How to Act Before Two Audiences
Roland Fryer has published a paper using a model he calls "two-audience signalling," discussing the pressures on African-American students in mixed-race environments to avoid "acting white." Interesting, practical, and as usual for Fryer, brave and candid.
The principal idea is that individuals face a two-audience signaling quandary: signals that beget labor market success are signals that induce peer rejection. The model’s two distinguishing predictions – racial differences in the relationship between peer group acceptance and academic achievement will exist and these differences will be exacerbated in arenas that foster more interracial contact or increased mobility.
It's a fierce dilemma. Who wants to live without either love or work?
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