Acting White Stuart Buck Summary

How and Why groups form? African Americans think that black teenage girls with natural hair were accused of “acting white.” Do you know what the word “acting white” means? In Acting White, Stuart Buck, an education researcher, assumes that “Indeed, I would defend the ’acting white’ criticism as entirely normal…it is behavior that arises from deeply rooted and commonplace desires that made sense throughout our history.”(641) Buck mentions the word, “acting white,” which means a desegregation word naming someone who acts like white people. He also studies another word, “homophily,” which explains why people from groups base on shared interest. Buck mentions that “Human being are usually tribal. We like to associate with people who are similar to ourselves," (641) Is the word “homophily” useful to understand how groups form? Since people are being in groups for their purpose and interest, the word “homophily” is a helpful way of understanding how groups form. Also, they compete to other groups for their own purpose. Buck knows that the “acting white” is controversial, because of desegregation. Some suburban whites think the urban black population in uneducable. Some black students might blame themselves as uneducated and poor. These thoughts …show more content…
He calls this behavior “homophily.” Homophily is strong in the area of race, friendships, and work relationship. In addition, people do not only associate with others, but also compete with other groups such as religious, racial, and ethnic groups. According to the experiment, researchers found that, “children showed a large preference for the latter result – giving your own group the advantage, even if it effectively cost money to do so. This showed the “ease” with which ‘discriminatory social acts’ can be ‘triggered in children as young as seven years of age.’”(642) Homophily could be helpful to understand how groups form and why they compete with one