Jenice Armstrong | Turning up the volume

YOU KNOW THE stereotype about black women being loud.

If you've ever ridden a public bus with a bunch of rowdy schoolgirls in the back, it's one that can be hard to argue with.

But the practice of speaking at higher decibels than is socially acceptable is not racial.

You can find the same annoying behavior among all ethnic groups and among different classes.

Still, the widely accepted belief that black females don't shy away from being noisy or raising their voices is deeply ingrained - so much so that it may impact how girls are educated and treated in classroom settings.

An academic who broached this topic recently in a scholarly journal titled his article, "Ladies or Loudies?"

Edward Morris, an assistant sociology professor at Ohio University, spent nearly two years observing interactions at an undisclosed middle school in a big city in Texas.

While he was there, he was struck by how often teachers at the predominantly black and Hispanic school shushed the black girls and admonished them to "act like ladies."

Although it wasn't the subject he'd initially set out to research, Morris found himself questioning why that was, especially since when the non-black girls acted up, their femininity wasn't called into question.

Nor was the masculinity of the boys challenged when they misbehaved.

"Black girls were seen [as not having] the proper skills to be ladylike," he told me.

"It was seen that they were too loud. Their behavior was maybe too aggressive and too assertive at times and this wasn't seen as lady-like behavior."

Morris was puzzled by his findings, particularly since, from his perspective, the behavioral patterns he observed seemed positive. He was referring to the girls' "speaking out, asking questions, not letting boys mess with them. Being out there and not being refined, docile and quiet."

Morris also found unsettling differences in terms of how the students were disciplined.

Black girls, he noticed, often were admonished for the same behavior that males or white females got away with.

"It might have been a Southern traditional female gentility kind of thing where women had this deferential behavior and these girls were not exhibiting this," he theorized.

"One of the stereotypes that I'm picking up on . . . is this idea that black women can be overly assertive. This is something that comes out in pop culture.

"In academic literature, there's stuff written on the stereotype of the matriarch and this idea that women are too assertive in the family," Morris continued.

"They are seen as having this overly domineering stereotypical role."

That's not necessarily a negative. Mo'Nique, who fabulously hosted the BET Awards Tuesday night, has based an entire career on playing into the strong, opinionated kind of thing as have other black celebs, including Wanda Sykes, Whoopi Goldberg and Star Jones.

Where would these divas be today if along the way they'd been schooled into taking a back seat and becoming docile?

There's something to be said for going for yours - even if does make people wish you'd turn down the volume a little.

As Morris pointed out, "In college, speaking up in classrooms and in the business world, you might ruffle feathers, but these are the type of qualities that people like to see." *

Have you peeped a hot trend that hasn't been reported? E-mail heyjen@phillynews.com and let me know what you know.