The most annoying thing about blacks for me has always been their self-destructive habit of equating successful behavior with "acting white" and characterizing such behavior as a brand of race treason. This sabotage of black success turns out not only to be powerful but to be a sociological equilibrium point, that is, a stable state that is hard for a group to shift out of.
This phenomenon is probably the largest challenge of race relations today. Whites want an end to affirmative action because they perceive this sort of limiting behavior as not their fault but that they pay a price in continuing reverse discrimination. Blacks have not been very forthcoming in admitting that some of their lower performance on a wide variety of statistics is due to their own contempt for those amongst them who "act white" and succeed.
Things get even more complicated in that nobody seems to have a clue as to how much of the difference in performance is due to "acting white" destructive behavior and how much is due to problems legitimately rooted in racial discrimination today or discrimination in the past. Lots more work has to be done to study this phenomenon to achieve a just balance in phasing out assistance to make up for problems that are rooted in black america's own chosen behavior.
HT: Fried Man
Posted by TMLutas at March 10, 2004 08:48 AM