Is “acting white” a legacy of integration policies that shortchanged blacks?
As the white adoptive parent of two black children, Harvard Law graduate Stuart Buck began to read about education and race and became intrigued by the “acting white” epithet sometimes directed at at high-achieving minority students.
That personal interest grew into a professional one that culminated in a book due out in May, “Acting White, the Ironic Legacy of Desegregation.”
A doctoral student in education at the University of Arkansas, Buck says his research led him to a surprising conclusion, that the “acting white” criticism had its roots in desegregation that wrenched black students from schools and communities they knew and threw them into new schools where they were often reviled, shunned and underestimated.
“The analogy I would draw is treatment for cancer,” said Buck, speaking by phone from Arkansas. “Segregation is like a cancer that we had to get rid of, but the treatment that saved our lives had unintended side effects.”
While black students often attended segregated schools that lacked the resources of white facilities, Buck says the schools served as the connective tissue in a community that historically valued education.
“In segregated schools, black children had consistently seen other blacks succeeding in the academic world,’’ he says. “The authority figures and role models — teachers and principals were all black. And the best students in the schools were black as well.”
While black parents welcomed integration, they had hoped for a merger of black and white schools. Instead, they witnessed the destruction of black schools and the erasure of the culture, community and closeness that the schools had created. Their children marched off to white schools where they experienced hostility and were tracked into lower-level classes. In his research, Buck found many examples of where even new facilities that had housed black schools were abandoned because white parents weren’t willing to send their kids to black schools.
“They did not want to send white schoolchildren into black schools, to be taught by black teachers and disciplined by black principals,” he says.
A University of Georgia and Harvard Law graduate, Buck cites Butler High School in Gainesville, which was built in 1962 but closed seven years later as part of the desegregation plan.
Black principals were demoted or fired, and teachers made to feel unwanted in the integrated settings. Buck notes that Gainesville had 115 white teachers and 70 black teachers in 1966. Three years later, 22 black teachers remained.
The loss was significant to the city’s black students because black teachers usually lived in the same community, knew the families of students and delighted in their successes.
There was an affection that was not easily replicated with white teachers who did not live in the same communities, attend the same churches or shop in the same stores.
In losing their school, Gainesville’s black students lost their mascot, their school colors, their yearbook and newspaper. Buck says the uprooting of black students from familiar and supportive environments was made even more difficult by the reception in their new schools.
Buck draws on news accounts of the era in which white students commented, “This is our school and they are just going to have to adjust.” White female teachers, raised to fear black men, were not comfortable teaching black high school boys.
Buck cites the research showing that capable black students are still less likely to be in advanced classes than white peers. Either out of overt racism or “liberal guilt,” Buck says white teachers did not hold black students to high expectations.
Once reassigned to desegregated schools, black students “were sitting in a classroom with mostly other black students in what they believed to be the ‘dumb’ class, watching as the white students headed to the ‘smart’ class down the hall,’’’ writes Buck.
Dispirited, black students began to associate achievement with white students and ostracize peers who joined the white kids in the ‘‘smart’’ classes down the hall.
Among the research that Buck mentions: The findings of Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. that while the popularity of white students rises with grade-point average, black children become less popular the better their grades.
He cites the experience of Ron Kirk, the first black mayor of Dallas, who recalled getting beat up at his newly integrated junior high school for being black and again in his neighborhood the same day for not being black enough.
Buck believes it is important to understand anti-school attitudes because he believes that students must be willing partners in education. “From youngest ages, children love learning, but something happens around 10, 11 or 12,” he says. “We have to understand why it is that children, black or white, don’t want to learn.”
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166 comments Add your comment
Maureen Downey
March 1st, 2010
10:22 am
south ga teacher, I think the author’s point was that education research fails to consider what the kids bring to the table. He wants to explore why black students may not value education excellence. His book does not have a lot of remedies, but he does think that there needs to be a movement within schools and communities that raises the profile and value of doing well in school.
Maureen
(I invited Stuart Buck to respond to some of these blog comments. He has been reading the comments, so maybe you will get a response from him directly.)
Senior
March 1st, 2010
11:56 am
As Maureen states, race remains a factor; particularly in the structure of Southern educational systems. A child of any race, given an excellent educational setting, can excel at the highest secondary levels; the foregoing can be substantiated by the fact that Stanford University—one of the two most selective universities in the country—has been majority-minority for more than a decade.
Other (than the typical Southern) schools worked throughout “black educational history.” However, many excellent black schools (in the North) were decimated as middle class blacks, upwardly mobile through affirmative action and the lessening of defacto barriers, left their less-prepared neighbors. The result was the socalled creation of a highly concentrated “underclass.” Neighborhood schools in these “ghettos” disintegrated as a result.
I can witness good black schools in days past. I was one of only seven white kids (1960) in an otherwise all black high school of ~1000 students. Many of my black classmates went on to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians. The best teacher I ever had was a black male (English teacher) who was one of the many black male teachers/role models on the teaching staff. [It's relatively rare to find a black male teaching a core subject in many of our Southern high schools.]
Another major difference between the then-now culture of the school was the relative priority of athletics; academics was the priority then, athletics are a vehicle of exploitation today. [How else can we explain that the GHSAA rules permit the "student-athlete" to remain eligible if he never passes a math or English class during 4 years of high school.] That is not to say that athletics weren’t important in the old days; in a remarkable display of talent, the entire football backfield of my sophomore class went on to play pro football—they also graduated from college because of academic preparation of high school solidified by the carrot-stick approach of demanding success in the classroom to remain eligibilty (no failing grades) for football.
I sense that I’m rambling. The point I intended to make: kids of any race can be academically successful in an environment structured for success. That structure doesn’t exist in modern Southern schools.
art vandalay
March 1st, 2010
2:32 pm
as a 37 yr old white southerner, i have always been perplexed be the ability of blacks to self-segregate. it seem to be more prevalent in their culture rather than any i have been exposed too. we should all be proud of our race, ethnicity, gender, culture, etc. growing up with a military father, i was exposed to a variety of races and cultures. i know it was a very small taste, but anyone who has lived on a military base understands the familiarity gained through the close proximity of base living. so many things seem to be threatening to the black culture. how can you ostracize someone for speaking proper english, getting involved in academic achievement, attemting to better themselves. however, that cycle continues to perpetuate itself. it seems that a majority of the black community only respects those who have “made it” with success in hip-hop or athletics. i know for many blacks, even president obama is “too white”. you lose “street cred” for having a neutral accent, conservaive attire, or god-forbid, an education. many would ridicule tiger woods as too white, but those same people would be the first to stand up and shout in his behalf as another example of a black man who “rules his sport”. even the rev. commented that woods’ biggest failure in so sorted affairs was not having affairs with black women so they too could profit off the media attention. i know i paint with a broad brush, but it seems to me that latinos and asians continue to excel through the opportunities given to them in this great country of ours. we still hve a ways to go, but many minority communities continue to flourish, while the southwest atlantas of the world continue to decompose while playing the race card and diligently using racial injustice as their crutch that forever remains in their corner if necessary. i believe you can preserve racial identity while still moving forward.
Hakim
March 1st, 2010
3:55 pm
@NoBama2012 – President Obama refers to himself as African American. He has a European American mother and an African father. In fact, President Obama may have more African DNA than many African Americans whose African ancestry was generations ago.
Obama’s life story and heritage are also essential parts of his political appeal. His racial background, as the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, not only helps him relate to a wide variety of people, it has even become a personification of some with hopes that the United States can move beyond its racial divide.
President Obama often describes his struggles as a child who was intellectually gifted and often not accepted due to his racial heritage. This blog is quite representative of the type of challenges many African American youth experience when aspiring towards academic achievement.
Media Coverage « Stuart Buck
March 1st, 2010
4:07 pm
[...] Media Coverage The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s education reporter Maureen Downey interviewed me last week, and the result is a well-written column and blog post. [...]
Mike S
March 1st, 2010
6:46 pm
Lee – you Rock! Amazig how many people who “Celebrate Diversity” see it as a win-win game – never seem to click on how equality is only a political construct! Could 40,000 years of evolution only show itself in skin color and hair quality?
Mike S
March 1st, 2010
6:56 pm
Postad on Buck’s Brag Site:
I read the AJC post. I think you are a twit. By adopting children which you could never produce yourself, you are negating the validity of their cultural heritage. How are you any different than the white slave masters of 160 years ago, other than your self serving concept of benevolence? They, too, offered proof of raising the black man from his benighted circumstances, they too equated materialism as the true meaning of life.
By placing black children in a position to either choose to adhere to their own culture’s rules, or adopt the ways of the white man to achieve “success” – you have sold souls that were not yours to sell.
Meet the enemy – he is you.
Bigboy
March 1st, 2010
9:36 pm
We are in the year 2010 and still talking about “white” and “black” instead of AMERICANS.Did any of you know that the whole idea of calling yourself “white” or “black” originated in the 13 colonies?Never before in recorded history did a man identify himself by his skin color… it’s old tired and the reason racial crap is still perpetrated.Prior to coming to the states people identified with their homeland not their race.
Bigboy
March 1st, 2010
9:43 pm
As for African Americans I would say the civil rights act was robbed of it’s intended effect by the inclusion of white females to the coverage.If this would have been limited to Black descendants of slaves only it may have had a much more profound economic impact on the Black community.As it is White females have been the biggest benefactors of the civil rights legislation..Ironic but true….there are more white females in America than there are Black people period.Amazing
Bigboy
March 1st, 2010
9:59 pm
As a matter of fact White females are the largest group of ANY people in the United States.Yet they were included in legislation that was intended to SOMEWHAT temper the long lasting effects of racial slavery and economic depredation.You have to admit it was a rather brilliant move…Take something intended to help a group of citizens who were victimized by a system designed to exploit their labor and give a lionshare of those intended safeguards to the largest segment of the racial group who benefited( directly or indirectly)from the denial of equal rights to that group.Simply brilliant…Machiavellian even!
sipp
March 2nd, 2010
8:55 am
This article is a reality. It’s noted in homes, schools, churches and the overall community. For many, it is acceptable to be ignorant and illiterate. Sad and tragic, but true.
What a Joke
March 2nd, 2010
4:25 pm
Wow, these posts on here are unbelievable! No wonder people around the world think Southerners are ignorant.
And Maureen, I know about the first ammendment and everything but this was nothing but a way to get the “switchboard” lit up.
I am white, I am a native Georgian, I am a Generation Xer, and I am a teacher. It saddens me to read posts like the ones left by Lee and Hank Williams Jr. and others.
I was raised in poor rural Georgia by great parents who taught us about MLK’s words and doing unto others as you would have them…
You have the right to voice your opinion like everyone else, but it’s just so disappointing to see THAT kind of ignorance being vagrantly touted by white people as a sound theory on life in general.
What a Joke
March 2nd, 2010
4:29 pm
I meant “flagrantly” not “vagrantly.” I do know how to spell most of the time…
Ole Guy
March 2nd, 2010
8:29 pm
Alecia, your observations on the abuse of the English language in the name of racial harmony speak volumns. Just as historys have been re-writen to appease the wrongs of our fathers …just as the so-called ebonics lingo has been sanctified as legitimate…we tend to “allow” these abuses of language and heritage simply because we strain at our feeble efforts in teaching diversity. Rather than telling the kid “YOU ARE WRONG…SAY IT RIGHT”, we allow our fears to overwhelm our better judgements.
Ole Guy
March 2nd, 2010
8:37 pm
And Joke…don’t sweat the small stuff. Nothing pisses me off more than these pinheads who concentrate their replys on such superflous issues. I think most readers are somewhat “on the ball”, as it were, to be able to assimilate your intent, mis-spellings not withstanding. For those who would rather correct spelling, than participate in the topic of discussion, my suggestions as to what they can do would surely place me on any black list of religous acceptability. Continue the march, Joke.
‘Acting white’ « Joanne Jacobs
May 25th, 2010
6:40 am
[...] of Arkansas. As the white adoptive parent of two black children, he chose to focus on the pressures faced by high-achieving minority students, he told Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Once reassigned to desegregated [...]