Academic Success and Popularity Among Black Adolescents: Do They Face the Burden of \\.

The "acting white" hypothesis suggests that black adolescents put forth little effort toward schooling because they fear sanctions from their peers. The black peer group, the argument goes, eschews educational goals as a way of maintaining a distinct black identity; doing well in school threatens that identity. The merits of the "acting white" hypothesis, however, are disputed among scholars because of key methodological issues. Drawing on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we introduce a better way to gauge "sanctioning" among peers and we directly measure the racial composition of students' peer groups. The results contradict the "acting white" hypothesis, showing that black students enjoy greater popularity among peers when they are academically successful than when they are not. Indeed, the gain in popularity associated with academic success appears stronger for black students with all-black peer groups than for black students with all-white peer groups. We discuss the implications for understanding black/white gaps in educational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]