Mr. Austin's reaction to the notion of the fear of "acting white"

http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2008/05/the-power-of-racial-stereotype-000495.php

Are black students really afraid of 'acting white'?Algernon Austin

In this article, Mr. Austin also takes aim at the notion that African-American students are anti-school and presents some interesting stats.

• The real question therefore is whether academically-oriented teasing is more common among black students than among whites. There is no convincing evidence that this is the case. A 2003 study by the Girl Scout Research Institute, for example, found equal levels of concern about school-related teasing among black and white girls.
• Contrary to the popular stereotype, much of the evidence suggests that black students value education more than whites.
• A 2006 survey by Public Agenda found that black students were more likely than white students to believe that "increasing math and science education would improve high school."
• What the current academic research shows is that much of the black-white achievement gap exists prior to first-grade, many years before academic teasing begins. This gap is due to broad social and economic disadvantages among black families in comparison to white families. The gap grows during school years because these disadvantaged black students then attend schools of lower quality than white students.
• Adults concerned about raising black student achievement have two options: we can get back into the civil rights business of confronting the social and economic inequalities that produce the achievement gap or we can cling to convenient stereotypes and keep on blaming black students. Blaming black students certainly means less work for us.