Stuart Buck, the University of Arkansas graduate student and author of the well-reviewed book, Acting White, suggests that high academic achievement for African-American students is hindered by negative social pressure from peers.
Now Dan Willingham reviews a new study on the subject:
It used a sample of over 13,000 students, averaging about 15 years old. Social acceptance was measured with a simple 4 question interview that asked whether they felt socially accepted, and the frequency with which they felt lonely, felt disliked, or felt people were unfriendly to them.
The study took measures at two time points and examined the changein social acceptance across the year. The question of interest is whether students’ academic achievement (measured as grade point average) at Time 1 was related to the change in social acceptance over the course of the year.
For White, Latino, and Asian students, it was—positively. That is, the higher a student’s GPA was at Time 1, the more likely it was that his or her social acceptance would increase during the coming year. It was not a big effect, but it was present.
For African American and Native American students the opposite was true. A higher GPA predicted *lower* social acceptance during the following year. This effect was stronger than the positive effect for the other ethnic groups.
Thus, it seemed that the simpler version of the “acting white” hypothesis was supported.
But the story turned out to be a bit more complicated.
Further analyses showed that there was a social penalty for high achieving African Americans *only* at schools with a small percentage of black students. The cost was not present at high-achieving schools with mostly African-American students, or at any low-achieving schools.
At the same time, there was never a social benefit for academic achievement, as there was for White, Latino, and Asian students.
These more fine-grained analyses were not possible for the Native American students, because the sample was too small.
So what are we to make the of “acting white” phenomenon?
A single study is never definitive, but this study indicates that academic success is not universally taken by African American adolescents as a sign of rejecting African American culture. It is specific to particular contexts and is plausible a response to discrimination.
Sounds like this mostly supports Stuart’s argument but I’m curious to hear what he thinks.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Thanks for the catch, Jay. I haven’t read this actual study yet, but from the description it sounds like it supports my basic thesis: that “acting white” is a phenomenon generated mostly in integrated schools with smaller numbers of black students, as opposed to all-black schools.