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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5379
Registered: 07-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 06:37 pm: | 
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April 29, 2007
The Obstacle of Black Racial Consciousness
By Steven M. Warshawsk
Last week in The New York Sun, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow John McWhorter offered a thought-provoking column on contemporary black urban culture. In the piece, McWhorter criticized what he terms the "stop snitching Zeitgeist," which encourages blacks not to report the criminal activity of fellow blacks to the police, as well as the casual use among black youth of the degrading epithets "••••••" and "•••••" as terms of solidarity and friendship. McWhorter is well known for his sharp critiques of black urban culture, and this piece was no exception.
Great Society Begets Bad Society
By JOHN McWHORTER April 26, 2007:
http://www.nysun.com/article/53269
But McWhorter's analysis of the roots of this destructive culture, in my opinion, is incomplete.
McWhorter first argues that, "ironically, the eclipse of open racism and segregation" is "one reason black America has reached this point." How so? According to McWhorter, "these days there is more room for acting out" by blacks, because white society no longer oppresses blacks through violence and intimidation, and "all humans like acting out when they can." So, on McWhorter's reading, blacks "act out" because their natural human impulse to do so is no longer being squelched by whites. This explanation is not very persuasive, however, because it fails to address the serious problems caused by such "acting out" in the black community (e.g., crime, illegitimacy, poverty, etc.) that are not experienced to nearly the same degree in non-black communities. If "all humans like acting out when they can," as McWhoter claims, why do such discrepancies exist?
Here, McWhorter blames the Great Society, which he argues "sowed the seeds for a black identity based on being bad." The destructive effects of the welfare state on black Americans (indeed, on all Americans) are well documented. But it is not at all clear that dependency on government, unemployment, and fatherless homes, as bad as they are, necessarily lead to gangbangers, crack cocaine, misogynist rap lyrics, and the like. After all, many European countries have even more expansive welfare states than we do. But, other than in Great Britain, they do not experience the same levels of social pathology that black Americans do. Something more is needed to explain this situation.
That something more, according to McWhorter, is a post-1960s culture that "made the upturned middle finger into an icon of higher awareness." This, surely, is a large part of the problem. The anti-bourgeois agenda of the left-wing activists, who over the past four decades have conducted a "long march" through America's cultural institutions (the media, the schools, the arts, and the entertainment industry), has excused -- even ratified -- many of the harmful behaviors that are increasingly common in our society (e.g., sexual license and infidelity, divorce, illegitimacy, a preference for meaningless pleasure over lasting achievement, and a generally selfish and irresponsible attitude towards life). Again, however, this explanation does not account for the higher incidence of social pathology among black Americans.
Where McWhorter's analysis comes up short, in my opinion, is in failing to acknowledge the obstacles posed by black racial consciousness in a majority white society. Certainly he is aware of the problem. Indeed, he noted in his piece that many of the features of black urban life he criticizes are facets "of a larger phenomenon: a sense among black teens and 20-somethings that being aggressive toward the opposition is the soul of being authentic." Although he does not say so explicitly, "the opposition" to which McWhorter is referring here is white society. The idea that black youths are simply "anti-authoritarian" (to use McWhorter's description) is at best disingenuous. On the contrary, the problem McWhorter points to, but for some reason does not state openly, is that many black Americans are anti-white, and certain behaviors (e.g., refusing to report crimes to the police, who are seen as agents of white society) only make sense when explained in such grossly racial terms.
Hence, I agree with McWhorter that the civil rights reforms of the 1960s created "more room for acting out" by blacks. But the resulting "acting out" -- which has been so destructive for black individuals, families, and communities -- should be understood as being motivated, at least in part, by the animosity that some blacks feel for the institutions and norms of "white society." Unfortunately, since the 1960s, this animosity has been fostered and rationalized and institutionalized through the work of black nationalists and white multiculturalists alike. While such feelings may be understandable from a historical perspective, the social and economic consequences of such feelings have been harmful in the extreme. Consider, for example, the negative attitudes that many black students have towards academic success, which is seen as "acting white." Such attitudes inevitably lead to academic failure. Not coincidentally, black academic achievement has declined since the 1960s. This is a clear example of the self-destructive consequences of black animosity towards "white society."
Without question, being an easily recognizable minority group in a society that mistreated your people for hundreds of years is a truly difficult and unenviable position. But racial separatism is a dead end. Without a sense of fellow feeling among all members of society, without a shared allegiance to the same basic institutions, values, and standards of behavior, a successful multi-ethnic society is not possible. This is what the original civil rights movement was all about. This is the worldview that inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech.
Sadly, a different worldview has taken hold among elites in this country, one that emphasizes the intractability of racial and ethnic differences. Perversely, by equating existing American society -- the richest and most powerful society in human history -- with white Americans (usually in a negative light), this worldview encourages black Americans to reject mainstream life, even as more and more opportunities for equal participation become available. Yet the only alternative to "white society" is the very urban culture that McWhorter rightly criticizes. As a result, "being bad" (in McWhorter's words) becomes the essence of being "black." The gangbanger or pimp is seen as more "authentically" black than the storekeeper or engineer. The true irony is that the mentality of white racists today is embraced by white and black "progressives" and their followers. A more self-defeating frame of mind is hard to imagine.
In short, what McWhorter cleary recognizes, but does not openly acknowledge in his column, is that racial consciousness itself has had harmful consequences for the black community in this country. Granted, identifying with and assimiliating into mainstream society may be difficult for black Americans, for a host of reasons. It may even seem unfair to expect them to do so. Ultimately, however, so long as the very conditions necessary for success in life -- getting an education, not having children out of wedlock, staying out of trouble with the law, and so on -- are perceived as "acting white," then the black community will continue to be plagued by the problems that McWhorter decries.
Steven M. Warshawsky
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/the_obstacle_of_black_racial_c.html |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5380
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 06:56 pm: |
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I mostly disagree with both McWHORTER and this author btw, this should go without saying.
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5382
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 09:10 pm: |
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Hmmm, on second thought, McWHORTER makes some excellent points. Now that I've read his piece, I agree with him a lot more than I thought I would.
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Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2185
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 10:21 pm: |
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Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4287
Registered: 03-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 11:50 am: |
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McWhorter is a right wing shill. In a just society they would necklace him like they used to do the traitors down in South Africa. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8480
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 02:24 pm: |
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I think that black America community needs all the input it can get in order to find a way out of the dire situation it now finds itself mired in. To label that doing what's in the interest of the greater good is not something that should be dismissed as right wing swill. The ideas expressed in this article are full of insight and are worthy of consideration especailly since the same ol liberal dogma is getting us nowhere. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5390
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 03:44 pm: |
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Actually McWhorter’s article is very forward-thinking and liberal. The only attempts I didn't agree with were his generalization of Blacks not from the (wealthy) upper class and his inferences that Black folks must be tamed. But he did mention racism as a factor; he just feels the "code" is not the solution.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 9343
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 04:30 pm: |
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April 26, 2007 Edition > Section: Opinion > Printer-Friendly Version
Great Society Begets Bad Society
BY JOHN McWHORTER
April 26, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/53269
On "60 Minutes" last Sunday, rapper Cam'ron told Anderson Cooper that he would not inform the police if a serial killer were living next door to him, as it would alienate his fan base.
The "stop snitching" Zeitgeist has become a shibboleth of being "down with" your people in poor black neighborhoods and refusing to give the police information about a black-on-black homicide, even if you witnessed it. This version of black identity has become so entrenched over the past few years that it is making it ever harder for investigators to crack murder cases.
Using this technique as a means to stop racism is as misguided as it is easy. Police brutality was much worse in the past, and the war on drugs is old news. The current "stop snitching" notion is, quite simply, a subcultural fashion of the moment.
It is also a facet of a larger phenomenon: a sense among black teens and 20-somethings that being aggressive toward the opposition is the soul of being authentic. There has been this element in the black community since the 1960s, but these days, it is so deeply felt that it is tacitly approved to place anti-authoritarian sentiment over saving black lives.
I got an earful of this generation's sense of self not long ago from an overheard conversation between three teens, a boy and two girls, on a subway. Our aggrieved musings over black people's use of the N-word had no application: all three were using it twice a minute. The exchange kept wending back to the leitmotif of joys of breaking rules: one girl exclaimed how good it felt to jaywalk, the other celebrated the police's inability to curb open drinking in Harlem.
The boy, teasing one of the girls, casually addressed her as "•••••." This was not a problem with these teens — the girl actually genuinely smiled.
The boy recounted a flirtation with being a gangbanger only to be turned off by how the members did not look out for one another. I will never forget how he ended this narration: "Guess I'll just be black by myself." Notice that assumption that there is something "black" about being a gangbanger.
Needless to say, all of this was delivered with a smile. These kids were, actually, rather thoughtful. In its way, the conversation was about ideas — trends, explanations, opinions. But this is a new kind of thoughtfulness, trumping logic and compassion. It is a religion, beyond the reach of reason.
Rapper Kanye West urges people to stop buying diamonds from murderous African nations and then calls women names and revels in anti-school rhetoric on the same CD.
One reason black America has reached this point is, ironically, the eclipse of open racism and segregation.
When all black people had to huddle together and make the best of the worst, there was no room for calisthenic acting up. When the community had to generate its self-respect from within, black boys looking black girls in the eye and calling them bitches for fun was unthinkable. A black teen jaywalking for the fun of showing that he could, might have been beaten by the police.
These days there is more room for acting out. All humans like acting out when they can. Poor and working class black teens are no exception, and thus they do.
But the reason these youngsters have elevated this attitude into an identity is because the civil rights movement freed blacks into an America that had just made the upturned middle finger into an icon of higher awareness.
The Great Society sowed the seeds for a black identity based on being bad, and treating it as enlightened to pull poor black women out of the job market and pay them to have children instead. Generations of young people grew up in fatherless communities in which full-time employment — i.e., conformity to a long-established American norm — was rare.
Meanwhile, America continues enshrining acrid derision of "the suits" as wisdom. It increasingly gets its news from the likes of the Daily Show. T-shirts read "F—k Milk — Got Pot?" Plus, whites constitute most of the buyers of the nastiest brands of rap music, undergirding the genre's very existence.
As such, the mentality of Cam'ron and the kids on the train cannot be reached by those concerned with exploring these issues on panels and "Oprah." Nothing will cut through a subcultural world view founded upon a religious devotion, capitalism, and mainstream attitudes. We are faced not with something these people do. It is who they are — just as it is, in less raucous but equally trenchant implacable fashion, what so much of America is today.
There is an exquisite equipoise in maintaining a reflexive cynicism about authority of any kind and labeling it enlightenment. Those who savor this Weltanschauung in formal prose, on blog sites, and on bumper stickers must embrace its less refined airings among young black folks.
Mr. McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
McWhorter: "On "60 Minutes" last Sunday, rapper Cam'ron told Anderson Cooper that he would not inform the police if a serial killer were living next door to him, as it would alienate his fan base."
I think Camron's views are about as representative of those of the average Black person's as Marilyn Manson's are of the average White person's. So I wholly discredit using what that fool Camron says to generalize about what most Black foks think.
Yes there are many of us who have concerns about dealing with police. Though, as I said elsewhere, I think the Blacks who wouldn't snitch would do so less likely to maintain ghetto credibility and MORE so because they feared reprisal from criminals.
McWhorter: "I got an earful of this generation's sense of self not long ago from an overheard conversation between three teens, a boy and two girls, on a subway. Our aggrieved musings over black people's use of the N-word had no application: all three were using it twice a minute. The exchange kept wending back to the leitmotif of joys of breaking rules: one girl exclaimed how good it felt to jaywalk, the other celebrated the police's inability to curb open drinking in Harlem."
White foks engage in all SORTS of demeaning and self-degrading activities (Hell. All you have to do is spend some time at your local Irish American pub to see GLARING examples of such.). Yet their behavior is SELDOM cast as some sort of indictment of ALL White foks.
McWhorter: "The boy, teasing one of the girls, casually addressed her as "b*tch." This was not a problem with these teens — the girl actually genuinely smiled."
Just yesterday, while in a local Borders, I happened upon a magazine titled B*TCH. The magazine appeared to be dedicated to extolling the virtues of female liberation and independence. And virtually all the pictures featured in the magazine were of WHITE women.
McWhorter: "These days there is more room for acting out. All humans like acting out when they can. Poor and working class black teens are no exception, and thus they do...But the reason these youngsters have elevated this attitude into an identity is because the civil rights movement freed blacks into an America that had just made the upturned middle finger into an icon of higher awareness."
White foks have been acting a gotdayam fool here from the moment they hit Plymouth Rock. We've had Slavery, Jim Crow, Lynchings, Segregation, etc. to account for our misdeads. But WTF is THEIR excuse for cutting up like they have?
McWhorter: "The Great Society sowed the seeds for a black identity based on being bad, and treating it as enlightened to pull poor black women out of the job market and pay them to have children instead. Generations of young people grew up in fatherless communities in which full-time employment — i.e., conformity to a long-established American norm — was rare."
I agree our failure to marry and make and maintain Father-Mother based families is at the center of MANY of our travails. And Black men AND women are contributing to that problem.
McWhorter: "Meanwhile, America continues enshrining acrid derision of "the suits" as wisdom. It increasingly gets its news from the likes of the Daily Show. T-shirts read "F—k Milk — Got Pot?" Plus, whites constitute most of the buyers of the nastiest brands of rap music, undergirding the genre's very existence...As such, the mentality of Cam'ron and the kids on the train cannot be reached by those concerned with exploring these issues on panels and "Oprah." Nothing will cut through a subcultural world view founded upon a religious devotion, capitalism, and mainstream attitudes. We are faced not with something these people do. It is who they are — just as it is, in less raucous but equally trenchant implacable fashion, what so much of America is today."
Notice how McWhorter's aptly describes part of the source of the problem - that WHITES are the primary consumers of the worst elements of hip-hop - while blatantly AVOIDING attributing or critiquing ALL White foks for what's going down. Or he cleverly describe Black problems as Black problems while describing White problems as AMERICAN problems. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5392
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 06:02 pm: |
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McWhorter: "Meanwhile, America continues enshrining acrid derision of "the suits" as wisdom. It increasingly gets its news from the likes of the Daily Show. T-shirts read "F—k Milk — Got Pot?" Plus, whites constitute most of the buyers of the nastiest brands of rap music, undergirding the genre's very existence...As such, the mentality of Cam'ron and the kids on the train cannot be reached by those concerned with exploring these issues on panels and "Oprah." Nothing will cut through a subcultural world view founded upon a religious devotion, capitalism, and mainstream attitudes. We are faced not with something these people do. It is who they are — just as it is, in less raucous but equally trenchant implacable fashion, what so much of America is today."
ABM: "Notice how McWhorter's aptly describes part of the source of the problem - that WHITES are the primary consumers of the worst elements of hip-hop - while blatantly AVOIDING attributing or critiquing ALL White foks for what's going down. Or he cleverly describe Black problems as Black problems while describing White problems as AMERICAN problems."
But ABM. I know it took a long time for him to reach his conclusion and he was thoroughly insensitive with some of his remarks until then, but the point that he's making is that WHITE culture is the cause of this confusion when it's all said and done. He's NOT avoiding them as part of the problem; he's naming them as the SOURCE.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8485
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 10:33 pm: |
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What I found significant about this article was the observation that once black people were free to act and speak without contraints they used this freedom to hate what their oppressors stood for. This proved to be counterproductive because they could not discern that by rejecting what white people did to achieve success was what ended up ensuring black failure. Good values are abstract and they are not the exclusive domain of any race; they are the linch pin that enable stability, civility, and ultimately survival. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4299
Registered: 03-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 12:32 pm: |
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What I found significant about this article was the observation that once black people were free to act and speak without contraints they used this freedom to hate what their oppressors stood for
(Who is this THEY? Is it YOU? Is it ME? Is it Mcwhorter? No! Who the hell are you talking about? Nobody! McWhorter is full of it!)
This proved to be counterproductive because they could not discern that by rejecting what white people did to achieve success was what ended up ensuring black failure
(Let's see what white people do to achieve success? Kill people. Rob them. Sell dope. Bootleg liquor during prohibition. Rip off other countries for their resources. Start wars. Take over countries.
Lie. Cheat. Steal. Fool people.
Oh but they do it on a big scale. That's our problem. Nickle and dime.
George W. Bush. He was a drunk. A dope addict. A failed businessman. Now he's President of the United States.
Good values are abstract and they are not the exclusive domain of any race; they are the linch pin that enable stability, civility, and ultimately survival.
(The only reason you can talk like this is because you don't know what real money and what real power are.
Eating and giving booty served you well, you think and for you this is the path to success.
And for some people it is.
But you ought to admit how limited it is.
John D. Rockefeller did not get where he got eating Booty. Or Bill Gates. Or George W. Bush. Or anybody you can name who really did anything.
You can take your little bromides and cliches and walk--with the rest of the BS
As in money talks
BS (or Cynique) walks. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8487
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 12:52 pm: |
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Blah, blah, chrishayden. Nothing you can jabber about will defuse the damage done by a wide-spread mentality that believes getting good grades and using standard English is "acting white." Nothing you can blubber about will disprove that success is color blind. Nothing you can sputter about will disprove that defying anything associated with whiteness consumed energy that could've been better directed in uplifting blackness. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2317
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 10:39 pm: |
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I haven't read all of either of the articles, but McWhorter's comments are generally the same, as it regards black people--conservative.
His comments are less important than his skin color, that is, someone who is black that criticizes other blacks thereby legitimizing his critique among some blacks and most whites. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5409
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 12:29 am: |
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'Acting White' Myth, The
By PAUL TOUGH
Published: December 12, 2004
When Bill Cosby spoke out publicly in May against dysfunction and irresponsibility in black families, he identified one pervasive symptom: ''boys attacking other boys because the boys are studying and they say, 'You're acting white.''' This idea isn't new; it was first proposed formally in the mid-80's by John Ogbu, a Nigerian professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and it has since become almost a truism: when smart black kids try hard and do well, they are picked on by their less successful peers for ''acting white.''
The only problem with this theory, according to a research paper released in October, is that for the most part, it isn't true. Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and William Darity Jr., an economist at Duke and U.N.C., coordinated an 18-month ethnographic study at 11 schools in North Carolina. What they found was that black students basically have the same attitudes about achievement as their white counterparts do: they want to succeed, understand that doing well in school has important consequences in later life and feel better about themselves the better they do.
So where does the idea of the burden of ''acting white'' come from? One explanation the authors offer will make sense to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie: there's an ''oppositional peer culture'' in every high school -- the stoners and the jocks making fun of the nerds and the student-government types. When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis.
More insidiously, the authors say, the idea that failing black kids pull down successful black kids can be used as an excuse by administrators to conceal or justify discrimination in the public-education system. The one school where the researchers did find anxiety about ''acting white'' was the one in which black students were drastically underrepresented in the gifted-and-talented classes. And significantly, at this particular school, the notion of the burden of ''acting white'' was most pervasive not among the black students interviewed by the researchers, but among their teachers and administrators, who told researchers that blacks are ''averse to success'' and ''don't place a high value on education.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12ACTING.html?ex=1260594000&en=37bb3e 44882a21bc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement
By John U. Ogbu
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lKNB4asR5oIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=A+Study +of+Academic+Disengagement&ots=4y8zVf3c4A&sig=plIMp0hrwqktn4e3RuqGE6KfltQ#PPR5,M 1
News Release
By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services
http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct05/tyson101105.htm
Roland G. Fryer Jr.
Harvard University and NBER
with Paul Torelli
October 7, 2006
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/papers/fryer_torelli.pdf
RESEARCH:
“Acting White”
By Roland G. Fryer
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3212736.html
“Acting White?”
African-American Students and Education
by Edward Rhymes Ph.D.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/100/100_cover_acting_white.html
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8498
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 12:36 pm: |
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Research "study" focusing on 11 schools in the single state of North Carolina. Nothing from northern innercity schools??? Get outta here. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 9346
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 12:42 pm: |
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Tonya,
McWhorter may be implying Whites are the cause of much what's going on with Black foks. But he's much less direct about such than he is about criticizing and blaming Blacks.
I mean, it never ceases to amaze me how Snoop, 50 Cents & Co. have been blamed and villified for spreading negativity when anyone who knows anything knows those guys make less than a penny to the dollar that's being made by WHITE foks for what they do. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8501
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 01:04 pm: |
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Maybe if Snoop and 50 cents hadn't been so busy not "actin white", they would've been more familiar with taking care of business. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8502
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 01:12 pm: |
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Yukio, the article posted was an analylsis of an article written by McWhorter and what Steven Warshawks had to say about McWhorter's commentary was what I found incisive. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5411
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 03:09 pm: |
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You mean John Ogbu's study, printed in "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb," is more hood than all of the other studies!? ...Hmmm, must be that common sense that comes with "acting white".
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5412
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 03:47 pm: |
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Just to be sure you understand, John Ogbu is the guy whose "study" you and others have been quoting over and over again...despite the fact that it's been thoroughly debunked by all of academia over and over again.
And I don't know when's the last time you've been to the dirty, dirty but those mofos down south is more hood than us northerners evvvuhhh been! LMBAO!!!!
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8508
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 04:33 pm: |
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I saw nothing in the article about the "acting white" attitude that afflicts certain black youngsters when it come to getting good grades. I might add that I don't know how many time I've heard this complaint from both teachers and students about how good students were put down by this stifling phrase. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5414
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 05:17 pm: |
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At this point...it really doesn't matter what you saw...you're through. The "attitude" you speak of is a phrase coined by the carefully & utterly discredited John Ogbu. This is where the teachers you heard from got the phrase, dear.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8511
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 05:31 pm: |
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No its not where the teachers got this phrase from, my dear. I've been hearing it for at least 20 years even from my own kids. It's nothing new. John Ogbu probably got it from the teachers and students who've been experiencing this put-down for years. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5418
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 06:37 pm: |
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Yeah, well, I've never heard the phrase "acting white" being equated by a Black person outside of these debates with a good education. Nor have I met a Black person, young or old, with an aversion to Education. They may not like a class--hell I’ve had several of those I didn’t like myself--but not education in and of itself. In fact I can recall attending NUMEROUS PARTIES in the deep, deep ghetto where some kid has "made it" to college, and the ENTIRE NEIGHBOROOD would come together bearing all kinds of gifts and encouraging words simply to show they were proud. That's why whenever I hear a Black person claim this "acting white" theory is the truth, I chalk it up to the type of people they must have attracted in their life.... The Laws of Attraction is a much more believable theory to me than "acting white". |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8513
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 07:40 pm: |
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Well, obviously we are both speaking from personal experiences and different perspectives. A couple years ago one of the goals of the PTA at the local high school was to neutralize the element in the school who copped the attitude that anybody who got good grades and went out for wholesome extra currricula activities was acting like a white nerd. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5419
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 07:48 pm: |
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Oh yeah? Well that sort of affair must have been written about in a bulletin or a local news paper somewhere, you mind posting it?
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5422
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 09:17 pm: |
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ABM,
Not only did he name white folks as the source, he implicated Oprah-like middle class Black folks as part of the problem too...liberal as a mutha where I'm from.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8516
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 09:46 pm: |
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Don't be ridiculous, Tonya. Why would I save something that took place at a PTA meeting 2 or 3 years ago. And I can't believe that you could be so naive as to think that high school kids don't engage in this type of behavior. High school are a hot bed of taunts and misbehavior and cliques and bullies and, yes, gangs. Surely you've heard the term "wigger"? The name whites call those among them who they think act black. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5424
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 10:07 pm: |
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I never said they don't use the term "acting white" or "wigger". They do not equate the meaning with a good education is what I said. And you didn't have to "save" anything. You’re a writer therefore a researcher and you have access to the internet!! But that's alright. In my former line of work it was completely understood that if you can't prove it, it did not happen....I know what time it is.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8517
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 10:16 pm: |
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Who said I was a writer or a researcher?? The problem here is that you are focusing on the kids who are the victims of the harrassers, and I am focusing on the kids who are doing the harasssing. I am not saying that there are no ambitious motivated black kids. I am saying that they have detrators who think anybody who aint down with the hood lifestyle is trying to act white. BTW do you have proof that these neighborhood parties occurred where people were doing all you claim they were doing. Or did it really happen? |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5427
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 02:48 am: |
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"The problem here is that you are focusing on the kids who are the victims of the harrassers, and I am focusing on the kids who are doing the harasssing. I am not saying..."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. You've been trying to spin it that way for some time now. It's been so lame and painfully obvious. But as it happens the focal point has been Black people’s mentality regarding education and its relationship to the politics of "acting white". You were never successful at engaging me in anything other than that, nothing more than the discussion these statements generated:
Cynnique: "What I found significant about this article was the observation that once black people were free to act and speak without contraints they used this freedom to hate what their oppressors stood for. This proved to be counterproductive because they could not discern that by rejecting what white people did to achieve success was what ended up ensuring black failure. Good values are abstract and they are not the exclusive domain of any race; they are the linch pin that enable stability, civility, and ultimately survival."
And after Chris called you on that:
Cynnique: "Blah, blah, chrishayden. Nothing you can jabber about will defuse the damage done by a wide-spread mentality that believes getting good grades and using standard English is 'acting white.'"
And of course this is clearly the point at which I stepped in.
BTW do you have proof that these neighborhood parties occurred where people were doing all you claim they were doing. Or did it really happen?
Wasn't trying to prove anything there, didn't have to, the data speak for themselves. Whoops!!! ...Looks like we’ve come full circle. Good night. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2206
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 04:38 am: |
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"Wasn't trying to prove anything there, didn't have to, the data speak for themselves. Whoops!!! ...Looks like we’ve come full circle. Good night."
There ya have it. Perfect example of a Chlorpromazine prescription that needs filling.......
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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2018
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 09:49 am: |
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The burden on the researchers is not to uncover that some inner city kids express the belief that high school achievement is "a White thing" and to document poor performing inner city kids. The key is to provide a credible causal link between the "Acting White" belief system and those students' poor school performance.
I agree with Tonya that this is not something that research has been able to do. This does not mean that no child has ever said or believed this, or no teacher has ever heard it. But is it responsible for inner city poor performance?
I think that is a cop-out; an easy, catchy way to blame the kids' belief systems (assuming it does exist) for other things that have a much larger causal factor (assuming the belief factor plays any role at all). What about inequitable systems for funding schools? What about unions that make it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers? What about lack of incentives for good teachers to keep striving, innovate, stay in the profession--as well as to attract them to teach in the schools that need them most? What about crumbling buildings with beer bottles on the playground, no doors on the bathroom, and lead in the water fountains? What about poorly conceptualized and administered NCLB (unfunded) mandates? And on and on and on and on.
No. Easier to just shake our heads that school children have messed up belief systems and not address the real issues for why they are not achieving. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8518
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 12:21 pm: |
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I don't have to defend my position to your satisfaction, Tonya. I was agreeing with what was said in the article which is to say I find what the writer had to say more significant than the way you and chrishayden are "spinning" things. Now if you want to deny that a child having a contemptuous attitude that includes putting down his classmates for getting good grades and speaking well and that if, in doing this, he is denying himself a better chance for self improvement, then go ahead and deny it. And yeeeees, Yvette, there are a lot of extenuating circumstances that contribute to the problem of black education, but does that mean the mind-set in question here should be shoved under the rug? Everybody has known about all of these other sociolgocial and economical probems for years and years and have yet to come up with a way to circumvent them since The Sytem is obviously not responsive. In the final analysis, the kids themselves are the ones who rise above the dilemma but their desire to take advantage of what opportunities are available is made harder by those among them who try to put them down for trying to "act white." |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 9348
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 01:52 pm: |
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Tonya,
I too am very suspicious of this notion of Blacks rejecting becoming educated for fear of appearing to be "acting White". I sure that's happening somewhere. But I seriously DOUBT that that is a significant part of the problem of educating our kids.
That seems to me to be a convenient excuse that many ADULTS (e.g., parents, educators, lawmakers, etc.) use to not do THEIR part to educate Black children. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8523
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 02:51 pm: |
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I'm amazed at how difficult it seems for "educated" people to understand that many problems contribute to the crises in black education. Who said that this "actin white" syndrome was the only one? Who said it wasn't one of many obstacles? Sheeze. |
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