why is it that is seems that the black community is the only community where its uncool to want an education?

Question

Why is it that so many blacks say someone is trying to be white when all their trying to do is get a good education and survive in this world. I've had fellow highschoolers tell me this, and even adults.

Answer 1

I cant give you a direct answer but...
Which is better, to have people say you are trying to act white, while you get your education and become self sufficient and successful, or to join the crowd working a low end job all your life, or selling drugs going to prison or dead?

Man, that's a tough decision.

Answer 2

It is not uncool in the black community to want an education. I am getting my PhD now and I am a black woman. I was supported within my community greatly so this has not been my experience.

The problem is that the educational system has systematically conditioned black children to think they are not as smart as white children. Because of the history of integration, there is a certain fear of suceeding in what was characterized as a white person's game. There is also the issue of those who have educated themselves who kick the ladder down rather than help someone else come up. There are numerous levels of stigma attached to being an "educated black person". We haven't always been good to one another.

Also, education has always been a complicated subject, dating back to when black slaves were killed if they tried to read and dating up to the civil rights era when the demand for fair educational tools got dogs and hoses loosed on you. I am not using these things as excuses, but there is a history that we have to take into account here.

Having taught in a high school where black children made up the minority, I saw this first hand. This is not a black community problem. It is an American problem and I think it is unfair to generalize as much. Some of the greatest thinkers and societal contributors in this country are black Americans. Don't believe the hype.

Answer 3

This is a really tricky one, but I will try to put a view on it.

1. The Black Community may well have a point, and this would apply to everyone regardless of race, colour or creed, Education is a part of a vast and amorphous program of indoctrination. To understand this is it necessary to look back to the time just before industrialisation which mainly started in Britain, at the late 18th/early 19th centuries (1700's to 1800's).

Before that most populations, most everywhere, were largely rural, and the main form of employment was agricultural production of myriad kinds. Then along came steam power, and the mechanisation of production. This required a major shift in populations, both geographically, and demographically. Quite simply the whole style of living was radically revolutionised. Towns grew into cities, and the 'Dark Satanic Mills' sprang up all over the place.

People were switched from toiling in the fields to toiling in the mills. Both women and men, even children by our standards. This created another problem, before the children grew up living alongside their parents and families, and learning was mostly home-taught and work related. Literacy wasn't very high, nor did seem to be a problem for most.

With industrial employment came the problem of what to do with large numbers of children unattended by their parents and education, especially that which would benefit future production was thought to be the best way to deal with the problem. It seems hard to believe now but Schools were mostly just glorified baby-sitters.......with an agenda, prepare those masses for the mills !

So, when seen from this perspective one can appreciate that formal education could have quite a dark side, and I would totally understand why the US Black Community might regard it with great suspicion, and rightly so. Look to the great numbers of young people graduating from Universities today, better qualified, in ever greater numbers, only to find that the only employment opportunities consist of flipping burgers at the nearest 'MackingWendy's' !

2. The other element is a little negative, but unfortunately all too true of human nature, regardless, again, of colour, race or creed.

Plain old-fashioned jealousy.

People who feel that they are frustrated in their aspirations often lock into a mindset where they don't want others to get ahead either. the thoughts are something like this :

"If I can't get out of the rut of misery and despair, why should anyone else, and if they do, or even try, they just want to be 'The Man'"

Something like that. It's depressing, but that's the way things are. The problem with having a major 'identifier' such as being of Oriental descent, or Jewish, or having pretty coffee-coloured skin, is that it is all to easy to blame your dissatisfaction on that, and not realise that most white people are frustrated as well.

Look around, there are huge numbers of white people living dull, boring, and apparently meaningless lives, the difference being that they don't havetheir colour to blame it on.

Not to say that Black People do not have justified grievances, they do. There is discrimination, but the odd thing is that when a black person decided to just get on with it, and go for their dreams, the perceived barriers do seem to slowly dissolve.

Since the mid-1960's when I lived for a time in the deep South of the USA I have seen change beyond imagination, there is still a long way to go, but we are on the way. Where I live now it really doesn't matter what colour your skin is, it's the tone of your heart that counts !

Answer 4

i do no longer unavoidably think of your commentary is racist, yet I do have self assurance that making a blanket fact approximately any group of human beings shows lack of information. In government faculties, money at the instant are not continuously dispensed the two. some communities get carry of additional funds for faculties and different public factors including parks . greater rich and Suburban factors have house proprietor's institutions and different community communities that shelter a powerful courting w/ the government, the place their voice is heard and that they talk with their vote. In some detrimental communites, that could or won't be predominantly Black, Latino, or White, many don't vote, and don't write their interior of reach government representatives to call for exchange.

Answer 5

It's not entirely just blacks, but I understand what you mean. I have met some latinos whose family was like this, and some white people from working class as well. Mind you, we don't say "You and your education, acting all white"- because we are already white. But it's sometimes implicated that one person is better than another, or that people who leave their poor roots somehow think that they are better than what they left behind.
I think it's a human thing, people are a little jealous of people who have the courage to work for something better, and it enforces in their own mind that they could have had something better too- they just didn't want to work to get it.

Answer 6

I have seen this as a Teacher many times.. but it is present in many situations where parents don't want their children to be better than themselves (why, I'm not sure because my parents always wanted me to be better than them)...

I have seen students come into school with bruises because their father thought they were trying to be "uppity" by getting an education.. I have seen students that lived under bridges instead of at home just so they did not get beat for going to school...

But Peer pressure is much more subtle.. and dangerous to your future...

Education, as much as you can get, has been one financial area that seems to pay off in the future.. even the US government gave GI's the GI Bill to go to school because they could not find jobs upon returning from war.. as a result our country exploded in schools and education.. but that is waning now because fewer people believe in education.

Answer 7

I'm a black women and I think that we try but we have some obstacles, that stand in our way that have us thinking we can't suceed, b/c we tend to critizes each other so much when we do good. We need to educate each other and ourselves, So we can be better as a nation.

Answer 8

I think it's a cultural thing, in that (as I've been told) white people like myself run the world. So, if you're trying to succeed in that world, you're "giving in" to that system. By working with it, you're accepting at a genuine and a correct form of social organization.

If somebody (regardless of color) feels that that system has disenfranchised him or her, he/she will regard that system as a bad thing, along with the people who support it. When it comes to race, you might be seen as somebody who "should know better," and thus seen as a traitor.

Answer 9

You're a fool if you think what is being offered in the inadequate, traditional school systems of America qualifies as a good education for Black people. Black people are intelligent enough to reject a system wherein there are inherent factors that perpetuate a permanent underclass for the masses of Black people regardless of how far some may go in school. It's a sham in the name of education. And Blacks have been ripped off having to pay into a system that is not designed for them or by them to meet their true educational needs.

Answer 10

Those are the ones that are happy to spend the rest of their lives on welfare. They don't matter to me at all, barely even human.