8 Asians

What About Asians in the Empirical Analysis of Acting White?

By akrypti | Tuesday, August 28, 2007 | Comments


The Fryer-Torelli paper, An Empirical Analysis of Acting White, has gained much attention and buzzworthiness among scholars in The Academy as of late, which found an inverse relationship between good grades and popularity among Blacks and Latinos.

“Among whites, higher grades yield higher popularity. . . . [However, a] black student with a 4.0 has, on average, 1.5 fewer same-race friends than a white student with a 4.0. Among Hispanics, there is little change in popularity from a grade point average of 1 through 2.5. After 2.5, the gradient turns sharply negative. A Hispanic student with a 4.0 grade point average is the least popular of all Hispanic students, and has 3 fewer friends than a typical white student with a 4.0 grade point average. Put differently, evaluated at the sample mean, a one standard deviation increase in grades is associated with roughly a .103 standard deviation decrease in social status for Blacks and a .171 standard deviation decrease for Hispanics. For students with a 3.5 grade point average or better, the effect triples.” (Fryer-Torelli, 4)

Since the Fryer-Torelli paper failed to include research and analysis of Asian Americans, I wonder what anecodotal evidence and narratives we could gather here on 8A to consider the good grades and popularity relationships among Asians. If you’re white, according to this paper, your GPA won’t affect how many white friends you have. However, if you’re Black or Latino, your GPA does affect how many Black or Latino friends you have. What about Asians? Did my GPA in high school affect how many Asian friends I had? Or did the fact I lived in an all-white suburb in middle America have something to do with how many Asian friends I had? Ooh. Tough, tough questions.

The foundational premise of the Fryer-Torelli paper comes across to the reader, or at least to me, as this: doing really well in school is a ‘white’ thing and so if you do well and you’re not white, you’re ‘acting white,’ which will invariably incite the wrath of your same-race peers, which means you will have fewer same-race friends.

One article in the Washington Post asserted: “As commonly understood, acting white is a pejorative term used to describe black students who engage in behaviors viewed as characteristic of whites, such as making good grades, reading books or having an interest in the fine arts.” We could intensify this discussion by drawing in the classic model minority myth Asians face.

Mainstream white society labels Diasporic Asians the “model minority” because we’ve been generalized, as a race, to make good grades, read books or have an interest in the fine arts (in other words we play the piano and violin). These characteristics, while we within the community have always referred to as psycho-typical-Asian-parenting-discipline-is-next-to-godliness-we’ll-disown-you-if-you-come-home-with-a-B, are apparently “white” characteristics…according to whites… because making good grades, reading books, and enjoying the fine arts are commendable and therefore white-people-like, not merely psycho-typical-Asian-parenting-discipline-is-next-to-godliness-we’ll-disown-you-if-you-come-home-with-a-B-like.

So really. How do our GPAs affect our popularity, in light of the Fryer-Torelli paper?

Perhaps the “acting white” phenomenon manifests itself a bit differently in our community. I’ve heard before Asians referring snidely to Asians who overachieve as trying too hard to be the model minority, which of course is what marks us the “other white meat” because we’re “acting white” by being overachievers. While similar to the phenomenon in black and Latino communities as referenced above, it’s a slight variation on the theme. I’ve also heard Chinese immigrants who move out of Chinatown to live in the suburbs be accused of “acting white.” Thus, it baffles me that Fryer and Torelli could ignore completely Asian Americans in their research, especially considering how we’ve got that model minority myth pegged against/for us. I hope a social scientist fills that void soon and one day I’ll read empirical analyses of “acting white” in my ethnic community. (Oh, the joys. I can’t wait.)

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  • Bertie
    Oh lord... the term "acting white" is offensive on its face. Based on the definition above, it means that aspiring to do well in school is a white characteristic. What a load of hooey. Succeeding in school and getting a post secondary education is the hallmark of the middle class and the upper class (because they're the ones, by and large, who could afford to do so), and a disproportionate percentage of immigrants from east and south Asia in the 1960s through the 1980s were middle class. If you look at Asian Americans in the inner cities or in the case of the Hmong in rural areas, the psychotic "succeed or I'll lose face among my Asian stepford friends" imperative does not exist. I think that the term "acting white" should be amended to what the real feelings behind the term mean to those saying it: "By attempting to do well in school, you're trying to join the effete middle or upper classes and leaving 'the ghetto' thereby rejecting us and leaving us behind, because you think you're better than us."
  • We made fun of kids with 4.0s regardless of their race and most of them were white. They were nerds, yo. I came from a poorer white family and my friends were pretty much the same and we all had big chips on our shoulder about it. But I did well in school and was called a nerd by them and generally teased in the same "leaving us behind" manner, Bertie described...

    And yes, leaving out the Asian American side of it is waaaaay bad... like that should be obvious to include...

    this is what happens when you have an economist doing an anthropologist's job ;-)
  • Hey Jesse,
    You know, in an earlier draft of this post, I was ruminating on the same thing you raised-- isn't this a *general* issue among *all* kids?? Like I started out writing in my own draft "inverse relationship between a 4.0 GPA and popularity..." and thought.. um.....this is a *race* issue?? But there it states in that paper - apparently, it's "less" of an issue among white kids, somehow, though I haven't quite figured out the precise path of rationale arriving at that conclusion. I guess basically, the difference is in what name you're being called by your immature peers. If you're white and have a 4.0, you're a nerd. If you're Asian, period, you're a nerd. If you're Black or Latino and have a 4.0, you're acting white. Hum.
  • In my public high school, where the population is 97.42% white (according to Wikipedia - yea, my HS is in Wikipedia! Huh!), getting high grades marked you as cool in some circles, and a loser in others. Although the majority thought of you as a loser if you had high grades.

    Me, I always got high grades. But I hid it. I acted like I didn't go home and study every night; I acted like I didn't care about classes during school. In my foolish, confused, adolescent mind, I thought this was the way to coolness, since that's how all the cool kids acted. Go figure.
  • Hey Mike,

    I guess my question is: did your high grades affect how many Asian friends you had? My intuitive response would be probably no. Don't you wonder why that is? Even for Asians who went to, say, Lowell High or Stuy or Brooklyn Tech, I have a hunch that their GPAs also didn't affect the number of Asian friends they had.

    So if the Fryer-Torelli paper is right in its assessment of the White, Black and Latino communities, why are Asians more like the White trends mentioned in the paper than the Black and Latino trends?

    Seems to me if Fryer and Torelli considered the Asians in the equation, they might find their ultimate conclusion moot because "acting white" by their definition doesn't decrease an Asian's popularity among Asians...or does it?
  • Bertie
    "Did your high grades affect how many Asian friends you had?"

    Uh, not enough of a sample size. Remember, many of us, like Mike and I, went to high schools that was 98% non-Asian. There were like three or four other Asian-Americans that I was aware of in my class of 400 and to seek out these three or four people for friendship based on skin color seems utterly ridiculous.
  • Bertie
    "high schools that *were* 98% non-Asian" - excuse my grammar
  • Akrypti
    As I mentioned earlier, even at the schools that are 98% *Asian* .. e.g., Lowell, Stuy, Brooklyn Tech... an Asian student's GPA won't affect the number of Asian friends that student has, which is the issue the paper contends-- that in Black and Latino communities, the higher your GPA, the less friends of the same race you have and therefore the notion that you're in essence white-washed. Unless I'm reading it wrong, in which case by all means someone please correct me right away so we can be on the right track.
  • @Akrypti,

    Hmm, good question. Here's a different way at looking at this (and sorry if I'm going off on a tangent here):

    What seems to be at the basis of friendships & cliques in high school are commonalities, be they proximity (living on the same block), interests (into the same video games), culture (practice the same traditions), etc.

    I could see grades correlating to some of these factors. Teens who have similar interests in playing chess may tend to have similar grades or studying habits, for instance. So do grades effect the number of friends you have (Asian or otherwise)? I think they could.

    If you were to apply popularity to these same factors, there may be loose correlations too. I'm no sociologist, but I tend to think that what's popular in one school is different than what's popular in another - and perhaps what's popular is somewhat defined by what the local society believes & reinforces as popular. Or maybe it's all the media.
  • Readers might find this article interesting. It was highly controversial when it came out:

    The New White Flight
    The Wall Street Journal. NOVEMBER 19, 2005.
    In Silicon Valley, two high schools with outstanding academic reputations are losing white students as Asian students move in. Why?
    http://wsjclassroom.com/teen/teencenter/05nov_w...
  • Bertie
    Akrypti:

    I was merely noting that, for people who attended high schools without a statistically significant amount of Asian-Americans, answering your question is impossible.
  • Hey Bertie,
    Your last comment raises a really good point that I wonder whether the authors of that paper considered. What about the Blacks and Latinos living in the suburbs? Class probably plays a significant role here, as significant if not more so than race. I'll admit I didn't read all 60-something pages word for word, but from my skimming of it, it doesn't look like the class issue comes up in any depth.
  • courageous kiwi
    It's probably because we Asians go out of our way to mimic European customs, at least in the United States. How many Asians do you know retain their ethnic names when they translate them to English? How many Asians hold European style weddings? The result of us trying so hard is the appearance of wanting too badly to assimilate to other Asians, and the name calling begins.

    Let's consider Indians (like, from India) in the United States. (I'm not going to get into the "Are Indians considered Asian" debate, because it's asinine) I've known a lot of Indians growing up and at work, and never have I heard of Indians accusing other Indians of acting White. Many Indians, even second or third generation Indians keep traditional names. To date, the Indian weddings I've been to have been traditional, complete with the groom riding on a horse, women and men in traditional Indian dress, and feet washing. Lots of feet washing.

    I'll end on the note that Asians want to move out of Chinatown not to be White, but to get away from the bullshit that is Chinatown. Chinatown in San Francisco is run by dirty Kuomintang backed Cantonese (who have no business in Taiwanese politics, I might add) and wealthy old school families who built their fortunes land speculating, who use their money to exploit newly immigrated Asians in America rather than helping them achieve success. I can't imagine Chinatown in any other major city being too dissimilar, and based on what I have heard, I am right. The people who move out and stay out are the ones that share my attitude towards Asians that cannibalize their own people: fuck that shit.
  • woo! White Flight!!! my high school is mentioned in there! Go Lynbrook!
  • Rob
    Asian Americans always act white by always having a superiority complex towards overseas Asians and "FOBs."

    That's how we "act" white.

    I also find it funny that Asian Americans make fun of FOBs but get angry when non-Asians make fun of FOBs.
  • Nicole Lee
    The funny thing is, I think quite a large number of "FOBs" and/or diasporic Asians are actually incredibly fluent in English, with decent grades to boot. Does that mean they were acting white even when they were back home in their Asian majority countries?

    This reminds me of when people used to act so surprised when I tell them I'm not American...
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