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i think i said it before, maybe even here, but part of me applauds this. its about time someone called out the idea that being smart and working hard was “acting white” and putting some fianancial bit into it is a good thing. over at patterico, they posted a week or so ago where a berkeley high school closed the science lab because it was seen as only benefitting the white children. yike.

but on the other hand, i am not sure the lawsuit or settlement did any of the students any good. i mean besides the african american kids with the payday.

One wonders what, exactly, “acting white” is.

This story is full of fail.

I am saddened that the story does not mention any sanctions against the educators who failed to protect students from harrassment or, more improtantly, the harrassers.

The real losers are the taxpayers who were forced to compensate the harrassed children.

Too bad the we do not hear from the Sharpton/Jackson crowd on this topics. My favorite of the reader comments: “I don’t know how to fix this, but I do know as an upper-middle white guy, it’s somehow all my fault.”

brb, I’m going to go sue, uh, let’s see, Vanilla Ice, because he’s white, like me, and his “acting black” by rapping is somehow harmful to me. And I don’t mean my eardrums from listening to him.

A.W., I’ve more often heard that “being smart and working hard” was “acting Asian.” Regardless, it’s a stupid notion that being smart and working hard s an attribute of any race rather than one wanting to get ahead in life and succeed.

Actually the problem with this suit is that, at its base, the kids were picked on for not behaving as the other kids expected them to act, period. This isn’t exclusive to black kids or white kids. I was that incredibly smart girl in elementary school who was bullied mercilessly to the point my parents had to pull me out of school. I am white, and it had nothing to do with my race. It had to do with kids picking on the one who stood out. That’s what happened here. These kids were picked on for standing out, not for “acting white.” As I mentioned above, being very smart is more often considered to be an Asian characteristic. Should I have sued for a hate crime for “acting Asian”? No. (My parents should have sued for the school being notified many times that I was being physically battered, some of this witnessed by teachers and once even he principal, and doing nothing, but being as young as they were, they wanted to just put it behind us and so put me in a private school.)

I am of the belief that lawsuits like this cement the notion that being a certain way is a characteristic of a race. Now it’s in a court order that intelligence and being hard-working are white characteristics, even if it isn’t phrased like that. This helps along the belief that blacks are expected to act stupid and lazy. It’s more harmful to black students than helpful to anybody. The school should have been sued for not intervening in the abuse happening on school property, not because someone says that by being bullies for working hard and being smart it must have meant they were “acting white.”

(And I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of white people who are as stupid as can be and so incredibly lazy that I can not consider them to be family, and I’m ashamed of them for not even trying and just being happy living on welfare, which is supposedly something more black and Mexican families are supposed to do. Racial stereotypes just don’t usually hold true.)

Some years ago a New York City television station ran a program about discrimination by black children against children who were too black. I am not kidding. The girl on the program was indeed very black and quite upset. She seemed sweet to me.