Researchers have explored this question with mixed results. It seems that the variability in their findings might be explained by the variability in the school settings in which the research was conducted.35 In studies investigating the link between academic performance and concerns about “acting White,” researchers have found that school context matters. In the hypersegregated schools that many Black students now attend, Black students represent the top of the class as well as the bottom. In that context, adolescents may be labeled pejoratively as “acting White” because of speech patterns, style of dress, or musical tastes, but not likely because of their academic performance. Yet in the context of racially mixed high schools where the AP and IB classes are overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, White and the regular and special education classes are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, in the minds of the students who attend those schools, academic success can become part of the “acting White” label some Black students seek to avoid. In those schools, academic opportunity is too often correlated with being White.36 This point is underscored by the research of Karolyn Tyson.
Black students in my studies rarely equated whiteness with academic ability and/or high achievement unless patterns of achievement by race (and usually social class) in their own school settings were stark.… A burden of acting white… was most relevant to black students in school settings where only Whites (usually wealthy Whites) or disproportionately few Blacks had opportunities to participate in higher-level programs and courses.… Students who had not experienced such explicit linking of race and achievement—those who attended all-black schools or schools that had more racially balanced classrooms—rarely recalled ever being accused of acting white specifically because of their achievement or achievement-related behaviors.37
Particularly in the context of schools where racial status has been linked to achievement, during the active exploration phase of REC identity development, when the search for identity leads toward cultural stereotypes and away from anything that might be associated with Whiteness, academic performance may decline. The response to the charge of “acting White” in this context can be a shift in attitude. Edward L., a seventeen-year-old student in Mickelson and Velasco’s study, says, “I’ve seen this happen to a couple of people, like, to fit in, they’ll just change their whole… their whole attitude… the way they dress, the way they think, they’ll stop doing work, you know. They won’t do any type of work, homework.”38 Most of the academically successful students they interviewed, however, described themselves as being able to brush off that kind of peer pressure, even though it made them uncomfortable.
What’s going on with those Black students who are not academically successful? Of course, their REC identity is developing, too. But lack of school success may lead to defining identity through other means—being a good athlete, being cool or tough, becoming the class clown—and seeking affirmation in other ways. Everyone wants and needs affirmation. “Excelling in one or more of these areas provides an identity that elicits respect, fear, and/or admiration from other students and simultaneously diverts attention from low academic performance.”39 Tyson adds, “Ridiculing the high achievers is a way of regaining a sense of dignity and power in the face of their own disappointment and resentment.… When black students disproportionately experience low achievement in the context of disproportionate white high achievement, some emphasize their black authenticity, seeking dignity in racial solidarity.”40
The Black college students I have interviewed, almost all of whom were raised in predominantly White communities, commonly described some conflict or alienation from other African American teens because of their academic success in high school. For example, a twenty-year-old woman from a Washington, DC, suburb explained: “It was weird, even in high school a lot of the Black students were, like, ‘Well, you’re not really Black.’ Whether it was because I became president of the sixth-grade class or whatever it was, it started pretty much back then. Junior high, it got worse. I was then labeled certain things, whether it was ‘the Oreo’ or I wasn’t really Black.” Others described avoiding situations that would set them apart from their Black peers. For example, one young woman declined to participate in a gifted program in her school because she knew it would separate her from the other Black students in the school.
Academically successful Black students in racially mixed schools typically want to maintain acceptance among their Black peers, but they also need a strategy to find acceptance among their White classmates, particularly since they may be one of very few Blacks in their advanced classes. Fordham described one such strategy as racelessness, wherein individuals assimilate into the dominant group by de-emphasizing characteristics that might identify them as members of the subordinate group.41 Lawrence Otis Graham’s son seemed to be using this strategy when he told his father why he did not want to report his racial encounter to the school authorities. “His chief concern was not wanting the white students and administrators to think of him as being special, different, or ‘racial.’ That was his word. ‘If the other kids around here find out that I was called a nigger, and that I complained about it,’ my son pleaded, ‘then they will call me “racial,” and will be thinking about race every time they see me. I can’t have that.’”42
Jon, a young man I interviewed, offered a classic example of this strategy as he described his approach to dealing with his discomfort at being the only Black person in his advanced classes. He said, “At no point did I ever think I was White or did I ever want to be White.… I guess it was one of those things where I tried to de-emphasize the fact that I was Black.” This strategy led him to avoid activities that were associated with Blackness. He recalled, “I didn’t want to do anything that was traditionally Black, like I never played basketball. I ran cross-country.… I went for distance running instead of sprints.” He felt he had to show his White classmates that there were “exceptions to all these stereotypes.” However, this strategy was of limited usefulness. When he traveled outside his home community with his White teammates, he sometimes encountered overt racism. “I quickly realized that I’m Black, and that’s the thing that they’re going to see first, no matter how much I try to de-emphasize my Blackness.”
A Black student can play down his or her Black identity in order to succeed in school and mainstream institutions without rejecting his or her Black identity and culture.43 Instead of becoming raceless, an achieving Black student can become an emissary, someone who sees his or her own achievements as advancing the cause of the racial group. For example, social scientists Richard Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff describe how a successful Black student, in response to the accusation of acting White, connected his achievement to those of other Black men by saying, “Martin Luther King must not have been Black, then, since he had a doctoral degree, and Malcolm X must not have been Black since he educated himself while in prison.” In addition, he demonstrated his loyalty to the Black community by taking an openly political stance against the racial discrimination he observed in his school.44
Similarly, Mickelson and Velasco found that some of their interviewees were motivated by the challenge of “representing the race” in the face of other people’s projection of stereotypes.
They considered the acting-white label to be part of the insidious legacy that impugned black people’s intelligence.… They deliberately embraced the challenge to do well, to work hard, and to succeed to prove the doubters wrong. They knew they were intelligent, they knew they could handle high-level classes, and they consciously wanted to disprove any notion that black students were not as intellectually competent as white students. And they wanted to reclaim academic achievement as entirely consistent with acting black.45
These examples make clear that an oppositional identity can potentially interfere with academic achievement, but that is not always the case. There are alternative responses that can lead to academic success. It may be tempting for educators to blame the adolescents themselves for their acade
mic disinterest, in instances where that occurs. However, the questions that educators and other concerned adults must ask are these: What is it about the curriculum and the culture of academic opportunity within the school that reinforces the notion that academic excellence is a largely White domain? What curricular interventions might we use to encourage the development of an empowered emissary identity?
The Search for Alternative Images
An oppositional identity discouraging academic achievement is not inevitable even in a racist society. If young people are exposed to images of African American academic achievement in their early years, as they look ahead to see what older students are achieving or as they read about the accomplishments and contributions of a diverse group of women and men in their textbooks, they will be less likely to define school success as something for Whites only. They will know that there is a long history of Black intellectual achievement. In this context, some have speculated about the potentially positive impact of the Obama presidency on the aspirations and academic achievement of young Black youth who, during Obama’s eight years in office, embraced President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as role models and highly visible examples of Black academic achievement. During the 2008 campaign, teachers and students from a predominantly Black middle school in Washington, DC, were interviewed about this “Obama effect.” One of the teachers, noticing an increase in homework completion, teared up as she described the positive changes she saw in her students during the Obama campaign. “She said, ‘It was really moving for me to hear students who don’t typically do well in school speak of, you know, different things that they know they can do because of what Barack Obama has shown them.’”46
Though he came of age before the election of Barack Obama, the point about the importance of visible role models was made quite eloquently by Jon, the young man I quoted earlier. Though he made the choice to excel in school, he labored under the false assumption that he was “inventing the wheel.” It wasn’t until he reached college and had the opportunity to take African American studies courses that he learned about other African Americans besides Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Frederick Douglass—the same three men he had heard about year after year, from kindergarten to high school graduation. As he reflected on his identity struggle in high school, he said:
It’s like I went through three phases.… My first phase was being cool, doing whatever was particularly cool for Black people at the time, and that was like in junior high. Then in high school, you know, I thought being Black was basically all stereotypes, so I tried to avoid all of those things. Now in college, you know, I realize that being Black means a variety of things.
Learning his history in college was of great psychological importance to Jon, providing him with role models he had been missing in high school. He was particularly inspired by learning of the intellectual legacy of Black men at his own college:
When you look at those guys who were here in the Twenties, they couldn’t live on campus. They couldn’t eat on campus. They couldn’t get their hair cut in town. And yet they were all Phi Beta Kappa.… That’s what being Black really is, you know, knowing who you are, your history, your accomplishments.… When I was in junior high, I had White role models. And then when I got into high school, you know, I wasn’t sure but I just didn’t think having White role models was a good thing. So I got rid of those. And I basically just, you know, only had my parents for role models. I kind of grew up thinking that we were on the cutting edge. We were doing something radically different than everybody else. And not realizing that there are all kinds of Black people doing the very things that I thought we were the only ones doing.… You’ve got to do the very best you can so that you can continue the great traditions that have already been established.
This young man was not alone in his frustration over having learned little about his own cultural history in grade school. Time and again in the research interviews I conducted, Black students lamented the absence of courses in African American history or literature at the high school level and indicated how significant this new learning was to them in college, how excited and affirmed they felt by this newfound knowledge. The comments they made to me are now echoed in the student demands for curricular inclusion that spread across college campuses so rapidly in 2015.47 Sadly, many Black students never get to college, alienated from the process of education long before high school graduation. They may never get access to the information that might have helped them expand their definition of what it means to be Black and, in the process, might have helped them stay in school. Young people are developmentally ready for this information in adolescence. We ought to provide it.
Not at the Table
As we have seen, Jon felt he had to distance himself from his Black peers in order to be successful in high school. He was one of the kids not sitting at the Black table. Continued encounters with racism and access to new, culturally relevant information empowered him to give up his racelessness and become an emissary. In college, not only did he sit at the Black table, but he emerged as a campus leader, confident in the support of his Black peers. His example illustrates that one’s presence at the Black table is often an expression of one’s identity development, which evolves over time.
Some Black students may not be developmentally ready for the Black table in middle school or high school. They may not yet have had their own encounters with racism, and race may not be very salient for them. Just as we don’t all reach puberty and begin developing sexual interest at the same time, REC-group identity development unfolds in idiosyncratic ways. Though my research suggests that early adolescence is a common time for Black students to begin actively identifying with their REC group, one’s own life experiences are also important determinants of the timing. Young people whose racial identity development is out of sync with their peers’ often feel in an awkward position. Adolescents are notoriously egocentric and assume that their experience is the same as everyone else’s. Just as girls who have become interested in boys become disdainful of their friends still interested in dolls, the Black teens who are at the table can be quite judgmental toward those who are not. “If I think it is a sign of authentic Blackness to sit at this table, then you should too.”
The young Black men and women who still hang around with the White classmates they may have known since early childhood may be snubbed by their Black peers. This dynamic is particularly apparent in regional schools where children from a variety of neighborhoods are brought together. When Black children from predominantly White neighborhoods go to school with Black children from predominantly Black neighborhoods, the former group are often viewed as trying to be White by the latter. We all speak the language of the streets we live on. Black children living in White neighborhoods often sound White to their Black peers from across town and may be teased because of it. This can be a very painful experience, particularly when the young person is not fully accepted as part of the White peer group either.
One young Black woman from a predominantly White community described exactly this situation in an interview. In a school with a lot of racial tension, Terri felt that “the worst thing that happened” was the rejection she experienced from the other Black children who were being bused to her school. Though she wanted to be friends with them, they teased her, calling her an “Oreo cookie” and sometimes beating her up. The only close Black friend Terri had was a biracial girl from her neighborhood.
Racial tensions also affected her relationships with White students. One White friend’s parents commented, “I can’t believe you’re Black. You don’t seem like all the Black children. You’re nice.” Though other parents made similar comments, Terri reported that her White friends didn’t start making them until junior high school, when Terri’s Blackness became something to be explained. One friend introduced Terri to another White girl by saying, “She’s not really Black, she just went to Florida and got a really dark tan.” A White sixth-grade “boyfriend” became embarrass
ed when his friends discovered he had a crush on a Black girl. He stopped telling Terri how pretty she was and instead called her “nigger” and said, “Your lips are too big. I don’t want to see you. I won’t be your friend anymore.”
Despite supportive parents who expressed concern about her situation, Terri said she was a “very depressed child.” Her father would have conversations with her “about being Black and beautiful” and about “the union of people of color that had always existed that I needed to find. And the pride.” However, her parents did not have a network of Black friends to help support her.
It was the intervention of a Black junior high school teacher that Terri feels helped her the most. Mrs. Campbell “really exposed me to the good Black community because I was so down on it” by getting Terri involved in singing gospel music and introducing her to other Black students who would accept her. “That’s when I started having other Black friends. And I thank her a lot for that.”
The significant role that Mrs. Campbell played in helping Terri open up illustrates the constructive potential that informed adults can have in the identity development process. She recognized Terri’s need for a same-race peer group and helped her find one. Talking to groups of Black students about the variety of living situations Black people come from and the unique situation facing Black adolescents in White communities helps to expand the definition of what it means to be Black and increases intragroup acceptance at a time when that is quite important.
For children in Terri’s situation, it is also helpful for Black parents to provide ongoing opportunities for their children to connect with other Black peers, even if that means traveling outside the community they live in. Race-conscious parents often do this by seeking out a historically Black church to attend or by maintaining ties to Black social organizations such as Jack and Jill. Parents who make this effort often find that their children become bicultural, able to move comfortably between Black and White communities and able to sit at the Black table when they are ready.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 17
