The Hidden Hurdle

Talented black students find that one of the most insidious obstacles to achievement comes from a surprising source: their own peers

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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."

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