Acting White: Acting Gangsta'

Popular black culture, epitomized by the late Notorious B.I.G. and gangsta’ rap, is the leading-edge of black discontent that rejects education for getting ahead in America. President-elect Barack Obama, through his landmark success this political season, is a lighthouse in the search for the prize that the classroom brings, even for the lowest of the low. Obama, whose mother once fed him with the aid of food stamps, shows just how far a schooled black person can go these days–all the way to the White House – if that’s what they want.

It is a tragedy for black progress that the popularized bad-boy behavior, or what social scientists call oppositional culture, has taken root in black communities across this land. As misguided as it is, living dangerously has become a hollow means to stand against assumed white dominators spouting white directives for how to behave. Many African-Americans feel these dictations, on the value of diplomas and degrees, even when touted by successful blacks, are nothing more than a ‘bait and switch’ tactic to keep blacks on the bottom. There is the in-house belief that an educated black man is still just a ‘nigger’ in the eyes of America, waiting to be disrespected. Obama’s political mistreatment at the hands of some whites bears vague witness to these beliefs.

Nevertheless, it is precisely this twisted outlook of the role of books and learning, that has ten million blacks stuck on the bottom rungs of this country’s economic ladder. Aspiring to an education is not acting white. Rather it is doing right, by preparing to go forward on infinite pathways to self-determination and the American Dream, however challenged that dream might be in these difficult economic times.

What African-Americans need is an understanding about emotion-packed labels, and how to ‘keep the beat’ through their repeated stings. We need this so that when Rev. Jesse Jackson accuses then Senator Obama of acting white, or Republican Congressman Westmoreland, of Georgia, labels the Ivy League-educated Michele and Barack Obama as uppity, or when a black kid reading a book anywhere is accused of acting white by his friends, we will understand that these accusations are nothing more than distractions designed to throw a despondent black community - a desperate black community - off the trail of change for the better.

James C. Collier

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