Are Hispanics and White Private School Students Most Afraid of “Acting White”?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________

Or The Problems of Roland G. Fryer “Acting White” Study

[This is the third part of a second open letter to John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race.]

If one accepts the findings of the Roland G. Fryer “acting white” study then the group with the most intense fear of being perceived as “white” for having high academic achievement is Hispanics. Whites in private schools have the second strongest fear of “acting white.” Blacks would come in third with the mildest fear of “acting white.” I raise these points because I doubt that white private school students are afraid of “acting white.” The closer one examines the study, the more problems appear.

In 2005, Roland G. Fryer, Jr. and Paul Torelli circulated a paper titled “An Empircal Analysis of ‘Acting White’” through the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Fryer published a version of the paper for more general audiences titled “Acting White” in Education Next. The research received a great deal of media attention and it was treated as conclusive proof that the “acting white” phenomenon is a serious problem among black students. But if one reads the study carefully and especially the more academic version circulated by NBER one comes to very different conclusions.

The “acting white” phenomenon was defined in Fryer and Torelli’s study as when there are racial differences in the relationship between grades and “spectral popularity index scores.” It is important to note that the analysis is based on spectral popularity scores not actual accusations of “acting white.”

If we accept Fryer and Torelli’s assumptions and evidence then it appears that in majority black schools, black students cease to be as popular as white students after a B+ GPA. We can only dream of the day that most black students have B+ GPAs. This has to be seen as a very, very mild case of “acting white.”

The problem for black students appears to be more severe in integrated schools because in integrated schools after a C GPA, black students are not as popular as white students. This still makes the problem fairly modest because the vast majority of black students attend segregated schools. Additionally, although black students in integrated schools have lower popularity index scores than whites, their popularity index scores still increase slightly up to a B+ GPA. (See image below. Click on image for a better view.) So, if popularity affects black student achievement, even in integrated schools they still have an incentive up to a B+.

Grades and “Popularity” in Integrated SchoolsBut even these very modest claims of the Fryer and Torelli study are suspect since Fryer and Torelli’s spectral popularity scores may not even measure popularity. This question arises when we examine the findings for whites and Hispanics more closely.

Because of the way Fryer and Torelli define “acting white,” they actually end up using white students as the standard even when their findings indicate that the white students do not appear to be valuing education very highly. This makes literal sense for examining a fear of “acting white,” but if one thinks anti-intellectualism is a problem, it should be a problem when whites are anti-intellectual also.

If we put aside Fryer and Torelli’s nonwhite-only definition of the “acting white” phenomenon and simply say that we expect there to be a positive relationship between spectral popularity scores and grades for all groups, popular assumptions about education are turned upside down. With this simple universally-applied definition, Hispanic students are the most anti-intellectual group. Hispanic popularity scores decline dramatically after a C+ GPA in public schools and after a C- GPA in private schools. I am not aware of anyone theorizing that “acting white” is worst among Hispanics compared to other groups.

White students in private schools also appear to be rather anti-intellectual according to Fryer and Torelli’s spectral scores. In private schools, white spectral scores peak at about a C- and then decline. See the figure below. (Click on the image for a better view.) The trend line for white private school students clearly differs from that of white public school students, but Fryer and Torelli's definition requiring racial differences allows them to ignore this fact. If white private school students were black public school students, however, the authors would declare them to have a severe C- case of "acting white."

The Most Popular Whites in Private Schools Have C- Grades!?!Approximation of white public school scores on private school graph.

So, if we accept Fryer and Torelli’s evidence then anti-intellectualism is most rampant among Hispanics, and the second biggest problem occurs among white students attending private schools. If black leaders and public intellectuals really want to lecture groups based on Fryer and Torelli’s research then they should be lecturing Hispanics and whites in private schools. Because this is where according to the research the most serious “acting white” problems lie.

I do not recommend this course of action, however, since I have serious doubts that Fryer and Torelli’s spectral popularity scores measure what the researchers think they measure.


Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[The Thora Institute needs you.]

The Educational Proof is in the Achievement Pudding

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________

[This is the second part of a second open letter to John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race.]

Black students’ pro-school and pro-education survey responses are backed up by their test-score trends and increasing educational attainment. It is useful to begin with the middle-class community of Shaker Heights that John Ogbu made famous since you also cite his work as evidence for the “acting white” hypothesis. Ogbu claimed to find academic disengagement in Shaker Heights which he argued explained the lower academic achievement among the black students in this community.

Ogbu made a number of major errors. First, he assumed that because the community was a middle-class community that everyone in it could be considered middle class. This was not the case. In my Black Directions newsletter, I noted:

Ogbu reported that 33 percent of the black households had an income over $50,000 while 58 percent of whites did—a difference of 25 percentage points. If we use the $50,000 as the minimum for defining a middle class household then whites were 76 percent more likely than blacks to be middle class.

Further, in another 1990s study of Shaker Heights, Ronald F. Ferguson found that 90 percent of white parents had at least four years of college, but only 45 percent of black parents could say the same. A quarter of the black households had parents with only a high school diploma or less. Fewer than 5 percent of white parents had this low level of education. Also, Ferguson reported, “a larger percentage of parents have postgraduate degrees among whites than have four-year college degrees among blacks.”

These are, in fact, large socioeconomic differences.

Ogbu also avoided explaining why black students in Shaker Heights out-performed black students in other areas. Again in Black Directions, I state:

[Ogbu] observed, “Black students in Shaker Heights perform considerably better than other Blacks in the rest of the state of Ohio and in the rest of the nation” as measured by standardized tests. Also, more than 70 percent of black Shaker Heights high school graduates went on to college in the late 1990s. Nationally, about 50 percent of black high school graduates went on to college at that time.

”Academic disengagement” or “acting white” does not do a good job at explaining this higher achievement.

Beyond Shaker Heights, there is encouraging news in black student test scores. While it is true that black students score lower on standardized tests than white students. It is important to examine the trends in black students’ test scores. Probably the best measure of black students’ academic achievement trends is the long-term trend National Assessment of Educational Progress exams. These exams show increasing black student scores in reading and math over time.



Not only have black NAEP scores increased, so have black scores on the National Assessment of Adult Literacy and on IQ tests. These increasing test scores do not fit well with the widespread claims that black students are not interested in school, but it does fit with the idea that black students value education.


The increasing rates of black college completion also fits black students’ statements about valuing education. Again, in Black Directions, I reported that

In 1994, 7.2 percent of all bachelor’s degrees went to blacks. By 2004, black students increased their share to 9.4 percent. In 1994, 8.6 percent of all associate’s degrees went to blacks. By 2004, black students increased their share to 12.2 percent.

In fact, in The Black-White Test-Score Gap (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips conduct a very interesting analysis of the likelihood of black and white students to attend college. When they “compare blacks and whites with the same twelfth grade test scores, blacks are more likely than whites to complete college” (p. 7). They add in a footnote that the findings cannot be attributed to affirmative action since they can be found before affirmative action and during affirmative action. Again, this higher college graduation rate controlling for test scores fits the finding that black students highly value education.

The survey evidence indicates that black students highly value education. The test-score evidence indicates that black students highly value education. The college enrollment and graduation rates indicate that black students highly value education. And, yet, one only hears black leaders and the leading black public intellectuals condemning blacks for not valuing education. There is a serious problem here, but it does not lie with black students.

Next Week: What the Pundits and the Media Did Not Tell You about the Roland G. Fryer “Acting White” Study.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[The Thora Institute needs you.]

Do Blacks Value Education More Than Whites?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________

[This is the first part of a second open letter to John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race.]

Dear John:

Thanks for your response to my first letter. As I mentioned, I had three major issues/reactions to Winning the Race. The first letter addresses my first issue. This letter addresses the second.

It’s good to know that we are diametrically opposed on the “acting white” issue. Consistency is comforting. I think the “acting white” discussion has distracted America from far more important policy reforms needed to address the black-white achievement gap.

Blacks Value Education as Much, If Not, More Than Whites: The Attitudinal Survey Evidence

You too quickly dismiss the research of James Ainsworth-Darnell and Douglas Downey (“Assessing the Oppositional Culture Explanation for Racial/Ethnic Differences in School Performance,” American Sociological Review 63, 1998: 536-553). As you state in Winning the Race, “Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey find that on the average, black students report more positive attitudes toward school than whites and that black students who report being popular also tend to do well in school” (p.271).

It’s important to realize that one finds this consistently in survey after survey, year after year. In the 1986, the year Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu study was published, the Monitoring the Future survey found that 74 percent of black high school seniors thought that getting good grades was of “great” or “very great importance.” Only 41 percent of white seniors felt the same. Half of black seniors indicated that “knowing a lot about intellectual matters” was of “great” or “very great importance.” Only one-fifth of white seniors felt the same.

In the 1987, the General Social Survey of adults of all ages finds that 90 percent of blacks believed that education is “very important” or “essential” to getting ahead in life. Eighty-three percent of whites felt the same. Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey showed that in the 1990 National Educational Longitudinal Study black students report more pro-school attitudes than white students.

More recent surveys show similar results. A 2006 survey by Public Agenda (see p. 12 of the report), found that 67 percent of black students believed that more math and science courses would improve high school education. Fifty-four percent of white students felt the same. The 2006 Higher Education Research Institute College Freshman Survey finds that 26 percent of the majority-black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities aspire to obtain a Ph.D., but only 17 percent of freshmen at colleges generally say the same.

When asked, black students also regularly report having lower grades than white students. And, as you also note, they will also admit to spending less time on homework, if asked.

You believe their statements about having lower grades and doing less homework but disbelieve their statements about their pro-school attitudes. Why would black students be deceptive, consciously or unconsciously, about liking school and valuing education but then be generally accurate and straightforward about having relatively low grades? This does not make sense to me. Low grades should be as, if not more, embarrassing than not feeling positive about school. I find black students’ responses convincing precisely because they readily admit details that could be viewed in a negative light.

What we need to realize is, as the song goes, “you can’t always get what you want.” Wanting to do well in school does not guarantee that one has had the necessary preparation and school resources to do well. Current research shows that there is a significant black-white achievement gap way before middle-school when you argue the “acting white” problem begins (Winning the Race, p. 275). We know that black children on average receive less academic preparation, formally and informally, than white students in the pre-kindergarten years. Improving the quantity and quality of black pre-kindergarten education is one of the things that we should be talking about.

The Commission on No Child Left Behind’s report Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation’s Children states the following about the importance of teacher quality:

teacher quality is the single most important school factor in student success. There is ample research to show just how critical teachers are. For example, studies in Tennessee, Dallas and elsewhere have shown that good teachers can improve student achievement by as much as a grade level more than less effective teachers over the course of a year. (p.30)

They add:

Research also shows that teacher quality is unevenly distributed in schools, and the students with the greatest needs tend to have access to the least qualified and least effective teachers. A study by The Education Trust, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to making schools and colleges work for all students, examined the distribution of teachers in three states and found that children in high-poverty schools are much more likely than their more advantaged peers to be assigned to novice teachers, to teachers who lack subject matter knowledge and to teachers with lower academic skills (Peske and Haycock 2006). (p.31)

I hope that one day the leading black public intellectuals would show interest in discussing the black-white teacher-quality gap—from pre-kindergarten through high school.

Why We Should Believe Black Students’ Pro-Education Survey Responses

What you skip over in your discussion of Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey is that they showed that black responses had similar statistically-measured correlations among answers as white responses. This is quite powerful evidence. If all black students merely responded randomly there would be no correlation. If all black students simply choose very positive responses to education/school questions, there would be no correlation. It is pretty much impossible for a survey like the National Education Longitudinal Study to yield similar statistical correlations without there being a truly similar relationship among the answers black students give as among the answers white students give. If you think the white students are presenting accurate information then, from a statistical standpoint, you are also endorsing the black student responses.

I can provide a simple example of this idea and test your hypothesis that 1960s black nationalism caused blacks to devalue or detach themselves from the educational endeavor. Since the General Social Survey is a nationally-representative survey of adults, we can do analyses of black adults of different ages on their views on how important education is for success.

If we compare blacks who were 18 years old or younger in 1965—40 years old in 1987—with blacks who were 19 or older in 1965, your hypothesis receives no support. Forty-five percent of the younger blacks, who you argue are disengaged from education, believe that education is “essential”—the extreme positive choice—for success. Only 30 percent of older blacks, who you argue highly value education, felt the same.

Now if we examine whites in these two age categories, we see the same pattern of the younger group valuing education more than the older group. Thirty-nine percent of the younger whites see education as “essential” but only 31 percent of older whites do. The only difference between the results of the blacks and the whites is that younger blacks, once again, may possibly value education a bit more than younger whites. It does not seem reasonable for one to accept the findings among whites and then turn around and declare the similar findings among blacks to be the result of deception by the black respondents.

And Finally, the Homework Issue

You make a big deal about black students doing less homework and Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey’s failure to explain how this finding fits in with valuing education. Ronald Ferguson’s research (see “A Diagnostic Analysis of Black-White GPA Disparities in Shaker Heights, Ohio,” in Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 2001, ed. Diane Ravitch (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), 347-414), I think, provides the answer. In Ferguson’s Shaker Heights study (he found no support for John Ogbu’s academic disengagement argument, by the way), he does not find that black students spend less time on homework than white students.

Ferguson’s analysis differs from Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey’s, in that Ferguson controls for or takes into account whether students are taking honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses or not. So, when Ferguson compares blacks not in honors/AP classes with whites who are also not in honors/AP classes, they spend similar amounts of time on homework. When he compares blacks and whites in honors/AP classes with each other, they spend similar amounts of time on homework.

It is important to control for honors/AP classes, because students in these classes spend more time on homework than other students, most likely because they are assigned more homework. If one does not control for these classes, it will look like blacks students spend less time on homework than white students because blacks are less likely to be in honors/AP classes. So, it appears that black students’ homework responses do not support your argument that they devalue education, but it does support the view that they are providing fairly accurate answers to survey questions. In an indirect fashion, black students are accurately indicating that they are less likely to be in honors/AP courses which we know to be true.

Next week: More Problems for McWhorter: The educational proof is in the achievement pudding.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[The Thora Institute needs you.]

The Truth about Black Students

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________


While Bill Cosby, Juan Williams and John McWhorter have been condemning blacks for not valuing education, black students have been going to college in growing numbers. Between 1994 and 2004, blacks increased the number of bachelor’s degrees they earned by 56 percent. The number receiving associate’s degrees went up by a remarkable 78 percent, according to Department of Education data. The College Board reports that half of blacks taking the SAT are the first in their family to attempt to enroll in college. This means that large numbers of working class and poor blacks—the very people Cosby and company are condemning—are trying to go to college. Cosby, Williams and McWhorter simply have their facts wrong.


[click on image for a better view]

All racial groups, not only blacks, are going to college in increasing numbers. How are blacks doing relative to other groups? When we look at the share of all degrees going to blacks, we find significant positive movement. In 1994, 7.2 percent of all bachelor’s degrees went to blacks. By 2004, black students increased their share to 9.4 percent. In 1994, 8.6 percent of all associate’s degrees went to blacks. By 2004, black students increased their share to 12.2 percent. Once again, the facts about black student achievement differ greatly from what the pundits are saying.

In addition to this story missed by the pundits and the rest of the media, the current issue of the Thora Institute’s Black Directions newsletter discusses:

• Why the Claim of a 50 Percent Black High School Graduation Rate is Wrong
• The Evidence that Black Standardized Test Scores are Rising
• The Actual Facts about the State of Black English
• Two Programs Proven to Increase Black Educational Achievement

To order this issue of Black Directions, send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “Truth about Black Students,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[The Thora Institute needs you.]

The Sophistry of Segregationists

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________

[On June 28th, the Supreme Court eviscerated the Brown decision. The article below was first posted January 1, 2007.]

If Brown stands for anything, Brown stands for integration. --Wendy Parker, law professor, Wake Forest University

“Segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever,” proclaimed Governor George C. Wallace in his 1963 inaugural address. In regards to America’s elementary and secondary schools, it looks like Wallace may turn out to be correct: segregation forever.

This year the Supreme Court will issue decisions on two cases involving school desegregation policies in Seattle and Louisville, KY. It is likely that they will find these plans unconstitutional because they use race as a criteria for school assignment. (See Linda Greenhouse, “Court Reviews Race as Factor in School Plans,” New York Times, December 5, 2006.) Such a decision will continue the reversal of integrated schooling in America that has been taking place since the 1990s.

With the 1954 Brown decision, the Supreme Court joined the vanguard of the struggle for black civil rights and racial integration. Since the 1990s, the Supreme Court has been the vanguard of the struggle against black civil rights and racial integration.

The Civil Rights Project has documented that the Supreme Court’s decisions terminating school desegregation plans have resulted in more segregated schools. In every school district with 30,000 students or more, the termination of desegregation resulted in more segregation.

While the nation as a whole produced more integrated schools from the 1960s through the 1980s, schools have been becoming more segregated since the 1990s. In 1991, 66 percent of black students attended majority nonwhite schools. In 2003, 73 percent of black students were in these schools according to the Civil Rights Project’s report.

As bad as increased school segregation is, the greater damage from anti-integration rulings would be the codification of the Brown decision as standing for “colorblindness” and not for integration. Everyone knows that in the Brown decision the Court took a stand against segregation and more generally for policies designed to achieve racial equality, but the anti-integration arguments in the current cases assert that the Brown decision simply opposed the use of race and is indifferent to the existence of racial segregation. This is a travesty.

Any one interested in racial equality and racial justice should be outraged. The “colorblindness” logic represents a resurgence of Jim Crow. It does not institutionalize Jim Crow policies, but it bolsters any and all of the legacies of Jim Crow. If the line of argument of the opponents to school integration wins any attempt to address racial inequality could be ruled unconstitutional. During the hearing, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked if a school district could deliberately place a new school in a location that would—without any additional intervention—achieve a racially mixed student body. The lawyer representing the parents challenging the Seattle plan said no. (See Greenhouse.) Any plan for a new school, therefore, that does not yield a school as segregated as the already existing schools is subject to court challenge. By preventing the state from doing absolutely anything to address racial inequality the “colorblindness” advocates do a great deal to ensure the persistence of racial segregation and inequality.

“Colorblindness” means being willfully blind and indifferent to racial inequality and injustice. “Colorblindness” advocates are winning. Why aren’t more people outraged?

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.


Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.


Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[The Thora Institute needs you.]