“The concept of ‘acting white’ and worries that African Americans are not pushing their children enough to focus on education have been long-standing concerns of Obama’s — he has mentioned them in several recent speeches — and issues that many prominent members of the community, mostly notably comedian Bill Cosby, have focused on in recent years,” via The Washington Post
Senator Barack Obama is right. “Acting white” anti-intellectualism isn’t the exclusive domain of African Americans. Growing up in Hawaii, there is a vibrant acting white anti-intellectual culture, except in Hawaii it is called “acting haole.” Either way, it keeps kids from “talking haole.” Speaking and writing — communicating — in standard English with a broad vocabulary and the ability to convey complex thoughts and concepts is de rigeur in order to become well-employed, successful, and upwardly-mobile in this and every other culture.
I have a set of books that my dad used to teach himself to lose his North Jersey accent. He took it upon himself to enunciate ever word, to explore language, to pronounce his t’s and r’s, and to make sure his spoken word was as neutral, as cohesive, and as comprehensible as humanly possible. My dad was tall, handsome, and white and even he knew that is was the cut of a man’s suit and the intelligence of his conversation and tone (including his regional dialect and accent, or lack thereof) that made the man. That being white wasn’t enough. That being tall and handsome wasn’t — isn’t — enough. He knew that he needed to act white and not act Jersey.
None of this is a race issue. None of this is a cultural issue. This is a class issue. Yes, there is, indeed, a class war, no matter what the main stream media is trying to sell. That said, the people who suffer are of course African American, Southern, poor, working-class, and under-employed.
Elita America has discovered something very powerful: we cannot judge on race, age, gender, or sexual preference, or family-of-origin, but we are still allow to make harsh judgment based on one’s inability to communicate, to be well-spoken, or to be competent on the job. One can still eschew based on education, based on training, and based on merit.
So, as long as minority-Americans and Southerners and the poor continue to show their roots through their mother tongue and their inability to speak in a businesslike manner, then there will never ever be a reason to ever reject someone based on volatile criteria such as blackness, femaleness, gayness, hispanicness, or whatnot — you can always just reject all of these same folks under the guise of “unqualified” or “inability to communicate” or “not representational of the company,” or some other euphemism for “you don’t speak or communicate in an appropriate manner.” Or, more accurately, “you sound ignorant.”
In Hawaii, Asian kids are called “bananas“ because they’re “white on the inside.”
I grew up bilingual: I was fluent both in Pidgin English and Haole, proper English. Most kids consider a point-of-pride not to — or be able to — speak English; of course, this was amazingly empowering on the schoolyard, but this doesn’t map to the boardroom.
Rejecting “whiteness” is the most self-destructive choice any boy or girl can make: we live in a bilingual America. Most whites I know in DC speak differently at work than they did growing up. Most have lost their southernness, I have lost all of my Hawaiian lilts and ticks.
Culturally eschewing East Coast whiteness and carrying anti-intellectualism as a badge of pride that not only corrupted my school yard but also my Island, my State, and my country. It isn’t just African Americans who are constantly being threatened by a plague of self-empowerment through anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, and anti-East Coast enlightenment, it is America.
When America completely rejects intellectualism, learning, enlightenment, scholarship, fairness, justice, and rationalism — tearing down the master’s house — what will be left? What will be built up in its place?
What good will come of a country filled with (reverse-)racism, separatism, ignorance, mysticism, anti-intellectualism, sexism, bigotry, pride, fear, religiosity, and gross nationalism? We as a nation, we as a country, and we as a people will surely be corrupted from a cancer and that cancer will not be from without, it will be from within.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
How sad…but, how true. Not just for racial minorities, but also for those of any disaffected class who feel they may not be able to compete intellectually. The result is they set a false standard designed to discourage those who can compete from learning and achieving. The above should be read and discussed in every class room in America. Anti-intellectual standards must be exposed as the strategy of the less capable and insecure.
hmmm. this is a tough one. firstly, i suggest reading cornel west’s “race matters” and siddle-walker’s “race-ing moral formation.” both works explore the complexity of this issue. secondly and less erudite-ly (how’s that for high brow?), society does discriminate on these points and the recounting of yours and your father’s experience suggests that we should continue to do so. i disagree with your comment that anti-intellectualism is a strategy of the less capable and insecure. generally, this behavior is geared towards identity-seeking and culture preserving, something of which i am all about. seeing it as anti-intellectualism *is* a very white interpretation.
Hey Chris-
Who is your audience here? I think you make some good points but I would point out a couple things. There is some word misuse that spellcheck isn’t going to pick up on, in the first few paragraphs so you might want to re-read that.
Also, the piece starts out disecting society by race and class- fair enough. But just as you have us nodding, you throw in Southern and East-Coast as distinctions. Personally, I don’t think it’s fair to classify the South in that way. The majority of southerners speak perfectly lovely English, albiet with a Southern accent. Unfotunately, intelligent and articulate southerners are sometimes disregarded merely on the basis of their accent and I feel that your including them here is more of the same. Then at the end you throw in East-Coast. Are you saying that the mid-western and western parts of this country don’t speak English appropriatly? Or that East-Coasters are snobby? I just don’t understand why that term is part of your argument. I think your previously established categories of race and class are enough unless you are ready to define and qualify what you mean by Southern and East-Coast.
And finally, I’d be pretty careful about using “master’s house”. That’s part of why I want to know your audience. Even I, a person who agrees with 80% of this piece was left with a bad taste in my mouth. A piece that uses that imagery is probably not one that I want to buy into.
So, there you have it. Thanks for sharing- it definitely got my brain cells working today. I know my reponse was a bit emotional so I hope you won’t take offense. I could just retort that “you started it!”
Have a good day, L
Hey, LC, I just wanted to clarify a little bit. When I referred to the Master’s House, I was referring to the writings of noted African American, Poet, Feminist, Teacher and Activist, Audre Lorde, 1934-1992, who wrote, about feminism,
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”
This is an essential tenet of Postmodern Feminist Theory as well as Postmodern African American theory as well.
What postmodernism does not offer is a plan for rebuilding. Postmodern criticism and theory does an amazing job of dismantling but it rarely offers anything competitive or compelling enough in it’s place.
That’s all I am saying. A separate-but-equal culture and linguistics and language and even accent is always separate but never equal.
And yes, my dad was well-spoken and well-versed, but he had a North Jersey accent — just an accent — and it was indeed a curse that he desperately tried to kill — and did so.
If a southerner can’t speak neutral English, he shouldn’t be surprised at all that people fancy him as brilliant as Gomer Pyle.
Sure, folks think that southerners are charming and all that, but show me one southerner who makes it into national television, short of “You Know You’re a Redneck.”
Southern accents do indeed work, when they’re very very very light and lilting. The south does not define the game.
Even CNN is in Atlanta and has not even a hint of southern drawl.
Why is that?
there’s this amazingly yummy holiday popcorn that comes in those cheap tins i want to give the popcorn as gifts a lot, but think that people will dismiss it because it comes in those cheesy tins like, they won’t ever TRY the popcorn just because of the packaging
What I am not saying is to ABANDON your inner hick, original gangster, vaudevillian, redneck, Canuck, hillbilly, mafioso, or blue collar past or present. What I am saying is that you’re doing yourself not merely a general disservice, but you’re in fact HURTING your chances of success by not becoming culturally bi-lingual.
Saying “axe” instead of ask and “y’all” or “yins guys” instead of “you” and if your cadence isn’t neutral and if you can’t speak at least a little bit outside of where you grew up, then you’re doomed to be judged harshly.
What’s worse is that while you can always go to Brooks Brothers to take your outfit up a notch for your big interview, it will be your ability to communicate at a “professional” level, at an “enterprise” level, at a “world class” level, that will get you ahead.
I am merely talking about interoperability. I am saying that there is a “high American” in much the same way that there is a “Queen’s English” and “High German.”
Your mother or school teacher might have called it “proper English” or “speaking properly.”
And, it really is important, both spoken and written. Unless, of course, you’re being intentional. Intentionally folksy, for example.
Otherwise, you’ll be responded to and reacted to much the same way you were when you tried to speak German or French and they quickly identified you as an alien and then took appropriate steps, be their positive, neutral, or negative. At this point, you were in their big bad world and they had you over a barrel.
I guess you could always settle in the south, stay in Hawaii, or whatever.
the issue is that people don’t want there to be one way to present oneself professionally.
Employees don’t get to choose! Only employers do. The worker doesn’t have a voice in the definition of terms of employment, only the management allowed. The worker is simply allowed to be indignant and say things like, “the man is keeping me down.” Truth is, you have to meet “the man” half way. And yes, there is “the man.”
Who is “the man?” Well, one could say it is shareholders, but the truth is, it is actually the worker, the client, the customer, the public.
If you have a business, you need to be as trustworthy, as shiny, as attractive as possible… you need to put your best foot forward and you need to make sure that you make your client trust and respect you.
Part of that is speaking professionally, speaking proper english.
First, A disclaimer and some contextualization:
I am an ex-pat, currently living in Germany. I have not lived in the US or an English-speaking country for the past four years. Over the past five years, my languages of daily interaction with those around me have been Spanish, Swahili, and German. This winter I will spend in a French-speaking African country.
And so, my view on this:
Refusing to learn the lingua franca of a country (in the case of the US, standard US English)… What? I just don’t get it. It is one of the most absurd, self-hobbling, self-destructive things I can imagine. Frankly, if someone suffers disadvantage because they willfully refuse to learn the language in which the people around them communicate, well, they really have brought it on themselves. I can summon neither sympathy for their resultant suffering nor understanding for their misdirected decision.
Why would anyone purposely and defiantly choose ignorance over capability and societal efficacy? Why would anyone deliberately dis-empower themselves when they can, with the very same focus and determination, empower themselves?
Would I move to Tanzania and not learn Swahili? No. Would I live in Guatemala and not learn Spanish? No. Would I move from my hick hometown in Pennsylvania to DC and still insist on saying “yins guys”, “hain’t”, and “is the milk all?” No.
For me, additional languages are tools. I think everyone should speak a few. I am stunned that people would hobble themselves linguistically as an expression of cultural identification. It’s the mental equivalent binding your feet into crippled knobs as a display of ethic pride. Absurd.
I find it that much more incomprehensible that one would not even choose to learn a mere dialect of a language they already speak – how hard is that?
I simply do not buy the cultural cohesion argument. I do not become any less of a Pennsylvanian because I respectfully use “y’all” instead of “you guys” when I’m living in Charleston. I become no less of an American when I say “bum bag” rather than “fanny pack” when I’m amongst Brits (the latter being, for them, a horribly offensive combination of words in polite company). No village Hehe tribesman in the southern highlands of Tanzania feels less Hehe because he speaks Swahili when he goes to town, no Berliner feels less a Berliner because he straightens out his dative and accusative cases when he’s speaking with Stuttgarter. It’s just being an effective communicator.
Languages are meant for communication. They are tools for bridging gaps. Lingua franca are wonderful tools for allowing people of differing cultural and dialect backgrounds to communicate as effectively as possible. If someone deliberately refuses to use that tool, which in the US, with standard US English is so easily acquired by anyone already speaking a dialect of US English, then, should they find that others are uncomfortable or unable to work well with them, they’ve got no one to blame for their plight but themselves.
Someone is going to say, “it’s more complicated than that,” I am sure; or, it isn’t as simple as that.”
That there be a more “intellectual English” in the United States is not a phenomenon particular to the United States or even to the English language. In every language and in every country there are various dialects usually one or two or which is acceptable in the corporate/business landscape. Take Great Britain where the Queen’s English is used in the offices setting as well as on the news (the people on the news are chosen for their ability to speak in the most neutral form of the language), however those who speak with heavy Irish or Scottish accents are not looked down upon in the office place because it is simply another acceptable/intellectual form of the language.
The same goes for other languages. In Spanish the majority of documentaries/educational films or programs are sent to be dubbed in Columbia since their dialect of Latin American Spanish is the most neutral and therefore easily understood throughout Lat. Am. These dubbed programs would not be sent to Spain however. The Spanish would rather listen to the “Castilian” accent spoken in Madrid.
In the United States the dialect of choice has come to be associated with the East as well as the West Coast and this is simply a matter of migration. People tend to migrate towards the urban meccas that are the east and west coasts of the US. With such an influx of people from all over there is a need to communicate with the most basic/understandable form of the language (needless to say this happens in most universities as well) and therefore the “intellectual English” was born which filters out all the fun nuances/slang/particularities of other regions so as to enable a better understanding.
I whole heartedly agree that holding onto traces of the “mother dialect” gives the speaker a sense of belonging and individuality that they want to hold onto. I was born in CA and am known to throw out a few “hellas” and “freshes” and the occasional “dude” but not in the middle of a meeting at work. There is a time and a place. Just as in ancient times scholars, clergymen, and students spoke in Latin now we speak in a neutral English. Once the lectures, homilies and debates were finished these scholars of old did not go around speaking in Latin to order their groceries and chat with there friends, they relaxed and spoke in their mother tongue just as we can all do in our personal lives.
It is a matter of choice but I turn off my Mexican slang when speaking to my Spanish friends, unless I want to get a good laugh, because they will not understand a lot of it or I may even insult them. It is the same in English, especially with the growing internationality of business it is necessary to facilitate understanding. Just as you shouldn’t drop f-bombs in business attire (it looks so silly).
To be frank, the Scotland and Ireland are different countries with different cultures. So, speaking with an Irish accent is a lingua franca of Ireland and the same with Scotland. Mind you, I can’t understand a bloody thing the folks from Glasgow say, so I guess they’re going to be equally shunned, since they’re just not communicating effectively.
When I get a phone call with a very bad connection, I blame the phone — the fidelity is poor. When it is a person-to-person conversation, I will either have to blame myself for poor comprehension skills or the other speaker for speaking like he has marbles in his mouth.
In this interchange, the winner is not who is right, the winner is the one who does that hiring, the buying, or has the power.
See that was exactly what I thought was interesting. Obviously I mispoke and should not have added in Ireland to my GB example. But… even though you and I can’t understand a thing those Scotts say (except of lads and lasses) the Brits don’t shun this accent in the corporate world. However, the south/Hawaii/South Jersey are not separate entities like Scotland and I think this is the reason that the accents are not looked upon as kindly by corporate America.
Where I teach, right out side of DC, there is a big mixture of minorities born and raised from US families and immigrants from all over the world. For middle schoolers, finding that balance between peer popularity and school success is the hardest thing they can learn. Without a role model of success, it can be extremely hard for lower-economic kids (kids of parents with no college degree) to even have any idea HOW to “act white.” as you define it. Who would they talk to like that?
Immigrant minorities (especially from Africa) tend to actually do better at this – probably because their parents are very close to the sacrifice it took to getting them here. They are expected to become part of the educated culture. I try to tell them that they won’t learn to use proper grammar and mechanics in their writing until they WANT it to look and sound educated, and that they should WANT to be able to “turn on” thier educated side when they need to impress the right people. Successful “hood” kids have to turn their communication skills on and off all the time. It is a very hard situation to survive both worlds.
Kathryn
I look at it more simply, actually. To me, again this is all about preservation of culture. The truth is…we value some cultures and devalue others. There’s no way around that. The sad thing is that the one with the most money makes that judgment.
Influence not money. Our culture is being dumbed down every day. Unfortunately, it isn’t merely money or dominant culture, it is influence. And, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter. It is all an emergent system based on simple choices, although it does often look like a mad global conspiracy. Blame whomever you want if it helps you sleep at night,even though you (not you, Janna — you, plural) botched an interview because you (pl) didn’t know how to put a sentence together or how to pronounce English words as they are well-defined in every dictionary.
Maybe it is not the man keeping you (pl) down, it is yourself. Maybe not.
Where I teach, right out side of DC, there is a big mixture of minorities born and raised from US families and immigrants from all over the world. For middle schoolers, finding that balance between peer popularity and school success is the hardest thing they can learn. Without a role model of success, it can be extremely hard for lower-economic kids (kids of parents with no college degree) to even have any idea HOW to “act white.” as you define it. Who would they talk to like that? Immigrant minorities (especially from Africa) tend to actually do better at this – probably because their parents are very close to the sacrifice it took to getting them here. They are expected to become part of the educated culture. I try to tell them that they won’t learn to use proper grammar and mechanics in their writing until they WANT it to look and sound educated, and that they should WANT to be able to “turn on” thier educated side when they need to impress the right people. Successful “hood” kids have to turn their communication skills on and off all the time. It is a very hard situation to survive both worlds.