style, no substance."
Are you sure you weren't describing your own posts?
Nah, I'm all substance, no style.
So, cultural stupidity holds a lot of white conservatives from achieving more in cultural and intellectual endeavors. Anti-intellectual bible thumping, flag waving, gun-hugging, and beer guzzling have made lots of conservatives stay stoooooopid.
How much damage have they done compared to "the leftist community organizers, the Bush Administration, the Fed, Wall Street, realtors, mortgage brokers, boiler room financial operators, Congress, faith-based organizations, civil rights leaders, anti-discrimination litigators, and on and on"?
"Nah, I'm all substance, no style."
Alright, we'll just accurately meet in the middle; you have neither.
I hope you actually read and review Buck's book in the future.
"Nah, I'm all substance, no style."
Alright, we'll just accurately meet in the middle; you have neither.
What's that, Afrocentric math?
If we were to meet in the 'middle', I'd have half of each.
But since you played dirty, I'm gonna have to claim both.
How much damage have they done compared to "the leftist community organizers, the Bush Administration, the Fed, Wall Street, realtors, mortgage brokers, boiler room financial operators, Congress, faith-based organizations, civil rights leaders, anti-discrimination litigators, and on and on"?
The issue is not the damage they've done but their lack of social and political impact. And bedause they are so dumb, they can easily be manipulated by the likes of Bush, National Review, Neocons, McCain, Palin, and etc.
Bush comes along, waves the flag, promises them no stemcell research, and blah blah, and dumb Christians think dubya is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
(To be sure, most liberals are dumb too. I mean just look at them bowing before Obama. Sick.)
"Truth said...
""They lack dignity and depth. They are slickity and slackity, like jazz musicians. All style, no substance.""
Are you sure you weren't describing your own posts?"
Wow! Such rhetorical brilliance! Ranks right up there with "I know you are, but what am I".
But I guess he had to write something, given that this post was on a black topic - he nearly never stirs himself to write on any other.
"Truth" is becoming a poster-child for black underachievement.
"And try to argue for evolution among white Christian Southerners, and they look at you like you're a 'communist'. So, cultural stupidity holds a lot of white conservatives from achieving more in cultural and intellectual endeavors. Anti-intellectual bible thumping, flag waving, gun-hugging, and beer guzzling have made lots of conservatives stay stoooooopid."
Huh? Most white southerners (over 65 percent I'd guess) under the age of 50 DO believe in some form of evolution or intelligent design. And how does "gun-hugging" and "flag-waving" inhibit someone from fulfilling their intellectual potential anyway? Last time I checked, hunting was just a past-time, and doesn't make people any "stoopider" than any other hobby.
>blacks and Africans are many times more hostile against gaysters than white heteros are<
What about the down-low brother phenomenon we keep seeing in trendy magazine pieces? One would think all black people are freaky deaky - if one believed everything media belches up.
"Huh? Most white southerners (over 65 percent I'd guess) under the age of 50 DO believe in some form of evolution or intelligent design."
Bwah? That's like saying that most of them believe in chemistry AND alchemy. The one is an actual science, the other is semi-religious claptrap. Belief in evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive.
I agree that the gun-hugging reference is pretty irrelevant, but the flag waving bit is spot on. These cretins are the reason why we are bogged down in two perpetual wars in Asia and have military bases all over the world. They've never met a war they didn't like.
This kind of conservative stupidity really does make it easy for them to be manipulated, and retards any kind of cultural revival. Just because the liberal whites are bat-sh!t insane, does not mean that the conservative whites aren't incredibly stupid. On the whole we get the worst of both worlds.
Have you noticed that the rise of gangsterism among the young seemed to coincide with the staggering popularity of a TV character who engenders the gangster lifestyle:that is,Fonzie? Perhaps young black males dealing with the pain of,as James Baldwin has remarked,loving America more than America loved them,sought to emulate the character whose familiar AAAAAYYYYY! promised acceptance,sexual success and the devotion of ones comrades:in short,Fonzie was cool. Just a theory. Did black guys watch much Happy Days? I think they'd be more Sanford & Son types.Or Chico And The Man. (Shame about Freddie Prinze.) But not,interestingly,the Jeffersons. That show appealed to middle aged white women,who perhaps saw in the charcater of George,and his devotion to his beloved "Wheezie" the black ghetto thug of their secret dreams "tamed" and domesticated. Just a thought. ( Upon refelction,it is odd that my dear mom was so devoted to just about ALL the Norman Lear Black stuff that appeared in the 70's.She loved JJ!! the last gasp of the genre was prob Clifton Webb's "Thats My Momma".Only 'Earl' the postman brought anything 'real' to the table. ) (She was not so sanguine about the "integration" that laid waste to almost all of our South Side Chicago neighborhoods.) Well,whatever. AAAAAYYYYYYY!!! DY-NO-MITE!!!
" And try to argue for evolution among white Christian Southerners, and they look at you like you're a 'communist'."
Okay, I will take the bait.
A personal acquaintance of mine who is a Ph.D. chemist in a chemical products company, is a young earth creationist Christian southerner. His degree is from the University of Chicago. He is 32 and has 3 kids so far.
Just because the liberal whites are bat-sh!t insane, does not mean that the conservative whites aren't incredibly stupid.
Someone finally figured out the real difference between liberals (insane) and conservatives (stupid).
josh:
Have you noticed that the rise of gangsterism among the young seemed to coincide with the staggering popularity of a TV character who engenders the gangster lifestyle:that is,Fonzie?
I have news for you, cool thuggish gansters with a secret heart of gold are a fictional staple much older than Fonzie or even Marlon Brando's character in "Wild One".
Perhaps young black males dealing with the pain of,as James Baldwin has remarked,loving America more than America loved them,sought to emulate the character whose familiar AAAAAYYYYY!
Sounds more like a white nerd fantasy, to have a superfriend like Fonzie to make them cool.
In the real world, the Fonzies would beat the nerdy Richies, Potsies, and Ralphs to a bloody pulp - while the parents, teachers, and cops verbally condemned such actions while doing not a blessed thing to stop them.
promised acceptance,sexual success and the devotion of ones comrades:in short,Fonzie was cool. Just a theory.
And breaking through the hypocrisy barrier. Fonzie was the psychopath who was not, but had all the evil charm of a psychopath. And such charm was transferrable, too.
Did black guys watch much Happy Days?
No.
"In truth, blacks and Africans are many times more hostile against gaysters than white heteros are."
True. However white heteros don't want fag boy scout leaders going camping with their sons.
It's not that simple. The modern all-or-nothing homosexual lifestyle is largely a product of the industrialized West. The boundaries between hetero and homo are rigid; though lifestyle bisexuals also exist with varying degrees of toleration.
Africans, African-Americans, Arabs, and to a certain extent all non-Westerners see things differently. They are more tolerant of homo-sex itself, but less tolerant of the homo lifestyle. For Africans, a manly man does it both ways, often as a display of power; but to be "gay" in the western sense is unmanly in the extreme.
promises them no stemcell research
Except that he immediately turned right around, on Thursday, August 9, 2001, and broke that promise.
On Friday, August 10, 2001, I drove to the registrar's office and resigned from the GOP [to which I have never returned].
Thankfully, I had known that this was coming - that we could never trust a Bush - so I had voted Constitution Party in 2000 and can therefore state with some pride that I never voted for Dubya.
"Wow! Such rhetorical brilliance! Ranks right up there with "I know you are, but what am I"."
Prease...lee-turn...to dojo Danier-San; Since you have reff...Mr. Truth-agi heart...very...very roan-ree.
"Bwah? That's like saying that most of them believe in chemistry AND alchemy. The one is an actual science, the other is semi-religious claptrap. Belief in evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive."
Many people don't view it that way however. They accept certain tenets of evolution but not others. I don't understand it considering I'm non-religious, but I don't really see it as totally ignorant either. I think they are just trying to reconcile their faith with science in the best manner they can, even if it isn't exactly logically consistent. The only people I regard as totally ignorant in that (evolution v. creationism) respect are the crowd that visits the creationist museums and believes that humans once lived alongside dinosaurs. And thankfully although they are a vocal minority they only comprise around 15-20 percent of the population in the South, and certainly less elsewhere. I mean, there are definitely more religious nuts in the South, don't get me wrong, but they aren't representative of mainstream white southerners.
Maybe there should be separate schools for black kids who 'act white'. Since this can't be done in a blatant manner, how about something called the "Acton Whyte Academy"?
To qualify, a black student need to be (1) smart (2) studious (3) bullied by peers.
"Bush comes along, waves the flag, promises them no stemcell research, and blah blah, and dumb Christians think dubya is the greatest thing since sliced bread. "
Yeah, those dumb Christians don't want to PAY for the EMBRYONIC stem cell research they don't believe in and for which there are plenty of private dollars already wasted without results. How dare they!
Meanwhile, Obama just cut off federal funding for ADULT stem cell research that has actually rendered useful therapies and which no one was ever opposed to.
So who is more illogical?
Those who don't want to pay for wasteful research or those who don't want to pay for proven research?
Next time, learn a little something rather than just assume if Christians oppose something, then it just must be great.
"Better put another jacket on, there, Sport, you're revealing the deep, inner reaches of your soul."
Hilarious, an objective description of a black guy reveals the "inner reaches" of the viewer's soul.
You can't make this stuff up.
Hilarious.
"Hilarious, an objective description of a black guy reveals the "inner reaches" of the viewer's soul...."
"...if you were to just look at Tiny Tim's photos you would see a big muscular scowling white guy..."
Objective or subjective?
Post a Comment