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I usually DESPISE Mediatakeout, but this video really hits home for me.
I attended some of the worst public schools in Pennsylvania when I lived in the ghetto as a little kid. Between 2003-2009 (3rd-8th grade), I was bullied in this manner all because I was a black kid who wanted to get out of the ghetto. I "talked white", did my work, made honor roll 7 out of 9 times between 6th (when the program was started)-8th grade, made it into a gifted program, and graduated near the top of my middle school class. I got the hell out of my old school district and attended a private Catholic HS. I graduated in 2013 and am now a rising junior in college.
Why is success equated with "whiteness"? Why is academic passion/prowess looked down upon? Why do the underclass of black people try to drag those black men and women who are trying to succeed down by saying that they are less black? This attitude is why so many black people are where they are today. It has nothing to do with the white man or "oppression", but rather this attitude. When I attended Catholic HS, I was NEVER harassed for trying to succeed by my white peers. They treated me as an equal and I never had any problems.
The best revenge is success. Sure, the victim did give the thug bully a good a** kicking, but his future success will be the salt in the thug's wound. I love driving around the area I grew up in (I return because some family still lives there) and seeing those who bullied me either in jail or on the streets with nothing going for them. In the end, I won and they lost. While I am set towards becoming an actuary or financial analyst, all some of those former bullies will ever be are small-time drug dealers.
This is all about misery loves company. Like any peer group, if someone is flying too high the lower of the group want to bring them down. It has nothing less to do with race, but it is the tool in this case. Sadly, the miserable person will get to many and derail some potentially successful people. This is when great parents or mentors are needed.
I absolutely agree! Personally, I think the term "sellout" is an attack on individuality. When someone calls someone else a "sellout", it implies that since that person has certain features, they must be bound to a certain way of living. If they deviate from that way of living, they have betrayed the group that they share certain features with. It's ridiculous! Just because I listen to Elton John and Smashing Pumpkins does not make me any less black
And yes, there are plenty of successful black men and women. They are out there, but the media tends to show the underclass of black people. Luckily, I had one to look up to as a kid: my mom. She had me at 18 (I was her first child), had no job, only a high school diploma, and raised me in Chester, PA and West Philadelphia. She started out at the bottom of the employment ladder, but worked her way up to an executive position at her company! Now we are middle/upper-middle class. She also instilled the value of hard work and education into my little brother and two sisters. I'm in college, my little bro will finish Basic Training for the US Army next Friday, and my sisters are excelling in school. She actually inspires me to work hard in college because she works full time and will be getting her BA in Psychology this spring. I lucked out by having a role model like her!
What's different now as opposed to when I was growing up(50+ years ago)is that most blacks wanted to achieve things, make progress and get ahead. It didn't matter if you were working class or more educated class of blacks . One our neighbors, when I was a kid, was a landscaper who put his only child through college.
Another was a chauffeur who did the same thing. None of these guys got past high school but they wanted the best for their children.
There's obviously been an attitudinal shift over time. It's heartbreaking to me.
I still blame racial oppression for this foolish thinking. I think the roots of this go back to rivalry and jealousy between field slaves and house slaves.
I still blame racial oppression for this foolish thinking. I think the roots of this go back to rivalry and jealousy between field slaves and house slaves.
Keep telling a group of people that none of their problems are their own fault, and watch as those people never figure out how to fix any of their problems.
You either act like you have some sense or you don't.
Last edited by Phyxius; 08-05-2015 at 11:12 AM..
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