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.