“darned few blacks with advanced degrees who are also worth the degree they hold. (They do exist. They’re just rare.)”
I worked with hundreds of black people at all levels for more than five decades in several states.
I never met one who was worth the degree they held—not one.
Freepers keep assuring me these folks exist—but they are Unicorns to me—I have to meet them and watch them work to believe it.
“Freepers keep assuring me these folks exist—but they are Unicorns to me—”
I worked with a massive black former college football star who had a degree in software engineering. His speech was peppered with “dis, dat, does and dem.” I knew he was an idiot, but he was a nice guy and we chatted all the time. One day the whole department was in a meeting discussing a failure that had the had the potential to cost the company millions of dollars. We had all the symptoms and he quietly said, “I think it might be “this” and we could test by “whatever.” Nobody else noticed. He was ignored. My hair stood on end. I thought, “damn! That’s brilliant. I wish I’d said that.” He had taken what we knew and made a very logical, and as it turned out correct, assessment. He’d skipped all the intervening steps. A few minutes later an old white manager with no technical background said exactly the same thing, but in better English. I saw him react, but he said nothing.
Later, I told him I understood that he was smart, but as long as he spoke the language of his black background he was not going anywhere. He said, “But I need to be true to who I am.” I said, “Living well is the best revenge. If you want to get ahead you have to talk to white people in a language they respect and ‘dis, dat, dem and dose’ is going to cause them to just ignore you. I realize how smart you are but as long as you talk like that they’ll never notice.”
I made him so mad he didn’t speak to me for weeks. We sat across from one another, so it was awkward. Like usual, I’d say good morning, or see you tomorrow and he’d turn away. Then, one day he came and sat in my visitor’s chair and apologized. His wife agreed with me, and he’d hired a speech coach and signed up for English classes. When I left there, he sounded amazing, and he was running a department with nine employees. (Doing much better than me.)
So, they’re there. But we might not recognize them because that “not acting white” thing is holding them back.
When I did taxes, I had a black woman co-worker with a masters in Accounting. Don’t know if she was a good accountant, but she was great at taxes, a wonderful person, a Christian married to a Christian black man raising their 3 kids - a joy to be around and work with. Cared about others, polite, soft-spoken, always willing to help - a “unicorn” regardless of skin color!
But very few people with advanced degrees have impressed me outside of engineering. And the engineers I worked with were about 90% white men. Some Asians. Can’t recall any blacks.