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To: Gorzaloon; Bigg Red
Guys, I've thought a lot about this. This country can't afford to discard all the poor kids in Boston . . . and everywhere else that an anti-learning, anti-achievement mentality has taken over.

I wonder if some variation on Booker T. Washington's plan wouldn't work better for these kids. . . . instead of an "us versus them" (having the white intellectuals doling out a few spots in a good school and bus a few kids over there), get together a group of no-nonsense, politically incorrect, and highly motivated successful black businessmen to start a program IN their community FOR the community. That would short-circuit the whole self-loathing thing right from the start - "look - I did it, despite all disadvantages, and you can do it too."

Might have to start with a good dose of practical, trades-oriented education side by side with academics, so the first groups of students could get out there and earn good money quickly - nothing like bringing home a fat paycheck to impress the younger kids coming along. (My dad made all us kids learn a trade as well as an academic specialty. I know this may cause some resentment in certain quarters as making students "second class citizens", but what the heck are they now? They don't know a trade, PLUS too many of them can't even read or write on a high school level when they graduate!)

10 posted on 10/15/2003 4:56:59 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother (. . . Nihil sub sole novum. . .)
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To: AnAmericanMother
get together a group of no-nonsense, politically incorrect, and highly motivated successful black businessmen to start a program IN their community FOR the community.

But then the white liberal elitists couldn't revel in the smug self-satisfaction of having "cared".

14 posted on 10/15/2003 5:19:18 AM PDT by randita
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To: AnAmericanMother
Eminently sensible suggestion ... too bad it won't happen.

But, you're quite right, that's what blacks like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver and many others did in the post-Civil War era in the South.

17 posted on 10/15/2003 6:02:31 AM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo [Gallia][Germania][Arabia] Esse Delendam --- Select One or More as needed)
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