The Hidden Hurdle

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

When it comes to achieving in school, Za'kettha Blaylock knows that even dreaming of success can mean living a nightmare. She would, above all things, like to work hard, go to college and become a doctor. But to many other black 14-year-old girls in her corner of Oakland, these ideas are anathema. The telephone rings in her family's modest apartment, and the anonymous voice murmurs daggers. "We're gonna kill you," the caller says. Za'kettha knows the threat comes from a gang of black girls, one that specializes not in drugs or street fights but in terrorizing bright black students. "They think that just because you're smart," says the eighth-grader, "they can go around beating you up."

Of all the obstacles to success that inner-city black students face, the most surprising -- and discouraging -- may be those erected by their own peers. Many children must also cope with broken families, inadequate schools and crumbling communities that do not value academic achievement as essential to survival and prosperity. But the ridicule of peers cuts most deeply of all. Students like Za'kettha find themselves reviled as "uppity," as trying to "act white," because many teenagers have come to equate black identity with alienation and indifference. "I used to go home and cry," says Tachelle Ross, 18, a senior at Oberlin High in Ohio. "They called me white. I don't know why. I'd say, 'I'm just as black as you are.' "

The phrase "acting white" has often been the insult of choice used by blacks who stayed behind against those who moved forward. Once it was supposed to invoke the image of an African American who had turned his back on his people and community. But the phrase has taken an ominous turn. Today it rejects all the iconography of white middle-class life: a good job, a nice home, conservative clothes and a college degree.

In the smaller world of high school, the undesirable traits are different, but the attitude is the same. Promising black students are ridiculed for speaking standard English, showing an interest in ballet or theater, having white friends or joining activities other than sports. "They'll run up to you and grab your books and say, 'I'll tear this book up,' " says Shaquila Williams, 12, a sixth-grader at Webster Academy in East Oakland. "They'll try and stop you from doing your work." Honor students may be rebuked for even showing up for class on time.

The pattern of abuse is a distinctive variation on the nerd bashing that almost all bright, ambitious students -- no matter what their color -- face at some point in their young lives. The anti-achievement ethic championed by some black youngsters declares formal education useless; those who disagree and study hard face isolation, scorn and violence. While educators have recognized the existence of an anti-achievement culture for at least a decade, it has only recently emerged as a dominant theme among the troubles facing urban schools.

The label "acting white" and the dismissal of white values are bound up in questions of black identity. "If you see a black girl," explains Kareema Matthews, a street-smart 14-year-old from Harlem, "and she's black, not mixed or anything, and she wants to act like something she's not, in these days nobody considers that good. She's trying to be white. That's why nobody likes her. That's how it is now." But when asked what it is to be black, Kareema pauses. "I don't have the slightest idea."

The right attitude, according to the targets of ridicule, would be shown by skipping class, talking slang and, as Tachelle says, "being cool, not combing your hair. Carrying yourself like you don't care." Social success depends partly on academic failure; safety and acceptance lie in rejecting the traditional paths to self-improvement. "Instead of trying to come up with the smart kids, they try to bring you down to their level," says eighth-grader Rachel Blates of Oakland. "They don't realize that if you don't have an education, you won't have anything -- no job, no husband, no home."

It is a sad irony that achievement should have acquired such a stigma within the black community. Hard work, scholarship and respect for family values have long been a cornerstone of black identity. In the years before the Civil War, many black slaves risked their lives learning how to read. In 1867, just four years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans founded Morehouse and Howard universities. According to the Bureau of the Census, between Reconstruction and 1910, the literacy rate among Southern blacks climbed from 20% to 70%. "There has always been a strong pressure toward educational achievement," says Mae Kendall, director of elementary education for the Atlanta public schools. Kendall, who grew up in semirural Thomasville, Ga., recalls, "My mother was not a lettered woman by any means, but she said, with a good education, you could turn the world upside down. That was a strong common linkage among all black people, and it was instilled early on."

Some education experts associate the rise of the culture of anti-achievement with the advent of public school desegregation and the flight of the black middle class to the suburbs. That left fewer role models whose success reinforced the importance of education and more children from families who found little grounds for hope in schools that were decaying.

The civil-rights movement did produce pockets of progress: the number of black managers, professionals and government officials rose 52% in the past decade. Black enrollment in colleges has climbed steeply. In 1990, 33% of all black high school graduates went on to college, in contrast to 23% in 1967. Since 1976, black Scholastic Aptitude Test scores have increased by a greater percentage than those of either whites or Asians. Still, blacks have higher truancy rates, and in spite of the gains, the test scores of African Americans remain the lowest among large ethnic groups. The high school dropout rate among young blacks averages 7.7%, nearly twice that of their white peers, at 3.9%.

As more black teachers and administrators reach positions of power in the public school system, the anti-achievement ethic presents a special challenge to them as educators. For years, the failure of black students to succeed in white-run schools was attributed in large part to institutional racism. But some black educators are reassessing the blame. "It's absolutely ridiculous for us to be talking about what's happening to black youngsters when you've got a 90% African-American staff teaching a 95% black student body," says Franklin Smith, who is superintendent of schools in Washington and black himself. "If you can't prove what you believe here in Washington, then you might as well forget it anywhere in this country."

The effort to reverse the pattern of black failure has prompted educators like Smith to try many experiments -- Afrocentric curriculums, academic- achievement fairs and efforts to establish black all-male public schools that focus on building self-esteem. The reform movements seek to revive in black students the value system that prizes education as, among other things, a way out of poverty. "We dropped the ball," laments Trinette Chase, a Montgomery County, Md., mother. "Our generation failed to pass on the value of an education."

It is a truism to say the problem most often begins at home. When parents are not able to transmit the values of achievement, the ever present peer group fills the vacuum. Moniqua Woods, 12, a student at the Webster Academy in Oakland, says it is easy to spot neglected children because they "come to school every day yawning and tired. You know they stayed out late that night." Concurs classmate Mark Martin, also 12: "Some of the kids' parents are on drugs. You go in their house, and you can smell it." Such a homelife can further strengthen the attitude that school does not matter, especially if the parents themselves are without a diploma.

Kiante Brown, 15, of Oakland, knows this all too well. His mother is a recovering crack addict who, he says, pays little attention to his comings and goings, and he hasn't seen his father in two years. Kiante used to spend his afternoons selling drugs on street corners. What little education he has came in bits and pieces; he has missed so much school he'll have to repeat the eighth grade. "I didn't really drop out, but I haven't been going to school much," he says. "For a while my mom told me to get up and go to school, but she really doesn't say nothing about it anymore."

Teachers may try to move in where parents have retreated. But with class sizes increasing and school violence growing, it is often all educators can do to maintain minimal order, much less give individual attention to any child. Some teachers admit that the insidious attitudes creep into the classroom. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: when teachers have lower expectations for their black students, they give them less attention and do not push them as hard to do well. Such stereotypes have crossed racial barriers to the point where even black teachers may hold these same attitudes. "If teachers feel they cannot make any headway with a youngster," says Richard Mesa, superintendent of Oakland public schools, "they may write him off."

It is especially painful for teachers to watch their most talented students sabotage their own learning in order to fit in with peers. "Some of them feign ignorance to be accepted," says Willie Hamilton, the principal of Oakland's Webster Academy. Seneca Valley's Martine Martin observed this self- destructive pattern when she formed a program for "at risk" black females at one of her previous schools. The group originally comprised girls who were pregnant or uninterested in learning. But then, little by little, Martin noticed honor students showing up in her program because they thought it was cool.

The environment outside the classroom also leaves its mark inside. The persistence of recession has made it even more difficult to inspire black students to do well in school with the carrot of a job. "The lack of association between education and post-school employment has discouraged a lot of young people," says William Julius Wilson, professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Chicago. "They see that whether you graduate from high school or you drop out, you're still going to be hanging around on a corner or the best job you're going to find is working at a McDonald's. After a time they develop a view that you're a chump if you study hard."

Many successful black role models feel the need to "give something back," by reaching out to inner-city youths. But some are finding it hard to make the connection. Meeting with a group of young inmates from a correctional . facility, Robert Johnson, founder and CEO of Black Entertainment Television, faced some hostile young men and responded in kind. "I told them they were playing themselves into the hands of people who don't care about them. That if they think the way to pull themselves up is to get into the drug trade, rob, shoot and steal they were going to lose."

But teenagers who have trouble identifying with Johnson choose their role models accordingly. "There's a lot of violence and a lot of drugs where I grow up," says Harlem teenager Marcos Medrano, 15, whose role model is macho actor Steven Seagal. "I went to a party, and there was a shoot-out. You're constantly living in danger. Who you gonna look up to? Bill Cosby or somebody that comes out shooting a lot?"

Successful blacks can be intimidating for the young, especially if they dress in suits and "sound white." Some suspect that the ease with which successful blacks move in a white world means that they have denied their heritage. "It's devastating for them because you begin to get this stereotype thinking that all blacks when they get to a certain level try to become white by assimilating themselves with whites," says Dorothy Young, principal of the Delano Elementary School on the west side of Chicago. "And that's not true. But once that seed is planted in any form, that seed is going to grow."

The need to define their identity may lead young blacks to reject the values of achievement; but, according to Rutgers anthropologist Signithia Fordham, this does not mean they think being black is only about failure. "They may not be able to articulate fully what it means to be black, but they're more attuned to why it is they don't want to be white," she says of black students she researched. "They know they want very much to remain connected to the black community. They want to be successful on their own terms."

There are, of course, many schools that can point to their success stories, to students who overcame all the private obstacles to graduation, often with the help of innovative programs. In Cleveland, the Scholarship-in-Escrow program was set up by local businessmen in 1987. To encourage students to work toward college, the program offers cash incentives -- $40 for each A they earn, $20 for each B -- which go into an escrow account for their tuition. Since its inception, SIE has paid $469,300 in earned funds for 2,199 graduates. "It's good to know that money is being put away for you," says Faith Bryant, an 11th-grader at John Adams High School. "I had always dreamed of being successful, but now I know I have a way to do it."

The hope for these students lies in their understanding that no one group in society has a monopoly on success. "As long as you're able to term success as being black or white or red," says Oberlin's Sherman Jones, a placement specialist for the Jobs for Ohio's Graduates program, "as long as we put conditions and colors on success then it'll be difficult for our kids." Destroying such misconceptions is not easy, especially when they are old and deeply rooted. But given time, perhaps "acting white" can be a phrase retired to the history books as the emblem of a misguided attitude that vanished in the light of black achievement.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/Oakland