The Impact of "Oppositional Behaviors" on African American Males'
All over the US, minorities face many problems and hardships that hinder their academic achievements improvement. Most blacks do not go to college. However, those managed to go to college achieve lower than their white peers do. Literature have shown evidence that blacks do still lag behind academically and widen the black-white achievement gap.
Recently, there are disputes among research on the causes that make blacks achieve lower than their white peers. Blacks do poorly at school because they have lost interests in education and academic success. Noguera (2008) argued that black males are in such situation because of their ‘attitudes and habits’ towards education. Others believe that blacks are subject to such situation either because of their surroundings, society, or by their ‘cultural’ behaviors.
Fordham and Ogbu (1986) stated that Black Americans hold and opposed stand towards academic achievement and 'standard schooling, barriers in adults opportunities' and develop 'survival strategies and other coping mechanisms' to cope with the hardships they experience. This means that blacks build a negative ‘attitude’ towards education as it does not help or qualifies them to get good jobs and careers. By holding to this, they unconsciously ‘signify their antagonism toward the dominant group by resisting school goals’. Whatever that school would encourage them to do well and be a good citizen is ‘acting white’ for them.
Many studies have shown that blacks do not experience academic disengagement in all schools. According to Roland G. Fryer (2006) this is mostly experienced in ‘racially integrated’ public schools and is less prevalent in ‘private sector and in predominantly black’ institutions. In his study Roland G. Fryer (2006) finds that ‘Black males in racially integrated schools fare, the penalized seven times’ as harshly as he estimated of the impact of ‘acting white’ on all black students. That is the concept of being academically successful, for them, becomes an act of being white. They simply connect high academic achievement and success with white students. Because of the structure of multiracial schools, Black adolescent males show oppositional stance towards high academic achievement and mock their peer minority for engaging in ‘behaviors perceived to be characterized of whites’.
The impact of holding the opposite stance on high achieving black females is significant to that on black males. Consequently, highly achieving black male students start to have difficulty getting along with their peers or start to even feel sometimes rejected by their minority peers. Some students could manage to build a sort of ‘split personality’; a personality that allow them to still feel proud of being black and achieve academically higher without acting white. However, the majority of black males slackens back and does nothing to be successful academically believing that success is white characteristic. Instead, they feel proud being in activities such as sports, music and avoid taking advanced courses. As a result, they end up sorting themselves in activities and courses that are not highly qualified help them achieve academically higher.
Even though holding the opposite stand contributes to the black-white achievement gap, it is not the reason why black males achieve low. Fryer, contrary to what Fordham and Ogbu argued, concluded with 'the argument that blames blacks for their own academic failure calling it "more judgment and explanation"' Brando Simeo Starkey and Susan Eaton (2008). Karolyn Tyson, Domini R. Castellino and William Darity Jr. prove that blacks keep away from advanced courses but because of their fear to be labeled " acting white", but because they are not confident enough to do well in such courses.
Similarly, James W. Ainsworth-Darnell and Douglas B. Downey conducted a study in high school sophomores stated that "African American maintain more pro-school values and more likely to esteem their high-achieving peers than are whites". Moreover, according to a study conducted by Philip j. Cook and Jens Ludwig, 'black 10th graders who excel in school are no more likely to be unpopular than other student'. Moreover, Margaret B. Spencer, Elizabeth Noll, Jill Stoltzfus, and Vinay Harpalani (2001) concluded, contrary to Fordham and Ogbu in 'the association between high achievement and high performing, that 'acting white' is associated with low achievement and vice versa.
In short, the acting white phenomenon is not a single reason that keeps black males behind but there are many others reasons that educators should work to find solutions.