I want to weigh in briefly on this conversation Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jamelle Bouie have been having regarding the concept of "acting white." I've long believed that the way that this phenomenon has been portrayed in the national conversation has been in a manner that is meant to deliberately flatter white people -- namely that the socioeconomic status of poor black people in the United States can be explained by their refusal to be more like whites.
Obviously, the phenomenon exists. But as Bouie and Coates indicate, it has a lot more to do with signaling cultural solidarity with other blacks than it has to do with questions of intelligence or grades. I'm tempted to get into details about my own experience, but let's just say that being bougie, biracial, and light-skinned makes one a prime target for being attacked as insufficiently authentic. What I find incredibly frustrating, though, is that people act like these gestures of cultural solidarity are a black issue. As Coates wrote earlier this morning:
This is who they are -- the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn't "have had all these problems," this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a "Real American" with no demonstrable interest in "Real America" then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.Basically around 25 percent of the country is committed to a kind of white identity politics in which denial of verifiable reality, such as the fact that the Civil War was fought over the question of slavery, is an act of cultural solidarity, but all you ever hear about is how black people would do better if they acted more like white people.
Everyone treated the debate over whether or not Barack Obama was "black enough" as a kind of novelty. But for years our political debates have centered around questions of cultural authenticity. Maine blue-blood George W. Bush was a "real American" because he wore a cowboy hat, and this last presidential election was no different, with John McCain's campaign surrogates at times explicitly arguing that entire swaths of the country didn't actually count as real Americans. The last election, for some people, was in part a debate over whether or not Obama was white enough to be president, and it occurred almost entirely through euphemism.
-- A. Serwer
