Broadening Perspectives
Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond
Black and White
By Prudence L. Carter
Oxford University Press, 2005
256 pp., $29.95, cloth, ISBN: 0-19-516862-3
Why do so many African-American and Latino students perform worse than their Asian and White peers in classes and on exams? Common wisdom holds that racial stratification leads African-American and Latino students to rebel against “acting White,” thus dooming themselves to lower levels of scholastic, economic and social achievement.
But is this true? Do minority students reject certain practices, such as excelling in school, and thus their own mobility, because they fear that peers will accuse them of forsaking their own racial and ethnic identities?
Drawing on survey fieldwork and interview data from low-income Latino and African-American youth in New York, Prudence Carter here shows that resistance to “acting White” indicates a rejection only of the generic American, “White,” middle-class styles of interaction, speech, dress and musical tastes. Carter further demonstrates why some African-American and Latino students thrive academically, and others do not. The most successful negotiators of our school systems are not necessarily those who assimilate into the dominant White mainstream, but rather those most adept at crossing the cultural divide. These students, who are potentially what she terms multicultural navigators, do not “act White” or “act Black.” Rather, these culturally savvy teens harvest resources from multiple traditions — whether it is knowledge of hip-hop or of classical music — to strategically negotiate different expectations and achieve their high ambitions.
Dr. Prudence L. Carter is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at Harvard University.
