TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031692/0316990.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 14.5 KB | 288 lines

                                                                                SOCIETY, Page 44

The Hidden Hurdle


Talented black students find that one of the most insidious
obstacles to achievement comes from a surprising source: their
own peers

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY -- With reporting by David E.
Thigpen/Oakland


      When it comes to achieving in school, Za'kettha Blaylock
knows that even dreaming of success can mean living a nightmare.
She would, above all things, like to work hard, go to college
and become a doctor. But to many other black 14-year-old girls
in her corner of Oakland, these ideas are anathema. The
telephone rings in her family's modest apartment, and the
anonymous voice murmurs daggers. "We're gonna kill you," the
caller says. Za'kettha knows the threat comes from a gang of
black girls, one that specializes not in drugs or street fights
but in terrorizing bright black students. "They think that just
because you're smart," says the eighth-grader, "they can go
around beating you up."

     Of all the obstacles to success that inner-city black
students face, the most surprising -- and discouraging -- may
be those erected by their own peers. Many children must also
cope with broken families, inadequate schools and crumbling
communities that do not value academic achievement as essential
to survival and prosperity. But the ridicule of peers cuts most
deeply of all. Students like Za'kettha find themselves reviled
as "uppity," as trying to "act white," because many teenagers
have come to equate black identity with alienation and
indifference. "I used to go home and cry," says Tachelle Ross,
18, a senior at Oberlin High in Ohio. "They called me white. I
don't know why. I'd say, `I'm just as black as you are.' "

     The phrase "acting white" has often been the insult of
choice used by blacks who stayed behind against those who moved
forward. Once it was supposed to invoke the image of an African
American who had turned his back on his people and community.
But the phrase has taken an ominous turn. Today it rejects all
the iconography of white middle-class life: a good job, a nice
home, conservative clothes and a college degree.

     In the smaller world of high school, the undesirable
traits are different, but the attitude is the same. Promising
black students are ridiculed for speaking standard English,
showing an interest in ballet or theater, having white friends
or joining activities other than sports. "They'll run up to you
and grab your books and say, `I'll tear this book up,' " says
Shaquila Williams, 12, a sixth-grader at Webster Academy in East
Oakland. "They'll try and stop you from doing your work." Honor
students may be rebuked for even showing up for class on time.

     The pattern of abuse is a distinctive variation on the
nerd bashing that almost all bright, ambitious students -- no
matter what their color -- face at some point in their young
lives. The anti-achievement ethic championed by some black
youngsters declares formal education useless; those who disagree
and study hard face isolation, scorn and violence. While
educators have recognized the existence of an anti-achievement
culture for at least a decade, it has only recently emerged as
a dominant theme among the troubles facing urban schools.

     The label "acting white" and the dismissal of white values
are bound up in questions of black identity. "If you see a
black girl," explains Kareema Matthews, a street-smart
14-year-old from Harlem, "and she's black, not mixed or
anything, and she wants to act like something she's not, in
these days nobody considers that good. She's trying to be white.
That's why nobody likes her. That's how it is now." But when
asked what it is to be black, Kareema pauses. "I don't have the
slightest idea."

     The right attitude, according to the targets of ridicule,
would be shown by skipping class, talking slang and, as Tachelle
says, "being cool, not combing your hair. Carrying yourself like
you don't care." Social success depends partly on academic
failure; safety and acceptance lie in rejecting the traditional
paths to self-improvement. "Instead of trying to come up with
the smart kids, they try to bring you down to their level,"
says eighth-grader Rachel Blates of Oakland. "They don't
realize that if you don't have an education, you won't have
anything -- no job, no husband, no home."

     It is a sad irony that achievement should have acquired
such a stigma within the black community. Hard work,
scholarship and respect for family values have long been a
cornerstone of black identity. In the years before the Civil
War, many black slaves risked their lives learning how to read.
In 1867, just four years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
African Americans founded Morehouse and Howard universities.
According to the Bureau of the Census, between Reconstruction
and 1910, the literacy rate among Southern blacks climbed from
20% to 70%. "There has always been a strong pressure toward
educational achievement," says Mae Kendall, director of
elementary education for the Atlanta public schools. Kendall,
who grew up in semirural Thomasville, Ga., recalls, "My mother
was not a lettered woman by any means, but she said, with a good
education, you could turn the world upside down. That was a
strong common linkage among all black people, and it was
instilled early on."

     Some education experts associate the rise of the culture
of anti-achievement with the advent of public school
desegregation and the flight of the black middle class to the
suburbs. That left fewer role models whose success reinforced
the importance of education and more children from families who
found little grounds for hope in schools that were decaying.

     The civil-rights movement did produce pockets of progress:
the number of black managers, professionals and government
officials rose 52% in the past decade. Black enrollment in
colleges has climbed steeply. In 1990, 33% of all black high
school graduates went on to college, in contrast to 23% in 1967.
Since 1976, black Scholastic Aptitude Test scores have increased
by a greater percentage than those of either whites or Asians.
Still, blacks have higher truancy rates, and in spite of the
gains, the test scores of African Americans remain the lowest
among large ethnic groups. The high school dropout rate among
young blacks averages 7.7%, nearly twice that of their white
peers, at 3.9%.

     As more black teachers and administrators reach positions
of power in the public school system, the anti-achievement
ethic presents a special challenge to them as educators. For
years, the failure of black students to succeed in white-run
schools was attributed in large part to institutional racism.
But some black educators are reassessing the blame. "It's
absolutely ridiculous for us to be talking about what's
happening to black youngsters when you've got a 90%
African-American staff teaching a 95% black student body," says
Franklin Smith, who is superintendent of schools in Washington
and black himself. "If you can't prove what you believe here in
Washington, then you might as well forget it anywhere in this
country."

     The effort to reverse the pattern of black failure has
prompted educators like Smith to try many experiments --
Afrocentric curriculums, academic-achievement fairs and efforts
to establish black all-male public schools that focus on
building self-esteem. The reform movements seek to revive in
black students the value system that prizes education as, among
other things, a way out of poverty. "We dropped the ball,"
laments Trinette Chase, a Montgomery County, Md., mother. "Our
generation failed to pass on the value of an education."

     It is a truism to say the problem most often begins at
home. When parents are not able to transmit the values of
achievement, the ever present peer group fills the vacuum.
Moniqua Woods, 12, a student at the Webster Academy in Oakland,
says it is easy to spot neglected children because they "come
to school every day yawning and tired. You know they stayed out
late that night." Concurs classmate Mark Martin, also 12: "Some
of the kids' parents are on drugs. You go in their house, and
you can smell it." Such a homelife can further strengthen the
attitude that school does not matter, especially if the parents
themselves are without a diploma.

     Kiante Brown, 15, of Oakland, knows this all too well. His
mother is a recovering crack addict who, he says, pays little
attention to his comings and goings, and he hasn't seen his
father in two years. Kiante used to spend his afternoons selling
drugs on street corners. What little education he has came in
bits and pieces; he has missed so much school he'll have to
repeat the eighth grade. "I didn't really drop out, but I
haven't been going to school much," he says. "For a while my mom
told me to get up and go to school, but she really doesn't say
nothing about it anymore."

     Teachers may try to move in where parents have retreated.
But with class sizes increasing and school violence growing, it
is often all educators can do to maintain minimal order, much
less give individual attention to any child. Some teachers
admit that the insidious attitudes creep into the classroom. It
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: when teachers have lower
expectations for their black students, they give them less
attention and do not push them as hard to do well. Such
stereotypes have crossed racial barriers to the point where even
black teachers may hold these same attitudes. "If teachers feel
they cannot make any headway with a youngster," says Richard
Mesa, superintendent of Oakland public schools, "they may write
him off."

     It is especially painful for teachers to watch their most
talented students sabotage their own learning in order to fit
in with peers. "Some of them feign ignorance to be accepted,"
says Willie Hamilton, the principal of Oakland's Webster
Academy. Seneca Valley's Martine Martin observed this
self-destructive pattern when she formed a program for "at risk"
black females at one of her previous schools. The group
originally comprised girls who were pregnant or uninterested in
learning. But then, little by little, Martin noticed honor
students showing up in her program because they thought it was
cool.

     The environment outside the classroom also leaves its mark
inside. The persistence of recession has made it even more
difficult to inspire black students to do well in school with
the carrot of a job. "The lack of association between education
and post-school employment has discouraged a lot of young
people," says William Julius Wilson, professor of sociology and
public policy at the University of Chicago. "They see that
whether you graduate from high school or you drop out, you're
still going to be hanging around on a corner or the best job
you're going to find is working at a McDonald's. After a time
they develop a view that you're a chump if you study hard."

     Many successful black role models feel the need to "give
something back," by reaching out to inner-city youths. But some
are finding it hard to make the connection. Meeting with a group
of young inmates from a correctional facility, Robert Johnson,
founder and CEO of Black Entertainment Television, faced some
hostile young men and responded in kind. "I told them they were
playing themselves into the hands of people who don't care about
them. That if they think the way to pull themselves up is to get
into the drug trade, rob, shoot and steal they were going to
lose."

     But teenagers who have trouble identifying with Johnson
choose their role models accordingly. "There's a lot of violence
and a lot of drugs where I grow up," says Harlem teenager
Marcos Medrano, 15, whose role model is macho actor Steven
Seagal. "I went to a party, and there was a shoot-out. You're
constantly living in danger. Who you gonna look up to? Bill
Cosby or somebody that comes out shooting a lot?"

     Successful blacks can be intimidating for the young,
especially if they dress in suits and "sound white." Some
suspect that the ease with which successful blacks move in a
white world means that they have denied their heritage. "It's
devastating for them because you begin to get this stereotype
thinking that all blacks when they get to a certain level try
to become white by assimilating themselves with whites," says
Dorothy Young, principal of the Delano Elementary School on the
west side of Chicago. "And that's not true. But once that seed
is planted in any form, that seed is going to grow."

     The need to define their identity may lead young blacks to
reject the values of achievement; but, according to Rutgers
anthropologist Signithia Fordham, this does not mean they think
being black is only about failure. "They may not be able to
articulate fully what it means to be black, but they're more
attuned to why it is they don't want to be white," she says of
black students she researched. "They know they want very much
to remain connected to the black community. They want to be
successful on their own terms."

     There are, of course, many schools that can point to their
success stories, to students who overcame all the private
obstacles to graduation, often with the help of innovative
programs. In Cleveland, the Scholarship-in-Escrow program was
set up by local businessmen in 1987. To encourage students to
work toward college, the program offers cash incentives -- $40
for each A they earn, $20 for each B -- which go into an escrow
account for their tuition. Since its inception, SIE has paid
$469,300 in earned funds for 2,199 graduates. "It's good to know
that money is being put away for you," says Faith Bryant, an
11th-grader at John Adams High School. "I had always dreamed of
being successful, but now I know I have a way to do it."

     The hope for these students lies in their understanding
that no one group in society has a monopoly on success. "As
long as you're able to term success as being black or white or
red," says Oberlin's Sherman Jones, a placement specialist for
the Jobs for Ohio's Graduates program, "as long as we put
conditions and colors on success then it'll be difficult for our
kids." Destroying such misconceptions is not easy, especially
when they are old and deeply rooted. But given time, perhaps
"acting white" can be a phrase retired to the history books as
the emblem of a misguided attitude that vanished in the light
of black achievement.