He’s an attorney who became a politician, which means he is…exactly like almost all other politicians.

He has such a slight voting record, that he has almost no history on issues at all.

Sure, he’s affable, looks good on camera, knows how to interview with Tim Russert, but what is he about?

There is no there, there. He needs more time to be a credible national political figure.

I wonder if and why the reverse is not studied … that is — the phenomenom of white acting black. —

I don’t get the whole ‘acting white’ thing when a person is just trying to improve themselves, in some locales improving yourself would be ingratiating yourself to blacks (don’t forget i’m in a hurry so please read kindly) … I think that’s bullshit or as the first poster said: way to undercut from top AND bottom.

It’s different to be born into a region and grow up speaking one way (not acting white but speaking like those you hear around you) similarly to myself — I was the first one in my family to grow up in the south and my accent is just pure ‘floriduh-ean’ hehe. While many of my relatives have Northern accents. (still!!) Others in my family moved to still other states and are hard for ME to understand now. I guess that’s acting North Carolina??

BUT, if you are a white person and you start hanging around blacks as a teen or what-have-you (bussing to different schools changing your demographic or whatever causes the change) … then you start talking like a black teenager — that is, striving to fit in in such a way that everything about you gets adjusted … (like moving to another state only in this case you go home to your family every day and still talk like someone else)
I think the reason I am a bit bothered is because this is a sign that the kid is not accepted as he is and felt he/she had to change EVERYTHING to fit in.
What’s wrong with that picture?
I had a pretty wide mix of friends all of my life and we all looked and sounded different. The cooler ones were somewhat imitated but everyone was generally themselves.
I’ve seen immigrants do the same thing to each other. When one is making it they trash the more recent immigrants. The more recent immigrants trash those who are making it ….

Why can’t each just learn to stand on their own and be counted without ripping another to climb higher on their imaginary ladder of esteem?

Anyway .. great post !

—
It’s not defensiveness on my part. It’s an effort to challenge the strategy of assimilation (from the “racial uplift” rhetoric of the 19th century to Bill Cosby’s admonition of black youth) that can and has been critiqued for being white-identified. Assimilationist strategies have been critiqued for being ultimately ineffective (at fostering social transformation) — they give some people access to middle-class white virtue, but leave most out (and that access is very, very contingent — think O.J.). These strategies have also been critiqued for contributing to continued marginalization (the problem that advocates actually want to diminish). Sure, we can and should complexify our understandings of racism, including institutionalized racism; that is always necessary. But, going in the opposite direction –discounting racism almost entirely, if not entirely — is far too simplistic. It’s palatable, for sure. I think that’s what ends the conversation.

The problem, at least for this (almost) middle-aged white woman, is that I know the white kids have access to privilege and power that will help compensate for that lack of intellectual drive, whereas my black students don’t have the benefit of white privilege to fall back upon. (And what chance do I have to get the necessity of learning language, through which they can then speak the truth to power, through to them?)

You’ve got a great chance, if you take it.

I’ve always made it clear to my students — multiracial, but overwhelmingly working class — that Standard English is just one dialect out of many, but that it happens to be the dialect that’s used by the intellectual and economic elite. If they want to gain entry into that elite, they have to have the ability to use that dialect.

A fellow teacher once told me about an exercise he did with his students. He said that when you write out a job application, or show a prospective employer some of your written work, the first thing that’ll jump out is whether the grammar and syntax follow Standard English rules. If they do, your application goes into the “maybe” pile. If they don’t, it goes in the trash. He’d mime picking up papers from a stack, glancing at each one, and pronouncing a verdict: “maybe” or “suckerfool.”

I give my students a version of that speech every semester when I hand out their first written assignment. I tell them that when I’m covering their papers in ink corrections and marking them down for their/there errors and making them rewrite, I’m trying to get them into the “maybe” pile.

The social/cultural rejection experienced by poor whites for essentially acting outside of the norms of their class does have something in common with the “acting white” phenonemon in that both seem to involve getting called out by your peer group for the same kinds of behaviors. But the fact remains that the white kids are unlikely to ever have their racial identity called into question, and the same historical assumptions and prejudice just aren’t there.

The fact is also that when interacting with the dominant culture, even poor whites are gonna have white privilege to draw from. (It can even be to your advantage in adult white achievement society to be able to claim a lower-class background and be comfortable with the language of “double-negatives and incorrect gramm[a]r”, as long you know when and how to use it.)

As far as “acting black”, yeah, it happens. But it’s not a charge any white kid is likely to hear for making the honor roll, being in the gifted program, or successful use of the language and vocabulary of the dominant culture. And that’s a major difference.

I was lucky and managed to go to a magnet school that had a good college track. But I heard some horror stories about the HS I would have had to go to.

I guess I just can’t understand it, but there seems to be so many examples of successful black people. Black CEOs, black generals in the army, black secretaries of state (two of them), etc. What would probmp black children to not want to emulate them?

I wonder if this is partly generational? I mean, probably the single most visible, successful black person in this country is Oprah, right? You don’t even have to use her last name anymore; everyone knows who you mean. And from the viewpoint of your average high schooler, she’s old. In my experience, very few high schoolers, whatever their race, accept “old people” as their role models. Or at least they don’t admit it.

Also, the fact that there are black CEOs “somewhere out there,” probably doesn’t mean much to the average black high schooler, let alone the ones at risk. For someone to be a role model, you have to have the sense that you could be like them. If, for whatever reason, you’re convinced that you could never grow up to be a CEO, it doesn’t particularly help that there are some out there who look like you.

Irene