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I honor your parents for their caring about your tomorrow. Just looking at the way you word your posts it shows. I myself would never say 'all' about anything.
But what about the young black men who don't have parents like yours, who could barely write a paragraph, and who see learning as not in their image?
About ten years ago I heard a local raido show in LA, interviewing the people who ran this walk in computer lab, library, tutoring service for free that was right on the street in the hang out areas of the young black men of that persuasion. It wouldn't cost them a cent. They could get help in any subject. They had few takers, and most were younger than the age they had targeted. Why? because it was 'unmanly'. Real men didn't learn how to use a computer. Real men didn't study. Real men flashed their clothes and style on the street.
Sad thing is for them, they'd made their choice. They couldn't be *forced* to care and learn. They had the chance and didn't want anything to do with it.
Lets face it, the world is run by nerds. The guys and women who step down the sidewalk preoccupied with all the thoughts in their head, and who go far beyond just out of the box, seeing where the box doesn't even exist. Where are the black nerds? No doubt succeeding. But what about those on the edge, smart but not quite a nerd. Heavily subject to street culture. Where is the drive and guidence within the community to keep them off the street and encourage them to become all they can?
A street level learning center should be full of takers. At some point the black community MUST take responsibility for the gangster culture it has grown and counter it or all the chances in the world won't matter for those who drink the coolaide.
In the end it is *always* up to each one of us to decide and make the best decision, and a parents duty to help point them the right way with good values. If every black kid had your dad, a lot more would be taking life in their *own* hands, not buying the easy way out.
Agreed. I had it tough but as a kid but "someone" watched out for me so here I am almost 50 years later. I don't blame "society" for my woes; it's MY choice whether I get up every day and head to work or not.
Of all the black males I knew it college, not a one had dreams of playing professional sports.
I don't think it's fair to criticize college athletes, the work that college athletes do should be a course unto itself and work very hard.
As someone who used to be in marching band in high school, there are more races in marching bands than whites.
Numerous black men who don't make it into professional sports finish their degrees.
So what's the white kid's excuse when they fail?
There are TONS of underperforming whites in America. Many who can't spell or write a correct sentence.
You are only harping on the blacks who don't succeed. Who is going to play basketball if the blacks don't?
BTW, most blacks who go to college DON'T PLAY SPORTS!
So why do the whites go to college and play baseball? Just to enjoy it?
I am sure that many whites play college baseball with dreams hoping to play in the MLB.
MANY blacks graduate from college every year and MANY whites DON'T graduate from college every year and vise versa.
Unfortunately, since we are no longer in the Industrial Age but are now in the Information Age, having a degree alone will no longer save you.
There are more opportunities than ever to earn a good living without going to college due to the power of the internet.
Oh yeah, and I'm a black man with a Bachelor's Degree who also loves to play hoops and listen to rap music
About sports: As someone who used to be involved in sports, you may not appreciate the hard work and dedication that athletes present but they work harder than many people in college.
Athletes in general have to study a LOT.
They have to study game footage, learn complicated offenses and defenses, learn difficult strategies and tactics. So they ARE using their brains a lot.
The only problem is that there is a slim chance that they will go pro.
You think learning how to play a sport is easy?
Just because you never made it big, don't criticize college athletes just because they dream of making it big.
Take it from someone who knows sports inside and out.
Just because you get a college degree that's no guarantee that you're going to make it either. Job security is at its lowest in a LONG TIME.
I advocate for people to start their own small or home businesses instead.
My advice for a high school senior is not to even go to college. The educational system is a scam and it's almost worthless. Start your own businesses and become an investor.
Many successful entrepreneurs didn't go to college and many of them dropped out of college.
I was more specifically addressing the sports connection. I know many others who play no sports go on and get an education without it. I just don't feel sports and those golden ones who excell should be allowed to bypass the requirments put on any extracirecular activity. There were reports at USC one year where some of the stars were having standins taking their tests. They should have been bounced form the team but its BIG MONEY and money talks. But sports should be no more important than any other department. The ones who get an education by it should have to really get the education or pay back the scholership.
I know how it is too. I have a son who will have to face that. Being white isn't an advantage anymore in a world where there are too few jobs. He is doing volunteer work which is helping him see reality so I'm hoping he'll find a way to make something of himself. He is still curently clueless but when he's done with this the big brick wall will come up and hit him.
And I'm sure that learning to play a sport isn't easy, but it comes AFTER doing the work that a college is about. And you don't get to unless you do the things sufficently that ALL other than class activities are based in. If athletes get free tutoring and 'other' help, so should everyone else. Just want fairness.
The really sad thing is today that my son's friends are white mostly, have parents with sufficent money to have bought too much stiff for them, and they too seem to have this attitude that 'something will come along'. Maybe a brick wall, but that's really all you'll get from it. Its not a black or white or purple problem. Its one of a generation which didn't get enough reality.
I have no objection to anyone wanting to play sports, and it sure beats never getting out of your easy chair, but sports should not be elevated to this position we have put it in where it gets its own rules.
Trailor? LOL This word is spelled trailer not trailor. LOL
Yea, everybody who puts Blacks in jail is a racist, judges and cops even these who are black, and cops. The laws are racist and nobody likes you.
The fact that almost every big American city has a Black ghetto is also racist white people fault. It seems that racism and prejudice is your only explanation for failure. Yes, most people got used to this but believe me, more and more whites are getting fed up with supporting black welfare mothers and building housing projects that you routinely destroy.
Asian come here and make it, Hispanics come here and make it. Only you guys always have some excuse for not being able to stand on your own two feet.
May I ask why you capitalize "black" but not "white"? I've seen this from your posts in this thread frequently.
I was more specifically addressing the sports connection. I know many others who play no sports go on and get an education without it. I just don't feel sports and those golden ones who excell should be allowed to bypass the requirments put on any extracirecular activity. There were reports at USC one year where some of the stars were having standins taking their tests. They should have been bounced form the team but its BIG MONEY and money talks. But sports should be no more important than any other department. The ones who get an education by it should have to really get the education or pay back the scholership.
I know how it is too. I have a son who will have to face that. Being white isn't an advantage anymore in a world where there are too few jobs. He is doing volunteer work which is helping him see reality so I'm hoping he'll find a way to make something of himself. He is still curently clueless but when he's done with this the big brick wall will come up and hit him.
And I'm sure that learning to play a sport isn't easy, but it comes AFTER doing the work that a college is about. And you don't get to unless you do the things sufficently that ALL other than class activities are based in. If athletes get free tutoring and 'other' help, so should everyone else. Just want fairness.
The really sad thing is today that my son's friends are white mostly, have parents with sufficent money to have bought too much stiff for them, and they too seem to have this attitude that 'something will come along'. Maybe a brick wall, but that's really all you'll get from it. Its not a black or white or purple problem. Its one of a generation which didn't get enough reality.
I have no objection to anyone wanting to play sports, and it sure beats never getting out of your easy chair, but sports should not be elevated to this position we have put it in where it gets its own rules.
Uh; our parents said the same things about us back in the day about being "something will come along", then we grew up. I'm in my 40s.
It usually isn't. Only recently have several books appeared on the early history that LED to black slavery. It seems to be a tabu subject which needs not to be. Nothing happens instantly, but in stages. The first slaves were white indentured. Some came willingly, some not. In practical terms over half died before it was done so for them it was a lifetime. Blacks were first only indentured servants, same as whites. They were all treated horribly and the first shipments were often children. Tabacco farmers in the Virgina area lost half their workfoce a year. The expected lifespan was a couple of years with the conditions. Children were cheap, controllable and there were plenty in orphanages and workhouses or just running the streets (think Dickens) to have a renewable supply. In 1618 the authorities in Londons swept the streets of troublesome urchans, refusing to give them back to pleading parents, and shipped a load to Virgina. It was said to be an act of 'charity'. In Virginia they were sold to planters and half of them died within the year. Shipments of English and Irish (later Scottish) children continued for decades. After that it continued, but along with the 'free willers' who chose to indenture themselves in hope of a future, they discovered they could empty the prisons too and force shipped adults in large numbers. One of MY ancestors was shipped here as an convict 'servant'.
This is something we hide for some reason. A history book might have a line about indentured servants. We picture the maid, but they worked fieds and frequently died from abuse and overwork along with blacks for several centuries. But in the usual language of the time they were refered to as slaves, and your seven or eleven years could easily double for numerous minor violations. The first blacks were simply indentured, and the survivors freed and allowed full rights.
How many blacks really know how slavery happened? The race card was played slowly. Blacks were more expensive so often were carefully used while indentered whites or convicts were cheap so if it was dangeous they did the job. They frequently escaped together. The first black man to become a slave for life was the result of an escape. He and his white friend had escaped multiple times, getting caught each time. Years were added. After a rebellion of slaves, servants and the poor which came when released and with no land to farm, the race card appeared to split the races since it came very very close to succeeding. The gentry set rules. Blacks were punished harsher. The white man was beaten and whipped and had sufficent time added he'd die the same. The black man needed more, legally, so they just made it a lifetime indenture. Hereditary status came bit by bit. The owner of these two unforutnate runaways, by the way, was a black planter.
Maybe someone should make a movie about these unfortunate children, with some appealing looking kids in the chief roles, some die, some live and have their grandchildren who ran off to Kentucky tell the story. Have some black indentured there to make sure its accurate. Few children made it to adulthood, though, since they were held until 21 and with the odds at best for five years in kinder work, not many did. I really wonder if it would change the way we looked at things if it wasn't hidden away and more people realize it was a *joint* heritage, and quite color blind for at least a centrury.
And yes, 'white privilidge' did start there, but in reality it didn't change much since both were property until that day when freed came, and if they died before, no problem. My somehting great grandfather married, took off to Kentucky and succeeding generations kept going west. The family sat out the Civil war, at least the direct one.
I reccoment this book. White Cargo --the forgotten history of Britan's White Slaves in America by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh.
Early American history. Did you know that the great majority of early immigrants to the American colonies were 'servants' and in that day servants were considered property? It was an age in which being poor, or Irish, or without land made you of no worth to those who ran the society. A great many white people also have slaves (white 'servants') in their family history too. After the revolution, convicts were bared from being shipped here, so the British founded the colony of Australia. They didn't have enough barges and goals to store all the poor who stole to live.
Australia, however, acknowledges that it beginning was as a convict/slave colony. We seem to be to worried it would spoil the mythology.
Why this is left out of history I don't know, except that we seem to teach it as more of a fairytale than the real thing.
I emphasized that the elite whites were the ones who created chasm between the black and white slaves to keep them from uniting.
Before the concept of race was created, there were no different attitudes towards the whites and black slaves.
However, later on, the slavery became confined to mainly the blacks.
Would it have if it had been ecomonically worthwhile? How many would have signed an indenture to get out of Ireland later on, rather than starve to death? But they didn't need to since the shipping companies had figured out how to make the big bucks. On some of the 'coffin ships' after collecting the fee, a lot of bodies went in the ocean since they were shipped as a comodity without chains. Money always wins.
Under Jim Crow, one way blacks (and other undesirable) were 'reinslaved' was through an indenture, with an arrest, a fine that couldn't be paid, and an obligation to work it off. Useful tactics are never forgotten. That system got dismantled because indentured servitude was also outlawed under the 13th amendment, which actually equated them.
Industy discovered it was easier to pay a very small pittance to desperate people and what happened to them when they weren't at their sewing machine didn't concern or cost them anything.
Race got played to change was was a class based system into a modification of one, but the class element was just restructured later with different players and we still buy the race card and poor/desperate are pitted against poor/desperate of another race.
This is one reason I hate the whole 'white guilt' idea. Its a powerplay to insure the gentry of our time still sit safely in their mansions.
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