Peshkin points out several issues between blacks and other main streams that shed new light on specific incidents of racial assimilation. While Steinberg points towards the structural factors involved in the racial assimilation of the black people during and after the civil war which may be applicable today.
Peshkin finds a distinction between acting and being white, if you are black: they are not the same[II, p. 190]. Although the common wisdom at Riverview High School is to ``be proud of what you are,'' there are certain attitudes that are taken up within Riverview when it comes to cross-group mingling. These attitudes are based on one's surroundings. The black students, when around other of their peers, whom are also black, tended to ``act like black people.'' But when they were around other ethnic groups they tended to see themselves as ``just acting human.'' These people whom are able to change their attitudes based on their cultural surroundings become good at fitting in. More so, because they see this as a necessity they also realise, at some level, that it's a departure from the norms of their social peers.
The ``acting black'' stigma is enforced, both from within, and from the outside. Many of the older generations say ``acting black'' or ``acting your colour'' to the younger ones, and are not giving complements. They associate ``acting your colour'' with being disruptive, loud, &c. Latterally, the stigma is shown in the use of the term nigger to describe someone's mode of (negative) behaviour. But the opposite is also true: ``No other ethnic group confronts itself with such an array of admonitions: acting ritzy, sophisticated, or proper; acting black, your colour, or like a nigger; acting better than you are, white or uppity...''[II, p. 198]
In sum, Peshkin states that black students that tend to modify their behaviour open doors to friendships otherwise closed to them. And that black students, above all other ethnic groups, demonstrate the ambiguity of identity at Riverview High. I gather that Steinberg would argue that this ambiguity, or loss of placeness, dislocation, &c. is based on structural factors that far supercedes the community in locale and history. These structural factors associated with being black may be rooted in the powerlessness of the black community to be able to fit in (especially with the industrial labour of the North in the post-reconstruction era.)
When the blacks were freed in the South, the question turned into ``now what?'' What would happen with all of the South's black citizens? There was now direct competition to the North's immigrant labour force. So the industrial tycoon in the North could say to their increasingly disgruntled workforce, that if the workforce didn't do the job under their terms, they would replace the immigrant workforce with ``free'' labour from the South. This competition spurred a very racist sentiment from the Northern immigrant workforce.
Point in fact, Steinberg argues, is that the South was fully dependant on their black labour, and begrudgingly addmitted it. They tried everything to bring in immigrant labour. But many of them had their eyes on the pie. And if they couldn't get a piece of it, they had other channels open to them in the North. [I, p. 185] Assimilation of the southern blacks was not to happen in the North, and the South would try everything to keep the blacks where they were.