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Maybe the most important thing is what one expects of him/herself, and considers normal and acceptable. From what I know about West Africa (specifically, from people I know from Ghana and Nigeria), education is highly valued in that society. Several physicians I know who actually went to med school in these two countries (then did the residency in the US, and are practicing in the US) are all excellent.
Re your mother, it must have been extremely hard in the South during legal segregation, and definitely there is no comparison between that kind of hardship and self-chosen segregation of today (where some minority people protest against influx of Asian or white races in the Bronx, just because they are entirely comfortable with the status quo of informal segregation and welfare poverty). It amazes me that some people on this forum (who typically go on and on about "the history" as the reason for low self esteem and the resulting socio-economic problems of the minorities) fail to acknowledge that (what, "low self esteem" is harder to deal with than the risk of lynching?). It is great that your mother realized how wrong the conditions were in the South of the 50s and 60s, and decided to fend for herself. She is obviously not the only one, there are traditionally excellent minority schools (eg, Howard Univ in DC), and a huge number of minority people graduated from them, and managed to pursue careers even in the time of legal segregation. It is very easy to do now what your mother did with great difficulty, and there is no excuse for anyone not to pursue the life of personal responsibility.
It is really good to have input on this forum from somebody like you, somebody from a successful and well-to-do minority family, to show that social success for a minority person is in fact a totally normal thing, and that this matter should not be viewed any other way, in the Bronx or anywhere.
Things were much easy than. Today with globalization, technology. The world has gotten much smaller and therefore much more competitive. If you don't get the tools down right at birth or by your parents. Your kids will be left behind. Today i had to go to a charter school and assist the school in producing a data algorithm for behavior. Its really shocking how kids are stuck in a reality, and how one kid blames everything on racism and white supremacy. As well as how teachers are saying look because you are black, you don't qualify for certain life rules, and how that you are black you will get killed by police, when data shows cops kill more whites than blacks.
But back to the topic. IMHO. NYC does not deserve the amazon office. The reason why I say this is due to the fact that NYC must improve their regressive, declining poorly efficient transportation hub, which is the best in America, but pales in comparison to 3rd world subway systems in developing countries. JFK and LGA are big times jokes. MTA and the Port Authority should be ashamed. Liberals in NYC should be making noise against the MTA and Port Authority for better transit hubs. Another failure will be taxes. Jobs will have to pay more because taxes here are higher. DC, Boston and Atlanta deserves Amazon more than NYC. Also DC needs to diversify its job market. Majority of the college grads in DC work for Feds, NGOs, lobbying firms on K Street. Like NYC, DC also plucks the best and brightest and is on par equally as an elite city which is shared with LA, NYC and SF.
Last edited by Bronxguyanese; 01-24-2018 at 08:15 PM..
Actually, I mentioned Howard Univ because they had one biomedical lab that did the leading research in the field in which I was working many years ago when I was still a researcher. They were #1 in the world in that particular field of research, they practically invented it. There would have been absolutely no difference whether the former president Obama went to Harvard or Howard, everybody in the world of academia and upper level endeavor knows that Howard is an excellent school.
I have never declared myself the ultimate expert on African Americans. I was not even talking about African Americans specifically, but about minorities in general (being that I am a woman, and an immigrant, I am actually a minority as well). I did not intend to offer an expertise, but observations of what I see around me, specifically in the Bronx where I'd like to retire.
Right, women were excluded from certain areas of higher education, including in my time (I am in my late 50s). So? I am a woman, and I got my higher education nevertheless, in a heavily male-dominated field. If you want to achieve something, and are prepared to put all the required sweat and sleep deprivation into it, you will achieve it, or at least put up your best effort. I kept my sights on professional development, not on forever blabbering about historical oppression of women. Northern universities no longer exclude female students, so that part of history is entirely irrelevant now to any young woman who wants to go to Columbia or similar school. Professional opportunities for women were paved by women who actually broke into male-dominated fields by their own efforts, not by Women's Studies majors (I know what a woman can do for the society with a degree in mechanical engineering; I have no idea what she can do with a degree in women's studies).
Western Europe takes more refugees from anywhere than the US (including from my former European country, which had a civil war in the early 1990s), ie, not just from Africa, but that is an issue totally unrelated to what we are discussing. Re people from Western Africa who do not have good education, even they generally have an honest entrepreneurial spirit (evidenced by the fact that they sell stuff on the street, no problem - you have to start from somewhere, and I have not noticed that Western Africans typically aspire to start (or continue, or end) on welfare. Selling stuff on the street is a honorable endeavor, and useful to the society - especially to the part of the society that doesn't have an umbrella on hand when it's starting to rain heavily - while exploiting society for welfare handouts is not).
West Africa and much of Africa as a whole has a high degree of mercantilism for the past two thousand years. Africans used to trade and barter with the Greeks and the Romans. Africa historically has been a hub for trade for precious items.
I am lucky that in my housing search, I did not have to consider the impact on my daughter, who doesn't like change in general, to have to change schools in the middle year, of middle school.
My daughter goes to a special school in Manhattan who advertises three hours of piano instruction per week. (and they delivered btw.) It's also a school that had 100 students last year, 175 this year, and at full capacity next year, will have 300 kids. Lastly, it has a THRIVE component that integrates all the socio-emotive tween angst and brings it into the curriculum so that kids in middle school, who are miniature sociopaths at this age, have an easier time at it. So her going to school in Manhattan has everything to do with this being a unique opportuntity for her that fits her temperment.
Not having to change schools is a big plus when moving. (The district we came from was considered a decent area to live but the schools were pretty rote and did not provide the enrichment that I wanted for her.) Her current school is in District 2, one of the best school districts in the city which gives her an advantage, but that was by chance of chosing and being accepted by lottery to this particular school in which she was enrolled. It was chosen on its merits and had nothing to do with the move, because at the time, I had no idea I would be moving.
Test scores are really poor indicators. I know people who have IQs that qualify them from Mensa who weren't able to even graduate from college. They read voraciously; something around 15 books a week, are highly intelligent, but just could not cut it in school. They could pass these tests with flying colors but aren't able to keep down a job. Go figure! Some people take tests really well and are dumb as rocks. And a lot of school districts more or less game the system because they provide test prep for their kids. (District 26 is infamous for this and this is why some competitive citywide high schools are filled with kids all from the same district. )
I know people that are at least average that took at least 8 years to get their bachelors degree. I mean what do I have to say about someone like that and are you gonna listen to any excuses from them? He/she certainly didn't find a good job afterwards, but he/she is doing alright money wise considering how f'ed up he/she always went about doing things. And again you're picking from the exceptions. I also remember seeing in a video how this guy has a 200+ IQ working as a bouncer. In his spare time he likes to read physics and is working on a theory of everything.
As for test prep did you know that when they switched to the common core the first year there was no prep from either the teachers since they didn't teach the material yet, as well as no tutoring classes available. Lots of people were hoping that a certain ethnic group that you're alluding to would be exposed as nothing, but test prepers. And it turns out that the number one school in the entire NYS besides only the top two G&T school in Manhattan was a school in Bayside. Not Scaresdale, not Great Neck, but Bayside by a long mile. Also the top 5 non-exam based elementary schools that year were all in NYC. Two in Bayside, one on upper west side, one in park slope and one in Chinatown. Those were the best of the best schools without test prep. Of course after two or three years of materials being around and test boycotting from wealthy suburbs they caught up. So next time you talk about test prep you can point your finger at the wealthy suburbs with so called well rounded kids because it shows in the dramatic drop in scores with a new test and the dramatic rise a few years after. So don't tell me about test prep and district 26 cause I don't buy that as the only reason we do well. Just more sour grape racial BS. And we'd all be thrilled if the busing to the High schools here stop. Why even get bused here for test prep.
Last edited by bumblebyz; 01-24-2018 at 08:39 PM..
Really, test scores don't matter. Having a rich dad like Trump is the best way to succeed. Trump had enough money send his kids to whatever university they wanted to go to, and then was able to directly offer them fantastic opportunities.
I seriously doubt Trump ever had to worry about his own test scores, because his own father was wealthy and likely donated to the University of Pennsylvania. Like Trump did himself. Trump did an excellent job of branding for the Trump family name, and his children will continue to make lots of money.
And so what even Bush was just a C student, went to Yale, and became the most powerful person on earth. However, he was probably a good puppet that listened to his smart advisers like most presidents. Being well liked by hicks have nothing to do with being smart. And people in this country somehow love to elect what actors, actresses, hustlers, and lairs which is nothing much to talk about. Most people can't get past a person's appearance and the lies that they spew from that mouths to really judge their leadership.
And so what even Bush was just a C student, went to Yale, and became the most powerful person on earth. However, he was probably a good puppet that listened to his smart advisers like most presidents. Being well liked by hicks have nothing to do with being smart. And people in this country somehow love to elect what actors, actresses, hustlers, and lairs which is nothing much to talk about. Most people can't get past a person's appearance and the lies that they spew from that mouths to really judge their leadership.
Maybe it's a sign that the US isn't completely a meritocracy based on the ability to excel at their job. It's a wild concept though, so I think we'll need to do some serious studies on this.
I actually know of a family in woodlawn who bus their kids over to school in Yonkers vs sending their kids to schools with underperforming blacks and violent Albanians.
I know people that takes the subway everyday from Cypress Hills to Chinatown so their kids don't have to go to school with the local kids. Where I live in district 26, there's apparently an underground market where people pay others to use their addresses to come to the schools here.
Maybe it's a sign that the US isn't completely a meritocracy based on the ability to excel at their job. It's a wild concept though, so I think we'll need to do some serious studies on this.
But it is. The ability to campaign and get people to listen to you is the primary hurdle to getting elected. Even in the corporate world those same skills are the primary skills up the corporate ladder. Most people in upper management spend the bulk of their time figuring out how to interact with people and what to say and how to say it. And a lot of people work really hard at it so it's not like they don't do work. Just shuffling a deck that someone else created for them can take a whole day.
But it is. The ability to champagne and get people to listen to you is the primary hurdle to getting elected. Even in the corporate world those same skills are the primary skills up the corporate ladder.
Oh, I wasn't saying that about the ability to go higher up in the ladder--I was saying that in terms of competence at the job you're actually supposed to be doing at that rung.
Oh, I wasn't saying that about the ability to go higher up in the ladder--I was saying that in terms of competence at the job you're actually supposed to be doing at that rung.
Sometimes performance is hard to measure until the ship sinks because everything coming from their mouths makes sense if you side with them. There are no test scores to measure this apparently. You should go read the emails from the Lehman execs before they went down. When they were approached by a Chinese bank willing to recapitalize them a few months before the collapse the CEO and other were exchanging emails saying stuff like dim sum wong? In hindsight it's safe to say that the CEO of Lehman brought the entire ship down, but up until it went down it was the most respected bank for fixed income. And if our economy goes down the tube one day it'll be the exact same thing no one will know until it happens.
And so what even Bush was just a C student, went to Yale, and became the most powerful person on earth. However, he was probably a good puppet that listened to his smart advisers like most presidents. Being well liked by hicks have nothing to do with being smart. And people in this country somehow love to elect what actors, actresses, hustlers, and lairs which is nothing much to talk about. Most people can't get past a person's appearance and the lies that they spew from that mouths to really judge their leadership.
And so it goes to show you NOBODY cares if you have the highest test scores or not.
Oprah is now being pushed for President. I don't think she designed rockets.
Bush, Trump, and Oprah are people who used money and business/political connections to get what they want.
I know you have a revenge of the supernerds going on due to your being bullied growing up, but the society doesn't care at all if you were the top scoring student in your high school, or what high school you went to.
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