Berkeley linguist John McWhorter has made his name in policy circles by arguing, among other things, that black students do poorly in school due to a strain of anti-intellectualism in African American culture that is a by-product of racism. The argument, which he made in a book called Losing the Race, is delineated in an essay in the most recent issue of the American Experiment Quarterly. McWhorter suggests that the reason African American students don't do as well in school as students from other groups is that students are told by their black peers that to do well in school is to "act white." The author considers and rejects some alternative explanations for the test score gap. He argues that the main reason for the gap is not that schools are underfunded. It's simply not true that students can only succeed when schools are well-funded; the kids of Southeast Asian immigrants go to schools with peeling paint, bad textbooks, and lousy teachers but don't have problems in school, despite those factors. Nor is the test score gap a class issue, since the children of working-class Asian immigrants do well in school, as did children from Jewish working-class families a generation ago. Are teachers biased against black students? In surveys, Latino and Asian students report the same amount of what they interpret as bias from teachers as black students do, but these groups don't have the same test score gap. Children of Caribbean and African immigrants don't have the same problems with grades and scores either, though they have kindred experiences with underfunded schools and residual racism. According to McWhorter, the real problem is the "acting white" anxiety, which was a response to racism-the ideology among black teens that to be cool is not to be a nerd. He suggests that one way of changing the culture is to introduce small all-minority schools, where there are no white kids for black students to compare themselves to (and avoid identification with). He believes that affirmative action must be ended so that a clear message is sent to black students that they are expected to do as well as everyone else. If you raise the bar, African American students will rise with it, he believes. See "Why the Black-White Test Gap Exists," by John McWhorter, American Experiment Quarterly, Spring 2002.
