Acting White: A critical review

Abstract

The hypothesis of acting White has been heatedly debated and influential over the last 20 years or so in explaining the Black-White test score gap. Recently, economists have joined the debate and started providing new theoretical and empirical analyses of the phenomenon. This paper critically reviews the arguments that have been advanced to support and refute the hypothesis. This review particularly covers the analyses in economics because the economic analyses are relatively new and usually neglected in other disciplines. Also, nationally representative data are emphasized, whenever possible, to improve the generalizability of the arguments. This review concludes that although the analyses in both noneconomics and economics are thought-provoking and compelling in some respect, a substantial body of empirical evidence is inconsistent with the assumptions of and results from the analyses. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010.