Years ago I worked with a very hard-working black lady. She was a wonderful person and a single mother to a teenaged daughter.
She had been married but her husband left her when her daughter was still a baby. She didn’t take up with other men nor have other children; she went to work and worked hard to give her daughter a better life than she’d had, including a better education.
At that time her daughter was in high school and her ambition was to become a lawyer. More than once the mother confided in me her exasperation with how her daughter was being treated by her classmates. The daughter was constantly told she was “trying to be white” because she tried to do well in school and make good grades and because she wanted to go to college.
It made no more sense to her mother than it did to me. Getting an education and living a middle-class life had no relationship to race in either of our minds. I eventually left the job and the area and don’t know if her daughter achieved her goals or not.
I think that, unfortunately, the attitude that getting an education, speaking correct English, and living a middle-class life is “white.” Even kids who have the innate capability of becoming a top-notch lawyer are discouraged from developing their intellects and obtaining good educations.
Affirmative action practices don’t help, either.
Blacks should realize that voting is acting white.
My daughter’s best friend in middle school was mixed race white/african American. A clique of African American girls harassed the girl because she was friends with my daughter. She would have none of it, but she was a very shy girl, and it was awful for her to have to deal with their aggression toward her. The girls are college age now, and still friends.