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June 5, 2005

Race and Academics - The High Cost of Acting White

Marginal Revolution points to this study entitled "An Empirical Analysis of ‘Acting White’" by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. and Paul Torelli. The paper reports on the high social costs among minorities should they "act white" by achieving high scores in school.

"Among whites, higher grades yield higher popularity. For Blacks, higher achievement is associated with modestly higher popularity until a grade point average of 3.5, when the slope turns negative. A black student with a 4.0 has, on average, 1.5 fewer same-race friends than a white student with a 4.0. Among Hispanics, there is little change in popularity from a grade point average of 1 through 2.5. After 2.5, the gradient turns sharply negative. A Hispanic student with a 4.0 grade point average is the least popular of all Hispanic students, and has 3 fewer friends than a typical white student with a 4.0 grade point average."

Couple this with another tidbit from the abstract.

"Using a newly available data set (the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health), which allows one to construct an objective measure of a student’s popularity, we demonstrate that there are large racial differences in the relationship between popularity and academic achievement; our (albeit narrow) definition of ‘acting white.’ The effect is intensified among high achievers and in schools with more interracial contact, but non-existent among students in predominantly black schools or private schools."

What I read from this is an interesting set of contradictions to liberal dogma. First, minorities themselves contribute to members of their own social groups low performance academically. Second, voluntary educational segregation benefits minorities in this matter, as it has been proven to benefit girls in all-female schools. Third, private schools tend to eradicate this problem within their rolls, while public schools appear to contribute to the problem.

"Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white."
-- Senator Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

Those who label themselves as "reality-based" instead of one of the other terms for "liberal" should probably read this paper, and get a dose of what reality is.

Posted by Lockjaw at June 5, 2005 6:31 PM

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» Bogus research paper about blacks “acting white” from Half Sigma
A research paper (link to PDF file of paper) proclaims to show that school aged blacks who “act white” have less popularity because they are shunned by their peers. (Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.) While this sounds reasonable, after reading [Read More]

Tracked on June 6, 2005 12:45 AM

» Roland Fryer and Acting White from Vision Circle
In a paper written with P. Torelli, Roland Fryer tackles the dreaded "acting white" syndrome. If you were to look at the press coverage of the article, you'd expect that Fryer and Torelli's paper breaks the back of the unbelievers--people... [Read More]

Tracked on June 9, 2005 12:51 AM

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