Tyrone N. Butts
APE Reporter
16
New Study Challenges the Thesis that Black Students Who Study Hard are Hampered by Peer Accusations of "Acting White":
Nearly 20 years ago, the late John Ogbu, a distinguished sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley, advanced the theory that a strong cultural bias against education was developing in the black community. Ogbu found that black students who studied and did well in school were ostracized by their peers and accused of "acting white." This, Professor Ogbu explained, was a factor in lower grades and SAT scores among young blacks.
But a new study conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina and financed by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction questions the Ogbu thesis that there
is some sort of cultural deficiency specific to the black co
mmunity which translates into a stigmatization that dampens academic achievement. The study, entitled Breeding Animosity: The Burden of Acting White and Other Problems of Status Group Hierarchies in Schools, found that indeed there is a stigma against high academic achievement in North Carolina schools. But this stigma occurs in all races and ethnic groups.
In almost all instances, the new study found no correlation between race and opposition to academic achievement at the high school level. But there was one exception. At a school where blacks make up a very large percentage of the student body but only a small percentage of the students assigned to gifted or honors courses, those few black students who are enrolled in these courses are often ostracized by their black peers and accused of acting white. "Thus oppositional attitudes are not 'learned in the black community' as some have suggested," says William A.
Darity Jr., one of the authors of the study. "But instead they are constructed
in schools under certain conditions."
Darity is Research Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University and is also a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He told JBHE that he believes unwarranted tracking of black students into the lower end of the curriculum in the elementary and middle school years results in racial imbalance in gifted, honors, and Advanced Placement courses at the high school level. This in turn produces a situation in a racially mixed school where the black students who are placed in higher level courses are ostracized by their black peers.
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Look, dumbass Darity, first of all, the tracking is not unwarranted. Negroes are tracked into spec
ial edjumakashun classes instead of gifted programs because they qualify for special edjumakashun and they don't qualify for gifted programs.
Putting a retarded negro in a gifted class isn't going to make that retard jigaboo a genius later on.
T.N.B.
New Study Challenges the Thesis that Black Students Who Study Hard are Hampered by Peer Accusations of "Acting White":
Nearly 20 years ago, the late John Ogbu, a distinguished sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley, advanced the theory that a strong cultural bias against education was developing in the black community. Ogbu found that black students who studied and did well in school were ostracized by their peers and accused of "acting white." This, Professor Ogbu explained, was a factor in lower grades and SAT scores among young blacks.
But a new study conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina and financed by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction questions the Ogbu thesis that there
is some sort of cultural deficiency specific to the black co
mmunity which translates into a stigmatization that dampens academic achievement. The study, entitled Breeding Animosity: The Burden of Acting White and Other Problems of Status Group Hierarchies in Schools, found that indeed there is a stigma against high academic achievement in North Carolina schools. But this stigma occurs in all races and ethnic groups.
In almost all instances, the new study found no correlation between race and opposition to academic achievement at the high school level. But there was one exception. At a school where blacks make up a very large percentage of the student body but only a small percentage of the students assigned to gifted or honors courses, those few black students who are enrolled in these courses are often ostracized by their black peers and accused of acting white. "Thus oppositional attitudes are not 'learned in the black community' as some have suggested," says William A.
Darity Jr., one of the authors of the study. "But instead they are constructed
in schools under certain conditions."
Darity is Research Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University and is also a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He told JBHE that he believes unwarranted tracking of black students into the lower end of the curriculum in the elementary and middle school years results in racial imbalance in gifted, honors, and Advanced Placement courses at the high school level. This in turn produces a situation in a racially mixed school where the black students who are placed in higher level courses are ostracized by their black peers.
************
Look, dumbass Darity, first of all, the tracking is not unwarranted. Negroes are tracked into spec
ial edjumakashun classes instead of gifted programs because they qualify for special edjumakashun and they don't qualify for gifted programs.
Putting a retarded negro in a gifted class isn't going to make that retard jigaboo a genius later on.
T.N.B.