G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
nikkas don't look down on squares?
I have never seen anyone look down on smart kids in the black schools I went to.
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Elle Driver
Veteran
Being gifted don’t make you no square.
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
Getting good grades and reading a lot gets you that label where I'm from.
When I lived in 95+% black neighborhood I never encountered any stuff like being looked down on for being smart or "acting white." Never even heard the term acting white til I moved to the mixed side of town. I do remember all the black kids asking if I ever been shot before and shyt like that. Never heard that from the cac kids tho.
Really all the black kids looked down on where I was from. None of the cac kids did this openly atleast.
Really all the black kids looked down on where I was from. None of the cac kids did this openly atleast.
nikka you 6'5 who the fukk is going clown you
Roland Coltrane
Superstar
'Acting White' Remains a Barrier for Black Education
Blaming the issue on society is like telling someone on a rainy day not to use an umbrella, but to support efforts to eliminate weather.
John McWhorter | October 8, 2014
LiveLeakHere we go again. A black woman (see photo at right) has articulately battled the idea that using standard English is "acting white" in a video that has gone viral of late, and Jamelle Bouie at Slate has called her out for propagating a myth that black students devalue school. In the eighties, (black) anthropologist John Ogbu with Signithia Fordham argued that black kids underperform in school partly because those who behave scholarly are teased as being "white," such that often fitting in means letting one's grades slip. And indeed, legions of nerdy black kids are familiar with black peers saying "Why are you working so hard on that school stuff? You think you're white?"
HAS ANTI-RACISM BECOME AS HARMFUL AS RACISM? JOHN MCWHORTER VS. NIKHIL SINGH[/paste:font]
Todd Krainin|11.30.18
- BRICKBAT: APARTHEID
Charles Oliver|11.15.18However, the documentation of this has always rankled those who prefer to document black problems as due to institutional racism rather than cultural problems, and over the past ten years, it has become popular to claim that it has been "refuted" that black kids think of school as "white" and that this lowers black scholastic performance.
- LIBERTARIAN FILMMAKER, PODCASTER KMELE FOSTER WANTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD: PODCAST
Nick Gillespie|11.14.18
But the people taking that position have a way of serenely neglecting counterarguments, not to mention embracing starkly shaky argumentation as authoritative simply because it makes what they regard as the better music. For example, one supposed piece of evidence that the "acting white" bit isn't a problem is that if you ask black kids if they value school they say yes. But this is hardly the smackdown argument people suppose. Last time I checked, race and racial self-identification were a subtle business. Who's up for asking Donald Sterling whether he likes black people? Aren't these sociologists, educators and journalists such as Bouie exactly the people who would laugh out the room a study claiming that you can identify people's inner racism by asking them about it?
Roland Fryer has shownthat among black teens, the better one does in school the fewer people report him or her as a friend—and to much more of an extent than among kids of other races.
The evidence continues. Newspaper coverage of the phenomenon has been rich. John Ogbu wrote a whole book squarely documenting black kids being told that doing well in school was white. After I wrote Losing the Race in 2000, I was surprised by thousands of letters, including over a hundred from black people explicitly attesting that they were teased as "white" for liking school, as well as from concerned teachers wondering what to do about black kids coming to them and telling them about this happening. I could go on, and on, and on (and have, elsewhere). The evidence is of crushing weight.
But no, all of this is apparently mere "anecdotes," refuted by the fact that if you ask black kids whether they respect school they say yes. Or, beyond that, people who want to wish the "acting white" problem away have a rather extraordinary collection of further feints.
The "acting white is a myth" crowd see quite the weapon in, for example, Tyson, Darity and Castellino's finding that it's mostly in integrated schools that the "acting white" charge flares up. Their implication seems to be that because it isn't an issue among poor black kids, it basically isn't an issue at all. But whence suddenly the idea that only poor black kids' problems matter? Anyone can see that the reason poor black kids underachieve is lousy schools, not being called "white," but surely we aren't under the impression that there are so few middle class black students in 2014 that their problems qualify as mere static. That black kids suffer this in advantaged circumstances such as these is exactly why the "acting white" issue is a problem.
Meanwhile, another purported riposte to people like me is studies showing that problems like poverty, poor schools, and economic duress "disprove" that the acting white charge is significant. However, they do not—they merely show that the issue is multifaceted. The question is why a widespread brand of social rejection would not have an effect, and a serious one, on grades; people claiming "acting white" is a myth have no answer to that question.
Then, we are informed that white kids get made fun of for being nerds, too. But once again, the people claiming that there is nothing race-specific about this issue are almost willfully playing dumb. It's one thing to be called nerd, but to be told you are disqualifying yourself from your race, with its implications that your presentation of yourself as black is fake, lends a particular sting. It is, quite simply, worse than being called a nerd. Why it is that people otherwise sitting always at the ready to remind us that in subtle but powerful ways, race matters, on this issue suddenly become color-blind?
The reason is that ironically, given that they readily designate people like me as working from bias, it is these detractors who are working from a deep-seated ideology rather than empiricism. They are viscerally dedicated to tracing black problems to structural problems in America's workings, and vigorously deep-sixing any idea that black people might also have some self-standing cultural issues to think about as intellectually mistaken, and probably immoral.
Never mind if someone carefully notes that the cultural problem is a legacy of racism in the past—that isn't enough. To speak of black cultural problems other than in passing is to "pathologize" black people, tout court. For example, what's being identified as black issue must be re-identified as a Southern one, or class-based—which is like a Russian saying that addressing alcoholism in Russia as a Russian problem is wrong because Finns and Swedes drink a lot too. Or, Bouie and others try an idea that it's speech and dress that are being made fun of, rather than being bookish, despite endless reports that the taunt is indeed directly about the books.
Quite simply, there are no human groups with no disadvantageous cultural traits. Practices become entrenched at first for concrete reasons, but can hold on past the circumstances that created them, piggybacking on other human leanings (think Albanian blood feuds). The "acting white" bit, for example, is compatible with teenagers' tribal impulse and is also handy for assuaging insecurity about schoolwork.
But these sociologists and journalists somehow cannot comprehend that cultural traits do not walk in lockstep with societal forces. To them, we're wrong to warn black kids not to fall for the "acting white" slur. They bristle to see media pieces teaching the public to care about it. Instead, we are to battle societal inequity and institutional racism. To me, this sounds like telling someone about to go outside on a rainy day not to use an umbrella, but to support efforts to eliminate weather.
O.T.I.S.
Veteran
Actually, I remember when I lived in the hood as a kid, I used to hoop like everyday at the park and in my driveway with my neighbor and older kids.
We actually used to bet on games (money, video games, etc).
It was the older kids that told me to stay in school and I was too smart for certain shyt I was doing. I had a few other cats that thought I was a “nerd” or square but I was good af at football and decent at b-ball. So when they saw me on the court or field they were surprised that I was fast af and knew what I was doing.
We actually used to bet on games (money, video games, etc).
It was the older kids that told me to stay in school and I was too smart for certain shyt I was doing. I had a few other cats that thought I was a “nerd” or square but I was good af at football and decent at b-ball. So when they saw me on the court or field they were surprised that I was fast af and knew what I was doing.
Got told I thought I was white because I made an 80 on a test. 
Brehs had no confidence in themselves unfortunately, considering how they were dumbing themselves down intentionally. No reason half the young brothas who was on that wave couldn't score nice grades.
Brehs had no confidence in themselves unfortunately, considering how they were dumbing themselves down intentionally. No reason half the young brothas who was on that wave couldn't score nice grades.
Cel 510 kid ados forever
Veteran
Putting whiteness with being smart is c00n butter biscuit talk.
Ive never seen black kids do it ever.
Black smart kids was always respected and encouraged in our community.
Even the drug dealers and hustlers would tell u to go to school and get a education
Ive never seen black kids do it ever.
Black smart kids was always respected and encouraged in our community.
Even the drug dealers and hustlers would tell u to go to school and get a education
This. Rejects infiltrated the definition of geeks. A lot of people claiming they nerds aren't even nerds. They just socially awkward. So they claim people don't like them b/c they smart...the bad breath, inability to speak to the opposite sex, lack of social acumen, weird theories about the opposite sex, lack of receptive and pragmatic language skills and communication issues have NOTHING to do with it.
No no, it's cuz people don't like "good", "nice", "nerdy" (insert any random word that has nothing to do with attraction)
Field Marshall Bradley
Veteran
We got looked down on by our own people not because we were 'smart', but because the majority of our classmates were 'White'.
They don’t even wanna understand for real
Field Marshall Bradley
Veteran
True... all that getting kidnapped and forced in a locker just for being smart is TV shyt... It was plenty of smart black kids in my high school.... it was actually an anomaly... and that may be because of new black money, but that’s another topic... no black kid was bullied for being smart.... Hell, there were potential national merit scholars starting at running back/full back st my high school.... and we were high district classification
The Exchanges
All Star
This summed up smart kids in my school:
Replace that white dude with any smart kid in class.
Replace that white dude with any smart kid in class.