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Hollywood is a huge contributor to this problem, and I don't think it can be boiled down to simply what sells. I suspect malevolent intent is involved. Ultimately a people have to have control over the popular media that their children consume. It can't be something that is monopolized by another race. Especially one with an often-negative racial psychology toward the other group whose media images they control.
As I mentioned earlier, ADOS people did control our own image up to the latter 60s. We had a score of national magazines. We had our own music production as well. Most large and many small cities had black newspapers. We gave up or sold off most of our image-making capabilities as white media discovered that black people were also consumers.
The important thing I remember about the black media was that they emphasized what the average black person could accomplish. They weren't all about the stars. In order to fill their pages, they had a lot to say about ordinary businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and people who were accomplishing things in generally achievable ways. Yes, it's possible to search hard to find such information today, but it takes a minimum critical mass of information to affect the zeitgeist of the culture.
How many black people are making a living in professional sports in the US today? I mean actually paying their mortgage? Only about 5,000, including retired athletes earning mortgage-paying endorsements and retirement benefits.
There are well over a million ADOS people in academic professions. You can go to any city that hosts a professional sports team and easily find ten times as many black academic professionals than black sports professionals...plus there are all the other cities without professional sports teams still have black academic professionals.
So...how do black kids get the idea that professional sports is a more plausible goal than an academic profession? Why can't we get more of them to stake academic professions as a goal as early as they stake sports as a goal?
In Texas, we have black parents of middle school kids who are paying a thousand dollars a month to get their kids into special sports clinics because you have to have gone to the right clinic to get on the school team. But not many are willing to pay that much to get their middle schoolers into clinics that could get them into Harvard.
I haven't seen that version yet. However, I could understand Uncle Phil's consternation with Will's inability to shed the "hood" culture. Culture can be something you're born into, but it can also be something you choose to keep, or let go. It can be a choice.
This reminds me of a neighborhood who went to middle school and high school with me. He was basically a step child. He was partly raised in a "hood" environment. Being brought into a middle class neighborhood didn't do much for him. I would think me being a fellow Black male (in a White neighborhood) and me getting decent grades and being goal-oriented might have helped him. It didn't. He wouldn't shake the "hood" culture. I think his mother and stepfather might have been thinking "if we take the kids out to a nicer neighborhood, maybe they will be around better people and do better". That classmate of mine just gravitated to the White underclass/druggies. He has issues with drinking and drugs as we speak.
This has nothing do with culture.
I wonder if his parents or young friends have issues with drugs or drinking. Or was it his personal choice.
One of the functions you will see in a functional culture is a firm determination of the responsibility of childcare and rearing. Functional cultures do not leave care of its children to chance or individual whim. The society will identify who is responsible and hold them accountable. The actual persons responsible for childcare may vary from society to society. It may be the parents. In old Hawaii, it was the grandparents. Some societies may pull in uncles and aunts. But every functional society nails down who is responsible and holds them accountable.
And there has been no functional culture that has left the function of childcare to single mothers, or as Oprah termed it, "Mommy alone." "Mommy alone" does not exist in any functional culture as an intentional or desirable or predominant way to rear children.
As a matter of protecting the present, functional cultures also creates and maintains its own image. A functional culture sets its own members as the epitome of all the values of that culture...it envies nothing of other cultures, even if it borrows from other cultures.
Prior to the 70s, ADOS people had scores of local newspapers, dozens of magazines. Many people are aware of Ebony, but there was a magazine for practically every word that connoted "brown" except "brown" itself: "Mahogony," "Bronze," "Sepia," "Tan," "Jet," and on and on. Ignored by white media (and ridiculed when noticed), we shaped our own image, and that was a positive image.
But when white media discovered us as a market (the Civil Rights Act provided "cover" for corporations to market to blacks without being identified as a "product for negroes," the media production companies in New York City and Los Angelas looked to their nearest resource--the urban ghettos--as their source of ADOS images.
And that is the image that continues to be portrayed to the extent that we believe it ourselves. It's incredibly annoying to see ADOS youth raised by two college-educated middle-class, SUV-driving parents in the suburbs thinking they're supposed to look and act like thugs to be "black." The "adoptionist" branch--that is, the traditional branch that we could say is represented by Martin Luther King is hardly recognized as "black."
Failing to protect the present: ADOS men are notorious in rejecting our own women as standards of beauty. This is part of the chitlin culture, inculcated into us in slavery, to identify white women as our own standard of beauty. Every young boy initially thinks his own mother is the most beautiful person in the world...until the world convinces him otherwise. It is rare, however, to find men of any other ethnic group who don't include their own mothers' phenotypes within their standards of beauty.
I'm sure comedian Bill Burr thinks his black wife is hot--he's said so-- but he also still finds beautiful white women hot.
A man whose standard of beauty is not broad enough to still include his own mother's phenotype has been brain damaged. Yeah, I said it. A black man who says, "Black women are ugly" has a psychological problem. That's an anti-survival attitude.
I work with teenaged boys in my church. A few years ago, while sitting in the youth service, I heard a boy behind me saying, "I just don't like the look of dark-skinned girls." I knew the boy, I knew his mother. He and his mother both are dark-skinned. I had to turn around on him and give him some real talk about respecting himself.
Now, am I saying all black men? Of course not. But it's prevalent and exposed enough that men of other ethnic groups have noted it, and ridicule black men for it. That is a failure to protect the present, a mark of a dysfunctional culture.
This is generally very untrue. Especially for many post-colonial cultures.
As I mentioned earlier, ADOS people did control our own image up to the latter 60s. We had a score of national magazines. We had our own music production as well. Most large and many small cities had black newspapers. We gave up or sold off most of our image-making capabilities as white media discovered that black people were also consumers.
The irony of this is that there's money to make more publications. It's not like Black people can't make publications. In fact, now is an even better time. We have YouTube.
Quote:
The important thing I remember about the black media was that they emphasized what the average black person could accomplish. They weren't all about the stars. In order to fill their pages, they had a lot to say about ordinary businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and people who were accomplishing things in generally achievable ways. Yes, it's possible to search hard to find such information today, but it takes a minimum critical mass of information to affect the zeitgeist of the culture.
And this is what we need, now more than ever. We need the Black doctors, park rangers, engineers, teachers, attorneys, etc to be promoted. I want to hear more about Black software engineers, Black scientists,etc.
Actually, there is a YouTube channel called Kenganda. It is about Africa, but it highlights Black Americans who are thinking about moving to Africa or who have moved there.
Quote:
How many black people are making a living in professional sports in the US today? I mean actually paying their mortgage? Only about 5,000, including retired athletes earning mortgage-paying endorsements and retirement benefits.
I only know one Black person, personally, making a living as a professional athlete. And he is making that living OUTSIDE of the USA. I have met more Black park rangers. I've met more Black engineers. The odds are better that a Black person will become an engineer or an accountant than an athlete. And this is also factoring in job discrimination.
Quote:
There are well over a million ADOS people in academic professions. You can go to any city that hosts a professional sports team and easily find ten times as many black academic professionals than black sports professionals...plus there are all the other cities without professional sports teams still have black academic professionals.
So...how do black kids get the idea that professional sports is a more plausible goal than an academic profession? Why can't we get more of them to stake academic professions as a goal as early as they stake sports as a goal?
Sports and entertainment are more popular than science and engineering. Popularity and respect. That stuff is INSTANT. Being strong academically can make you a good student, a good employee, and with a little work, a good employer. However, athletes get more respect, alot of it instant. Athletes with alot of money, alot of fame.
A young Black boy from a middle class family has a great chance of being a Neil Degrasse Tyson or a Dr. Benjamin S. Carson. A much better chance than being a professional athlete. However, even after Neil Degrasse Tyson got his own show, he isn't getting more traction in terms of popularity.
I think about this. Growing up, I think about who was popular in my school. The valedictorian in my school was also a cheerleader. She had the best grades. However, her grades didn't make her popular or respected. Being a blonde, blue-eyed 5'7" cheerleader got her popularity got. In fact, the most popular WHITE kids(my high school was predominantly White) were either the football players, cheerleaders, or were the rich preppy kids. Who was most popular among Black students? The basketball players and football players.
It's hard to get people to chase academics with as much fervor as sports when the smart kids get bullied and labeled as "nerds". When the smart kid is played up as the comic relief on television, it's not encouraging.
Quote:
In Texas, we have black parents of middle school kids who are paying a thousand dollars a month to get their kids into special sports clinics because you have to have gone to the right clinic to get on the school team. But not many are willing to pay that much to get their middle schoolers into clinics that could get them into Harvard.
It goes back to this. Why are the parents chasing sports for their kids in the first place?
My theory is that sports, their kids make it, will bring instant popularity, ALOT of money, and respect. Athletes tend to be respected more than scientists.
As I mentioned earlier, ADOS people did control our own image up to the latter 60s. We had a score of national magazines. We had our own music production as well. Most large and many small cities had black newspapers. We gave up or sold off most of our image-making capabilities as white media discovered that black people were also consumers.
The important thing I remember about the black media was that they emphasized what the average black person could accomplish. They weren't all about the stars. In order to fill their pages, they had a lot to say about ordinary businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and people who were accomplishing things in generally achievable ways. Yes, it's possible to search hard to find such information today, but it takes a minimum critical mass of information to affect the zeitgeist of the culture.
How many black people are making a living in professional sports in the US today? I mean actually paying their mortgage? Only about 5,000, including retired athletes earning mortgage-paying endorsements and retirement benefits.
There are well over a million ADOS people in academic professions. You can go to any city that hosts a professional sports team and easily find ten times as many black academic professionals than black sports professionals...plus there are all the other cities without professional sports teams still have black academic professionals.
So...how do black kids get the idea that professional sports is a more plausible goal than an academic profession? Why can't we get more of them to stake academic professions as a goal as early as they stake sports as a goal?
In Texas, we have black parents of middle school kids who are paying a thousand dollars a month to get their kids into special sports clinics because you have to have gone to the right clinic to get on the school team. But not many are willing to pay that much to get their middle schoolers into clinics that could get them into Harvard.
We do the same thing.
But it is to get them on the school team so that it will help get them into Harvard.
The irony of this is that there's money to make more publications. It's not like Black people can't make publications. In fact, now is an even better time. We have YouTube.
And this is what we need, now more than ever. We need the Black doctors, park rangers, engineers, teachers, attorneys, etc to be promoted. I want to hear more about Black software engineers, Black scientists,etc.
Actually, there is a YouTube channel called Kenganda. It is about Africa, but it highlights Black Americans who are thinking about moving to Africa or who have moved there.
I only know one Black person, personally, making a living as a professional athlete. And he is making that living OUTSIDE of the USA. I have met more Black park rangers. I've met more Black engineers. The odds are better that a Black person will become an engineer or an accountant than an athlete. And this is also factoring in job discrimination.
Sports and entertainment are more popular than science and engineering. Popularity and respect. That stuff is INSTANT. Being strong academically can make you a good student, a good employee, and with a little work, a good employer. However, athletes get more respect, alot of it instant. Athletes with alot of money, alot of fame.
A young Black boy from a middle class family has a great chance of being a Neil Degrasse Tyson or a Dr. Benjamin S. Carson. A much better chance than being a professional athlete. However, even after Neil Degrasse Tyson got his own show, he isn't getting more traction in terms of popularity.
I think about this. Growing up, I think about who was popular in my school. The valedictorian in my school was also a cheerleader. She had the best grades. However, her grades didn't make her popular or respected. Being a blonde, blue-eyed 5'7" cheerleader got her popularity got. In fact, the most popular WHITE kids(my high school was predominantly White) were either the football players, cheerleaders, or were the rich preppy kids. Who was most popular among Black students? The basketball players and football players.
It's hard to get people to chase academics with as much fervor as sports when the smart kids get bullied and labeled as "nerds". When the smart kid is played up as the comic relief on television, it's not encouraging.
It goes back to this. Why are the parents chasing sports for their kids in the first place?
My theory is that sports, their kids make it, will bring instant popularity, ALOT of money, and respect. Athletes tend to be respected more than scientists.
Of course, disrespecting education is an American problem larger than the ADOS community.
But there was a time that intellectuals were considered more important in the ADOS community than they were in in the Anglo community...and I was around to experience the end of that period.
Of course, disrespecting education is an American problem larger than the ADOS community.
But there was a time that intellectuals were considered more important in the ADOS community than they were in in the Anglo community...and I was around to experience the end of that period.
But those posters assume it’s only the black community…unfortunately to their ignorance.
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