Posted on 12/03/2005 2:09:57 AM PST by 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.
>>>"She can talk about her experience now because she knows how to deal with it."<<<
The Uncle Toms can't keep all the blacks enslaved on the liberal plantation, no matter how hard they try. There will allways be a few who will escape to freedom.
[By "Uncle Toms", I mean, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte, Spike Lee, and their kind.]
So right on...
It's also the culture that kids are fed from the media. The gangsta lifestyle doesn't lend itself to excellence.
My daughters best friend sounds like and eleven year old version of Mandisa. Earlier this year, another black girl made similar comments about her, essentially that she wasn't black enough on the inside. Even more ridiculous...the girl who made the nasty statement is herself bi-racial and very light skinned....but apparently according to the prevailing thinking...black enough inside.
While serving as a squad leader in the 82nd Airborne, my best private was a black kid from South Carolina. He was motivated, knowledgeable, and all around good troop. I figured this kid would end up in Delta Force before too long.
Unfortunately in his off duty time he was surrounding himself with some of the less than stellar soldiers who were more interested in being gangstas than paratroopers. This kid was ridiculed for being gung ho, and trying to be too white. Only white rednecks go in for all that Army stuff you see.
Mandisa cut the chains and escaped the bondage of the Big House. She is no longer a slave to her NAACLP massas who control all.
To those who fear leaving the plantation Mandisa is a threat.
"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."
My guess is that blacks have been so filled with anti white hatred and propaganda that they reject white values.
Excellent post. This extends beyond Blacks, though. I've seen it a lot in inner city Hispanic kids too. With Hispanics it seems to be not un-Hispanic, but just uncool. Some white kids see being intelligent as uncool too but to a much lesser extent.
I don't teach regular public school, but I see it in the religion classes (Catholic CCD, 7th-8th grade) kids I teach on Sunday. Not a whole lot of teaching experience, granted. But with a couple of the kids, their normal school attitudes seem to carry over to Sunday too. I have only one Black kid and she is a really bright, devout and eager to learn kid.
School Choice Bump
Dont forget Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams
Indeed, it all about handouts, what can I get for free
Read the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Here you have the same syndrome only instead of eventual acceptance she will never always be outside their sphere.
She has two choice as she goes through life. Either she rises above her antagonists like Condi Rice has done or she will hide her intelligence for fear of being called Uncle Tom.
Wow. Someone finally had the onions to say this.
Wish I had.
I've often wondered how Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech would sound delivered in ebonics.
It would have lessened the speech's effect.
This young lady is helping to change history. The day will come when black America is going to divide leaving a very messy legacy of helpless plantation slaves with their RAT masters. People of character won't allow themselves to be judged by the color of their skin.
I've been told by many executives in our business that if you were black and could dress and speak properly they would hire you in a minute.
"I am not sure that is a uniquely black problem..."
Agree - the rappers have gotten to a lot of white kids - stupid is cool.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.