In short, when it comes to “acting white,” if the term means paying no attention to policy details, but rather voting for the person who you’d most like to hang out with at a sports bar, then perhaps we need not only black and brown folks to forswear such lunacy, but for those of us who are white to turn on whiteness too.

–Tim Wise

Pundits and politicos of all ethnicities have weighed in on the seemingly abberant tendency among African American youth to label learning, reading, and other academic activities as “acting white.”

This phenomenon is portrayed, among other things, as a betrayal of our ancestors’ struggle to earn — for their children, grandchildren, great-grands, and beyond — the right to learn and be taught. Betrayal or not, however, the disdain and distrust conveyed in the assertion that good students are “acting white” links these Black youth to one of the most deeply entrenched elements of the American character, anti-intellectualism.

African American youth may have developed a more headline-grabbing way to taunt their overachieving peers(by telling them that they are “acting white”), but they are certainly not alone in their tendency to tease and isolate those who seem to have an uncommon interest in learning and books. Think about it: how many high schools can you name, in which the president of the math club is more popular than the captain of the football team? Anti-intellectualism is, at its base, an core American value.

The following essay underscores that anti-intellectualism is an American problem which, having dodged meaningful address in recent years, now threatens our political and economic future in ways that could truly have lasting and irreversible effects.

***

“Reflections on White Anti-Intellectualism
(Or, What’cha Want With all That Book Learnin’?)”

By Tim Wise (from his myspace blog)
September 14, 2008

To hear an awful lot of white folks tell it, the problem with black people is that they just don’t want to work hard enough in school. They act up and refuse to study or get good grades, because they don’t want to be put down for “acting white.” In other words, the African American community is beset by a culture of anti-intellectualism, contrasted, one supposes with our own white culture of studiousness and academic achievement.

When making this argument, and knowing that it might sound a bit disparaging, even racist, we white folks love to refer to the high-profile black folks who agree with us. So we point to Bill Cosby, for instance, who said this same thing a few years ago and hasn’t stopped saying it yet. The fact that a dozen or so studies have found that there actually is no unique peer pressure or ostracism that black kids experience for doing well in school (over and above that which all kids who are viewed as brainy often face) fails to move them. The fact that longitudinal data actually shows that black students are the most likely to believe in the importance of getting a good education, the least likely to cheat and the least likely to skip class appears to matter not.

But what I have always found interesting about the anti-intellectualism charge coming from whites and pointed at persons in the black community, is how readily it emanates from a group of people (white adults) who seem to actually revel in anti-intellectualism, as evidenced by our voting behavior and political sensibilities, made especially clear during the current political campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

Beverly Daniel Tatum (b. 1954)

I also think of a conversation with a fellow student in graduate school, a Black man I did not know well. We were waiting for a bus, and he asked me what I was going to be doing when I finished graduate school. I told him that maybe I would teach, maybe I’d be a psychotherapist. I wasn’t exactly sure. I added, “You know, I just know I don’t ever want to be bored.” And he looked at me and said, “what is you class background?” “What do you men?” I replied. And he said, “Well, where did you get the idea that work was supposed to be entertaining?” The notion that work should be fulfilling and not just something you do because you have to support yourself or your family or to make ends meet clearly came out of my class background. Class, like race, influences how we view the world, and ultimately, influences how we interact with other people.

— Beverly Daniel Tatum in Can We Talk About Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation ( page 89)

Biographical Notes: Beverly Daniel Tatum is currently the ninth president of Spelman College, the noted Black college for women, located in Atlanta, Georgia. She was born in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1954. Dr. Tatum was raised in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where he father was a college professor and her mother was a schoolteacher. She earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. She also holds an M.A. in religious studies from the Hartford Seminary.

Dr. Tatum comes from a long line of educators. Her great-grandfather, William Hazel, was the first dean of the Howard University school of architecture. Her grandparents, Victor Hugo Daniel and Constance Eleanor Hazel Daniel  spent several years as the co-directors of the Cardinal Gibbons Institute in Maryland. Her father, Robert A. Daniel, has been a professor at Florida A&M University, Southern University in Baton Rouge, and Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts.

Beverly Tatum has taught at UC-Santa Barbara, Westfield State College, and Mount Holyoke College. The Spelman College website provides this overview of her three most influential publications:

In her critically acclaimed 1997 book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” and Other Conversations about Race, she applies her expertise on race to argue that straight talk about racial identity is essential to the nation. Using real life examples and the latest research, she not only dispels race as taboo, but gives readers a new lens for understanding the emergence of racial identity as a developmental process experienced by everyone. Her latest book, Can We Talk about Race? and Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation, released in 2007, explores the social and educational implications of the growing racial isolation in our public schools. She is also the author of Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White Community (1987). In addition, she has published numerous articles, including her classic 1992 Harvard Educational Review article, “Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: An Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom.”

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Edwina Morris

***

Congratulations to Edwina Morris, a senior at Science Hill High School in Johnson City, Tennessee. Morris is the first African American ever to be selected for the Roan Scholars Leadership Program, an honor that includes a full four-year scholarship to East Tennessee State University.

Nicki Mayo describes Morris’s successes on tricities.com:

Morris is humble and modest about her intentions for the scholarship. The 18-year-old is taking part in a clinical internship at the James H. and Cecile C. Quillen Rehabilitation Hospital. She started her 80-hour program Wednesday and plans to take the examination to become a certified nurse assistant around graduation time.

“I’ve always thought I’d leave Johnson City after graduation,” says the high school senior. She considered attending Nashville’s Vanderbilt University and Maryville College.
“The more that it was brought to my attention what it was a bout and how a roan scholarship is defined I said ‘wow this is me,’” she adds.

This fall, Morris plans to enroll in ETSU’s pre-Medical program. She hopes to become a surgeon or obstetrician. Right now, the Science Hill senior says she plans to focus on her roles as Student Government Association school wide representative and president of the Health Occupation Students of America chapter.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

According to yesterday’s SF Chronicle, a first-of-its-kind study of San Francisco kindergarten boys and girls has found that half of the city’s entering students are not ready for school.

At least part of the gender achievement gap between young Black men and young Black women can be attributed to the pressure on African American boys to live up to certain popular conceptions of Blackness and masculinity, particularly those that are at odds with the academic success.

The Chronicle report on the San Francisco kindergarten study highlights an additional contributor this same achievement gap. According to Chronicle staff writer Jill Tucker, the study found that, “Those who were ready more often were girls, attended preschool, were older, had no special needs, and had mothers who went to college, researchers found.” In addition, “The mother’s education was most closely aligned with a child’s readiness, trumping all other characteristics, including family income, ethnicity, and English language ability.”

The groups at greatest risk for lack of kindergarten preparedness were found to be, ” younger kindergartners, low-income tots, boys, Latinos, African Americans and those who did less reading with their families.” Those who enter kindergarten unprepared are rarely able to catch up and, instead, fall farther behind every year; but the study authors also found that preschool could bridge the gap between prepared and unprepared students. This last finding could certainly lead to a decrease in the gender gap between young Black men’s and young Black women’s high school graduation rates.

One of the teachers in the Chronicle article is quoted as saying that, “[s]ome kids come in and haven’t held a pencil before,” an observation that suggests that there are kids coming into kindergarten who haven’t even had a chance to draw. These children are the unwitting victims of that less easily recognized form of neglect which manifests itself in the parents’ wholesale abandonment of the role of their child’s first teacher.

Such children cannot wait until universal parenting education becomes feasible. Their need is immediate; and government policies change far more slowly than will benefit those boys and girls who are currently poised to enter kindergarten during the next 3 – 5 years underexposed to even the basic tools of learning.

Recently, San Francisco has taken decisive steps toward insuring that at-risk groups enter kindergarten no less prepared than their school-ready peers. The Chronicle describes the city’s unique approach to insuring that all children who enter school are, indeed, ready to learn:

The city and school district is ahead of schedule in expanding San Francisco’s Preschool for All program, which is serving 2,400 children this year in every ZIP code. The program offers free preschool regardless of family income level, funded by city Proposition H money as well as state, federal and school district resources.

Within three years, the city hopes to offer 4,800 spots, serving most of the city’s 6,000 4 year olds. San Francisco is the only county in the state offering free universal preschool, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

Universal preschool should be a national priority, especially given the long-term effects of entering school unprepared. San Francisco is funding its own program (with federal assistance), but not all cities can afford to take that path (though some would argue that no city can afford not to follow in SF’s footsteps). I’d love to see a program like Upward Bound, but for preschoolers. Children could enroll during the summer before kindergarten, or even 2 or 3 days a week throughout the school year. Like Upward Bound, a national preschool program could be based on college campuses. Federal funding would be ideal, but colleges — especially those with massive endowments– could finance the programs themselves.

The stated goal of the Upward Bound program is, “to increase the rate at which participants complete secondary education and enroll in and graduate from institutions of postsecondary education.” How much more easily could Upward Bound reach its goals — and for how many more young people — if preschool was was available for all students who needed it?

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Harvard University Baseball Team, 1904. William Matthews (no. 11, front row) was one of a small number of Black students attending majority white institutions in the early 20th century. Born in Selma, Alabama, he attended Tuskegee Institute for four years before moving north to further his education, first at Phillips Andover, and then at Harvard.

Matthews as an outstanding athlete and a standout at the shortstop position, this at a time when Harvard’s was arguably the best college baseball team in the nation. After completing his undergraduate studies, Matthews earned a law degree from Boston University. He went on to become special assistant to the U.S. district attorney in Boston, and eventually to hold a position in the Justice Department, under Calvin Coolidge.

(Source: Library of Congress, General Collections. Reproduction #: LC-USZ62-119879)

For more on William Matthews and his battle to integrate professional baseball, click HERE.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

William Hallett Greene (CUNY class of 1884)

Brooklyn Ron (brooklynron.com) offers a moving and detailed account of the disturbing events that shaped the life of William Hallett Greene, the first African American to graduate from CUNY/City College in Manhattan, New York. With many thanks to Brooklyn Ron, I offer this excerpt from his April 4, 2008 blogpost on the strange and terrible odyssey of this once-promising Black pioneer:

The Victor Who Became a Victim

For decades now, William Hallett Greene has existed as a distant figure in the history of The City College of New York, with that quality of distance pertaining not only to the passing of time, but to the inscrutability of the eyes gracing his comely image in photos taken for his graduation more than a century ago.

They were eyes that suggested a certain tenacity, even as they conveyed a sadness that was perhaps appropriate for a man lost in the dustbin of time.

Greene received his bachelor of science degree along with other members of his graduating class, on the evening of June 26, 1884, at the Academy of Music, not far from their beloved City College, then located at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street.

An article in the following day’s New York Times noted the presence of Greene, remarking that he was “the first colored boy who has ever graduated from the college” and that he’d “made a good record” while a student.

“The audience applauded him liberally last night,” the Times wrote.

It was a day of triumph for Greene, as it was for other members of his class, who like him were men of great promise, schooled in a strict, classical way of study that left them with feelings of camaraderie and high ambitions.

Known affectionately as “Greeny,” Greene was popular and highly respected. He had been voted recording secretary of his class and he was a cabinet member of the literary society known as Phrenocosmia.

But many months of research—including searches of records in the National Archives, old city directories, ancestry.com and old newspaper articles—have led to a conclusion that Greene was, at the moment of his graduation, like a flashing star approaching its apex.

By all accounts uncovered so far, Greene soon fell victim to the racism that was so prevalent in his day, even as he, perhaps, also fell to inner demons that often grip young men, then, as now.

His story could even be called a 19th-century foreshadowing of what today has been termed the Plight of the Black Male.

Breaking Barriers

Greene, slight of build, standing five-foot-seven and weighing only 132 pounds, according to a June 1884 issue of The College Mercury campus newspaper, had long wanted to be in the U.S. Signal Corps. In The Mercury, he listed his favorite person as “Uncle Sam” and his favorite course of study as astronomy.

And so two months before his graduation, Greene, just 19 years old, applied to become the first black member of the U.S. Signal Corps, the highly competitive U.S. Army unit that tracked weather patterns and was the precursor to the National Weather Service.

The Signal Corps required that applicants pass written examinations, and in May Greene scored highly on it.

But he was rejected, bluntly told by the Signal Corps Commander, Gen. William Hazen, that, according to Hazen’s interpretation of the 1866 Army Reorganization Act, blacks were restricted to four regiments set aside for them, in the infantry and cavalry.

Young Greene turned to his college president, Alexander Webb, for help. And Webb, a former army general who had been a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg, responded right away. He dashed off a letter to Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln (son of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln), writing: “This young man is the first colored student who has ever passed beyond the sophomore class of this college. He is the first colored graduate and is, by election, the secretary of his class, composed of some of the finest young men of this city.”

To learn about the fate of CUNY’s first Black graduate, please click THIS LINK.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Jewel Woods

27. I come from a tradition of humor that is based largely on insulting and disrespecting women; especially mothers.

38. I have the privilege of popularizing or consuming the idea of a thug, which is based on the violence and victimization of others with virtually no opposition from other men.

45. I have the privilege of believing that feminism is anti-black.

46. I have the privilege of believing that the failure of the black family is due to the black matriarchy.

58. I can rest assured that most of the coaches — even in predominately — female sports within my race are male.

–Jewel Woods, in “The Black Male Privileges Checklist”

Have you heard about “The Black Male Privileges Checklist,” on JewelWoods.com? Jewel Woods is an author and gender analyst. He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, a Master’s in sociology from the University of Toledo, and a Master’s in social work from the University of Michigan; and from all indications it seems that questions of Blackness and gender have been at the center of his work all along. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in social work, and his commentaries on gender, race, and masculinity have been featured on a variety of television and radio programs and published in a number of prominent magazines.

One of the hardest things to do is to talk about people who are marginalized in one area about the privileges they have in other areas. Consider, for example, the challenges inherent in speaking with working-class and poor white people about white skin privilege, or in talking to rich white gay men about white privilege, male privilege, and class privilege. I can imagine that this is the same case when it comes to discussing male privilege with men who are Black, especially given African American males’ disproportionate poverty, incarceration, and drop-out rate. Add to this the focus in both the mainstream media and the Black press on portraying African American men as a population in crisis, and on stories like the gender achievement gap between Black men and women.

I have blogged on the gender achievement gap between Black men and women; and yet I do believe that Black men do have (and sometimes exercise) male privilege. I also believe that to acknowledge and understand male privilege could enhance Black men’s overall prospects for academic success, mostly because this checklist can function as a mirror, calling attention to the ways that Black maleness is constructed and performed in our society.

The gender achievement gap between Black men and women (and Black boys and girls) is be based, at least in part, in the vast differences between how Black men (and boys) and Black women (and girls) respond to prevailing stereotypes associated with their respective identity categories. Black women are stereotyped as sexual savages, lazy “welfare queens,” and/or as emasculating “sapphires”. Alternately, Black women and girls may find themselves rendered invisible by popular understanding of Blackness as male and of womanhood as white. As such, Black women and — most imporantantly, Black girls have nothing to gain from embracing these stereotypes and everything to gain from rejecting them.

The picture is a little different when it comes to Black maleness and masculinity. The prevailing stereotypes associated with  Black men — as hyper-masculine, sexually superior, tougher, meaner, scarier, more violent, and cooler than their non-Black counterparts — may actually feel empowering, especially to young males who see like possibility of accessing other forms of male power (like economic power, political power, et cetera). Unfortunately, the behaviors and attitudes required to live up to these stereotypes are often deeply incompatible intellectual pursuits and academic success.

Indeed, I have encountered young Black men who felt the conflict between their schools’ and their parents’ desires to see them succeed academically, and their Black and non-Black peers’ expectations that young brothers should be athletic, virile, stoic, tough, and cool. For these and other young long-term rewards of living up to their parents expectations cannot compete with the immediate gratification of being perceived by their peers as the embodiment of youthful masculinity. 

“The Black Male Privileges Checklist” has the potential to shed what Audre Lorde refers to as “a different quality of light” on the hypermasculine behavior and stereotypes that so many young African American men find so compelling. It’s emphasis on some of the ways that Black manhood and masculinity hurt Black women carries with in an important subtext, that much of what passes for “real” African American manhood also hurts Black men. In the context of workshops led by Jewel Woods and other Black male activists and mentors, an exploration of the “Checklist” could create a space for some much needed reflection on how to embrace maleness and masculinity in ways that expand rather than limit young men’s options. 

To read “The Black Male Privileges Checklist” and its accompanying explanation, click HERE.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Bishop and Mrs. Daniel Payne

(For larger image, click on photo above)

In 1863 Bishop Daniel Payne, Wilberforce benefactor and 7-year trustee, succeeded Richard Rust to become its second president, and the first African American college president in U.S. history. To read a short biography of this Black pioneer, click on THIS LINK.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Yesterday’s Yahoo! news features included an interesting article in the rise of environmental rankings for U.S. colleges and universities. Apparently, the Princeton Review has added a “green rating” to its annual college guide. The rating will appear in the 2009 edition and is meant to indicate how “environmentally friendly, responsible, and committed the institutions are.”

According to the Princeton Review Guide, the schools with the best green ratings are: Arizona State University (Tempe),  Bates College, Binghamton University, College of the Atlantic, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of New Hampshire, University of Oregon, University of Washington, Yale University.

In addition there are a number of other rankings, some more scientific than others, that indicate those schools most heavily committed to (and successful at) reducing their negative impact on the environment. Curiously, almost none of those institutions are HBCUs.

A handful of HBCUs have signed onto the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. They are: Coppin State, Xavier University, Dillard University, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science, and Norfolk State University. Though I am pleased that at least some HBCUs showed up on the list, many surprising names were missing from the list. I would, for example, have expected the presidents of Howard, Spelman, Morehouse, Hampton, and FAMU to have signed the Presidents Climate Commitment.

On those rare occasions when HBCUs showed up in the various green ratings and pledge lists, they were at the bottom of the rankings. The Sustainable Edowments Institute has developed one of the most thorough reviews of college environmental policies and sustainability. Howard and Spelman are the only HBCUs included on the Sustainable Edowments Institute 2008 College Sustainability Report Card, earning bottom marks for what the Institute describes as their failure to make significant movements on conservation, sustainability, and waste reduction. The Institute gave Spelman a grade of D-, which is at least higher than Howard‘s F.

Black colleges should be spearheading the spread of environmental awareness and the adoption of sustainable living strategies throughout the African American community. Instead, it seems that those HBCUs best positioned to make an impact (due to their strong endowments and national reputations) have yet to take action on their own campuses.

I would have hoped for better.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

A report on the China View website brought to my attention the battle that is taking place at UCLA, between the undergraduate admissions committee and Political Science Professor Timothy Groseclose, a former committee member.

Apparently Prof. Groseclose has become convinced that the admissions committee is, to use his language, “cheating” in the admissions process. Since 1996, California’s Proposition 209 has effectively prohibited any form of identity based discrimination or preferential treatment by state institutions. The main point of this proposition is expressed in this excerpt from the text of Prop 209:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

On August 28, 2008, Professor Groseclose submitted his “Report on Suspected Malfeasance in UCLA Admissions and the Accompanying Cover-Up.” The report begins with this summary of his accusations against the admissions committee:

A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions. Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay part of their application. This allows admissions staff members to learn the race of applicants; then, in violation of Proposition 209, readers use such information to evaluate applicants. To the extent that this happens – an extent which can only be assessed with stematic data on admissions – such practices are de facto implementations of race preferences.

(To read the full text of Professor Groseclose’s report, click HERE.)

UCLA has consistently denied that it has violated Prop 209 in any of its policies or practices, and the University responded to Professor Groseclose’s accusations, issuing a statement that affirms, among other things, that,

“UCLA’s admissions policies and practices were developed to scrupulously adhere to state law and University of California regulations. The campus remains committed to the highest ethical standards and to openness and transparency in establishing and maintaining admissions policies in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”

(To read the full text of UCLA’s Statement on Admissions Processes, click HERE.)

Groseclose emphasizes that he does, in fact, support the use of racial preferences in college admissions, but that he opposes what he perceives as the unlawful actions taken by UCLA. He describes his beliefs in the second appendix of his 89-page report:

Notwithstanding some accusations I may face, I strongly favor racial diversity.

Indeed, in university admissions I favor racial preferences – that is, to adopt policies that would aid racial groups who have faced greater challenges and suffered past discrimination – as long as the preferences are executed transparently and within the limits of the law.

Groseclose believes that there are a number of strategies that UCLA admissions could use to increase racial diversity in its undergraduate student body without violating the constraints imposed by Proposition 209, including the adoption of a policy that grants, “automatic admission to any student who graduated in the top 1% of his or her high school class.”

Groseclose’s statement of support for diversity aside, it troubles me that a sudden rise in the number of Black students admitted to UCLA seems to have launched his probe into the University’s admissions practices. I doubt that a sudden surge in the number of Arab American, Asian American, or Latin American students admitted would have been met with the same suspicions.

I wonder if it ever occurred to Groseclose and others who associate a rise in the number of Black on campus as evidence of unlawful activity that maybe UCLA, under pressure from concerned Black alumni, has actually became more fair to Black students, rather than less fair to white and Asian students. Is it possible that UCLA has simply gotten better at judging Black students fairly, rather than worse at adhering to state law?

When one considers the history of Black people in the U.S. (including recent history), the proponderance of the evidence indicates that large and powerful institutions are rarely biased toward Black people. Even in the case of affirmative action, the fact remains that, throughout the history of affirmative action, the greatest beneficiaries of its policies have been white women, whose sweeping and preference-based advances have largely been masked by the national obsession with the relatively small gains made by people of African descent.

I will watch this story with great interest, but little hope that it will result in any outcomes that are favorable for Black people. Throughout the blogosphere, many have already made up their minds that more Black folks at UCLA must mean less fairness toward other ethnic groups. This is a shadow that will follow the Black students on that campus throughout their undergraduate careers. The intimations — whispered, written, and spoken aloud — that they are somehow less deserving than students of any other ethnic heritage will mar their academic experience; and, in my experience, no level of performance, no matter how high, will convince the majority of students on campus that each Black student they encounter does not represent a white student’s displacement by a “less qualified” person of African descent.

Posted by Ajuan Mance