Please Stop Helping Us. Jason L. Riley

student said that some black students believed “it was cute to be dumb.” Asked why, “she said it was because they couldn’t do well and that they didn’t want anyone else to do well.”⁶

      Ogbu found that black high-school students “avoided certain attitudes, standard English, and some behaviors because they considered them White. They feared that adopting White ways would be detrimental to their collective racial identity and solidarity. Unfortunately, some of the attitudes labeled ‘White’ and avoided by the students were those that enhanced school success.” The behaviors and attitudes to be avoided included, for example, enrolling in honors and advanced-placement classes, striving for high grades, talking properly, hanging around too many white students, and participating in extracurricular activities that were populated by whites.