What is so ‘un-black’ about being intelligent?

Atlanta Journal Constitution ^ | December 1, 2005 | RICK BADIE

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Mandisa likes Abercrombie & Fitch, not FUBU.

She speaks proper English, not Ebonics.

She takes honor classes and belongs to the Beta Club and National Arts Honors Society at Parkview High. She plays the violin and has danced and sung in area productions of “The Nutcracker” and “My Fair Lady.”

Mandisa Surpris, a 15-year-old sophomore, is all this.

And she’s black.

Some of the other black students don’t know what to make of her. The way she dresses, the way she talks, the grades she earns. She’s an anomaly. To them, she’s more white than black. They’ve even told her so to her face.

“It’s the most ignorant statement I’ve ever heard,” Mandisa told me. “A lot of black students have the ability, but they think that being smart isn’t cool. So they hide it.”

She can talk about her experience now because she knows how to deal with it. That hasn’t always been the case.

Last year, the comments, slights and snubs took a toll. Mondays, the start of the school week, were especially tough. She’d complain of pain in her limbs. Mom and Dad took her to several doctors. Tests were taken and exams were given. Nothing.

Then, a doctor at Emory University wondered if her illness wasn’t psychosomatic. Something, he said, must be going on in Mandisa’s life that’s making her body ache. It was a breakthrough.

Mandisa, crying, had a heart-to-heart with Mom and Dad. She told them how some – not all — black students treated her as an oddity because she didn’t succumb to their idiotic and destructive views of the black diaspora. My words, not hers.

“It was painful,” said Renald Surpris, her father. “Some black kids don’t have the education and understanding to accept people for who they are, not what they look like.”

I know what some of you are thinking. Here Rick goes again. Writing about race. Stirring up trouble. Critics say it all the time. I don’t care. I write about racial issues carefully and selectively, and sometimes, when I’m ticked off.

Like now.

My people, my people. Some of you disturb me. There’s something terribly wrong when black students — even one — at Parkview or any other Gwinnett campus criticize, ridicule and question the “blackness” of someone like Mandisa simply because she wants to excel.

It’s even sadder in this case because Parkview High is no ghetto school. Its student population doesn’t hail from lower-income apartment complexes and subdivisions. At Parkview, the parents and students consider their school the crème de la crème of public schools, the clientele upper-crust perhaps and at the very least middle-class.

So I blame parents. You black parents.

It’s your fault if your children think academic achievement is uncool, anti-black and pro-white. It’s your fault if your offspring are so enthralled with the so-called thug life that they devalue education, hard work and dedication.

And you’re especially to blame if your child’s sense of black culture means that you have to think and act a certain way, and that to do otherwise means you’re acting like whitey.

It’s your fault. And you’re crippling your kids.

Mandisa wants to pursue acting or a career in the fashion industry. She plans to attend college in New York, her birthplace. I’m sure she’ll be fine.

It’s the kids who ridicule her that I worry about. When they succumb to this crippling ignorance, we all lose. We’ll have fewer doctors, teachers, artists and more. Fewer people to be proud of.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Schools rush into change (To raise reading scores, CosmoGIRL is in, grammar is out)***.........After a dismal performance on state standardized tests this spring, the Baltimore school system decided to overhaul the way it teaches reading and writing in middle schools.

Putting convention aside, officials spent at least $2 million on Studio Course, a curriculum that uses teen magazines, places grammar on the back burner and lets kids write about whatever they want.

... The program has a track record in only one other city, Denver, where middle schools have seen reading and writing scores stagnate.

"I can't imagine Baltimore would be so ignorant to think it's research-based," said Kay Landon, a sixth-grade teacher in Denver. "They can look at our test scores. Our test scores have not gone up. The kids are getting shortchanged."

The implementation of the curriculum in Baltimore has been marked by some teachers starting the school year with no training, schools struggling to buy the necessary materials, and lesson plans being scrapped and rewritten, a review by The Sun has found.

School system officials, who say Studio is based on the latest reading theory, dismiss criticism that they implemented the curriculum too quickly.

"When the boat is sinking, you don't follow the manual," said Frank DeStefano, the system's deputy chief academic officer. "You fix it."

Studio is being used in all 21 of Baltimore's traditional middle schools, where more than 60 percent of pupils last school year failed the state reading test, plus two alternative schools and one kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.

Among the magazines the schools are using to engage children: CosmoGIRL!, which has a feature this month called "Five Hot New Kisses," with explicit tips on making out, and Teen People, whose November issue includes the articles "Hot Boy Next Door" and "Flirt Better!" One lesson defines a noun as "stuff" and a verb as "what stuff does."..........***

[bd476]

Cincinatus' Wife, this is a great article. It's good to hear that Mandisa Surpris is getting some support from her parents. And there is still time for them to try something else.

One positive solution to the group think indoctrination hurled at children every school day of the year is homeschooling.

A simple Google search turns up many links to support groups and organizations for families in the African American community who are homeschooling or who want to learn about homeschooling. Here are just a few:

1. According to African American Homeschoolers Network

"Over 120,000 African Americans home educate
their children -- and we're growing!"

2. National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance

3. FAMILIES OF COLOR USING HOMESCHOOLING

4. Ebony Homeschoolers

5. African-American Unschooling Resources

6. From the website Homeschool Zone.com in their section "Faces of Homeschooling Profiles" there is an interview and discussion:

African-American Homeschooling
An interview with Judi Thomas
of HERITAGE Homeschoolers
hosted by Joe Spataro

"Former middle school teacher Judi Thomas of Marietta, Georgia, started HERITAGE Homeschoolers, a support group for minorities, after finding other organizations included few, if any, black families.

She has been homeschooling her daughter Juliet (age 9) and her daughter Jacqueline (age 4). Judi in many ways is like any homeschooling mom but with some unique perspectives. As a former middle school teacher she has an intimate inside knowledge of how the "system" works.

As an African-American homeschooler, she has developed a support group for this community of homeschoolers, adding to the diversity of the homeschooling movement. She was recently featured in a Time Magazine article, and I thought it might be fun to chat with Judi a bit and have her tell us more about herself, her family and her support group..."

Continues at: Faces of Homeschooling Profiles

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thank you for the post and the LINKS!

The new face of home schooling - More and more, African-American families redefine 'homeroom'***DURHAM, N.C. - There are 200-odd houses in Durham's Eno Trace, but the Smiths' home, at 13 Warbler Lane, is a bit unusual. The first clue: a wooden school desk in the middle of the den.

While other kids stream to bus stops on Monday morning, the two oldest Smith girls - Courtney and Erika - head out to babysit: lessons in physics and American history often wait until nightfall. Meanwhile, E.J. and Cassie, the two youngest, sit back on the couch and fill their notebooks with essays. When they get into trouble with composition, they yell one word: "Mom!" .........***

[Misterioso]

[By "Uncle Toms", I mean, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte, Spike Lee, and their kind.]

Astute insight.

[freeangel]

I have a feeling tht this author won't last much longer at the AJC if cynthia tucker has anything to say about it.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

In her own way, Ms Tucker agrees with the author.

Make excellence a 'black thing'***............But it is black parents who are responsible for insisting that their own children hit the books and take school seriously. Too many black children dismiss scholarship as "a white thing." That has to end. Surely it is more embarrassing to be considered dumb than to be considered "white." ***

[R. Scott]

So I blame parents. You black parents.

It’s your fault if your children think academic achievement is uncool, anti-black and pro-white. It’s your fault if your offspring are so enthralled with the so-called thug life that they devalue education, hard work and dedication.

Not just the parents – the whole Jackson/Sharpton/Farrakhan/hip-hop/gangsta rap culture. If a black succeeds it will give the lie to “Whitey keeps you from making it” mantra, therefore if a black does succeed in an area other than entertainment she isn’t really black.

[bd476]

Cincinatus' Wife wrote: "Thank you for the post and the LINKS!"

Wow, now I get to thank you for the link to your thread from 2003. I'm wondering how I missed seeing that. Fascinating thread discussion too!

Something from the article though really bugs me.

"...But a chief worry for teachers, according to National Education Association, is the fact that along with avoiding school violence and unsavory peer influences, home-schooled students often miss out on positive socialization, too. No matter what their grades, the criticism goes, they're missing a crucial part of the American curriculum: fraternization with peers."

Dripping with sarcasm a response was recently delivered by a friend in answer to her nosy neighbor's question "but what about socialization??"

"Oh don't worry yourself about socialization. We began with Hegel and we're teaching our kids all about socialists, socialism, the NEA and oh yes, we're covering the communists too, you know... Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin.

As a matter of fact in a few weeks we're going to do an in-depth study of Mao Tse-Tung. Junior asked Santa Claus to bring him Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" for Christmas and we couldn't be prouder."

According to my friend, Glady Kravitz herself couldn't have delivered a larger jaw drop than the nosy neighbor after hearing that.

[Erik Latranyi]

If a black succeeds it will give the lie to “Whitey keeps you from making it” mantra...

It is much more than that. The political discourse against conservative blacks teaches voters that calling people "Uncle Tom's" and pelting them with Oreo cookies is acceptable behavior, while praise for a 100-year-old reformed segregationist at a birthday party should bring downfall for any white.

Black immigrants from Africa in Philadelphia are attacked (physically) by American Blacks for not being "pure" and for being too successful.

Past racism is being used today to justify reverse racism and laziness.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

Bump!

[R. Scott]

Black immigrants from Africa in Philadelphia are attacked (physically) by American Blacks for not being "pure"…

What’s wrong with that picture? < /sarcasm>

[Mike Darancette]

What an interesting exchange.

These guys were definitely bi-lingual.

[Gondring]

Because the democrat party wants it this way. To keep people uneducated, poor and dependent on the government is the way that they can keep their overseers buying the votes for their continued power grabs.

Right there in a nutshell.

[Blue Jays]

Hi Boris99-

"...Unfortunately in his off duty time [this talented individual] was surrounding himself with some of the less than stellar soldiers who were more interested in being gangstas than paratroopers..."

---

So what ever happened to this soldier with whom you served? Did he ever "come around" to greatness or did he just shuffle off to mediocrity?

~ Blue Jays ~

[Sister_T]

What is so ‘un-black’ about being intelligent?

I'm black and I can't answer that question. Good article, though.

[LibWhacker]

It’s the kids who ridicule her that I worry about.

Well, don't. To hell with them. Worry about her. One of the best has been scarred and traumatized for life.

[Zionist Conspirator]

So intelligence is "un-black?" But I thought that intelligence was absolutely essential to being a good Left Wing Intellectual and that all Blacks were Left Wing Intellectuals. In fact, I thought that only right wing white trash was un-intelligent. And now all of a sudden it's radical and Black to be dumb? Does that mean that liberal intellectuals will now start paying homage to the trailer parks for their chic-ness?

I'm confused!

[Boris99]

Hi Blue Jays

During my time as his squad leader he remained a good soldier, but there was definitely a change in his attitude. He was an intelligent guy that knew his job, but he picked up the habit of mouthing off to NCOs. I think it was his way to earn some "street cred" with his gangsta buddies. I PCSed to another assignment, but from what I understand this guy left the 82nd for a mechanized unit until he ultimately got out of the Army.

[spintreebob]

Because the democrat party wants it this way.

The party is just the tip of the iceberg. The white elite (Howard Dean, John Kerry, Hilary Clinton... but also the White public school teacher) have a need to feel superior to somebody. They also want a means of assuaging their guilt feelings.

The white elite need a needy underclass dependent on the good intentions of the white elite to take care of the underclass.

The white elite think that a major thing that separates them from the white red neck is that the white elite "take good care" of the people on their plantaton.

That leaves the Dem Party as.... yep ... the plantation.

[YOUGOTIT]

"That leaves the Dem Party as.... yep ... the plantation."

Outstanding! You are right on!