REASON: You talk about a "cultural disconnect" from formal learning. How can public policy address this?
McWhorter: I think one of the things that would help most would be school vouchers. Small schools with concentrated, innovative teaching have been shown to get through to black children. Although the possibility of getting all black kids into schools like that has never been great, we need to get as many black kids as possible into schools like that.
REASON: Most polls show huge support among blacks for vouchers and school choice. Yet you contend that blacks don't particularly value book-learning and education. Is there a paradox here?
McWhorter: If anything, black people value education more highly than white people because there is a sense that we are a culture climbing upward. The anti-intellectualism among blacks is more subtle. It's what happens once students are in school. Black parents value that you go get a degree, that you go get earning power, and maybe that you go be a historian or whatever. But the cultural dynamic senses learning as something that other people do, so there is kind of a block on engaging it on that more intimate level.
REASON: These traits -- treating education as a means to an end -- probably aren't limited to the black culture. Have you looked at other cultures?
McWhorter: The Irish were known to be anti-intellectual people before they became "white." That's a universal American quality. Black culture is different in that skepticism about pointy heads extends into the upper class. It all comes back to the fact that on average in 1995, among black students whose parents made $70,000 a year or more and had at least one master's degree or above, SAT scores were lower than the SAT scores of children from white families making no more than $10,000. That's scary. That's a really scary statistic. That's the problem.
REASON: Are you aware of the "stereotyping anxiety" research done by psychologist Claude Steele? He finds that if test-taking is preceded by positive messages, then black children do better.
McWhorter: It's an interesting hypothesis but I'm not sure how important that observation is. One reason is that it has been shown that women suffer from the same stereotype threat and yet girls are ahead in schools. One thing that I have never seen that research address is the extent to which actual tests and schoolwork in the real world present the stereotype threat. It's not so much that black kids are very threatened by school. It's that there is a sense in the black identity that school is an alien realm. It's not so much that it's seen as threatening, but that it's seen as something apart from what you regard as your essence.
There is a sense that to embrace school in a real way would be a step outside of your identity. Or better, your identity is one that does not condition you to embrace knowledge that doesn't have to do wholeheartedly with black people. You have to remember that stereotype-threat analysis is so appealing in the education community because it's a victim-based approach.
That doesn't automatically render it untrue, but it's interesting to think about what Claude Steele proposes as the solution, to the extent that he really indulges in talking about solutions: He advocated the setting of high standards. His idea is to let black children know that you expect the best of them. Doesn't that mean that affirmative action is not really a very good idea?
REASON: Not just affirmative action but race-conscious policies in general, because it appears that when you remind people of racial issues, it brings out the stereotype anxiety.
McWhorter: You're black. You're different. You're a victim. We think you can't do it, so we're making things different for you.
REASON: You support racial preferences in business but oppose it in education. Why?
McWhorter: Affirmative action is good when it redresses racism. That's why affirmative action was good in 1965. Affirmative action in business can counteract the tendency for sometimes-subtle cultural conflicts, or the "birds of a feather" phenomenon that can deny people promotions or even jobs in the first place. I think there is still room for discrimination to operate in places such as Coca-Cola, with it not having to be anybody's intention. So the idea of racial preferences is not anathema to me. But I do consider it to be chemotherapy: It's something that creates as much harm as good and you withdraw it the minute that you've gotten rid of the main symptoms. In education, that happened 15 years ago. In the world of business, I don't think that we're there yet.
REASON: The justification for affirmative action has shifted from a remedial project to a diversity project, ensuring that racial and ethnic groups are represented at certain elite institutions. Doesn't this mean it's more important in higher education?
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