Prometheus 6

Before I say anything else: white folks, you got the whole wrong idea.Black folks upbraid one another on occasion thus:

"You think you're white!"

As People of the Word, you should recognize there's a big difference between "You're doing things white people do" and "You think you're white."

On to the topic. In February of this year Mr. Fryer published An Economic Analysis of 'Acting White' with David Austen-Smith. From the abstract:

This paper formalizes a widely discussed peer effect entitled 'acting white' 'Acting White' is modeled as a two audience signaling quandary: signals that induce high wages can be signals that induce peer group rejection. Without peer effects, equilibria involve all ability types choosing different levels of education. 'Acting White' alters the equilibrium dramatically: the (possibly empty) set of lowest ability individuals and the set of highest ability individuals continue to reveal their type through investments in education; ability types in the middle interval pool on a common education level. Only those in the lower intervals are accepted by the group. The model's predictions fit many stylized facts in the anthropology and sociology literatures regarding social interactions among minority group members.

Wtf is a "stylized" fact? And that "equilibria" of "all ability types choosing different levels of education" is an unsupported assumption.