[Jhensy]

It all comes down to reading, reading, reading. Are there bookshelves in the home? Do Mom and/or Dad read for pleasure? Do they discuss the facts and the wonders of this amazing planet with their children? Do they instill curiosity? Or do they assume schools will do the job for them? This of course applies to all races, not just blacks.

But comedian Chris Rock does a very disturbing routine where he advises that the way to keep black men from stealing from you is to hide your valuables in books. "Books are like kryptonite to (n-words). They won't EVER look inside there."

It's disturbing because the mostly black audience roars with laughter in recognizance of the fact.

[tictoc]

It all comes down to reading, reading, reading

I believe you are right.

Are African Americans capable of attaining the highest levels of intellectual achievement? That shouldn't even be a question because there are many who have done exactly that. Here is one example, Professor Jim Gates

(not to be confused with Henry Louis Gates jr., the head of Afro-American studies at Harvard.)

Jim Gates is the John S. Toll Professor in Physics at the University of Maryland.

He is a leading light in the theory of superstrings. Don't ask me to summarize his field of study, I simply lack the brainpower to understand, let alone, explain this esoteric research area. What I do know is that these scientists must be extremely good at mathematics (algebra), as good as or better than most professional mathematicians, in addition to being full-time particle physicists.

Affirmative action won't help you cut it, you either can do it or not.

Now I'll just quote a few passages from the interview that jumped out at me:

Q: When and how did you first become interested in physics and mathematics?

A: Well the answer to the question has, unfortunately, a number of parts. The first part is when I was about eight years old. My father brought home a book one day and it was about space travel. And in this book I learned that the stars in the sky were not just lights but places to go. And suddenly my universe got very much larger and I knew that science was the way, science and technology, the way to get to such places. So that was part one. Then a little bit later we had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and I was probably in the third grade, and I was bored one day, just thumbing through one of the volumes. And I came across Schrodinger’s Equation, and I was amazed. I knew it was mathematics because I saw an equal to sign. Then I saw a bunch of symbols, Greek letters and partial derivatives, which I had absolutely no idea of what it meant. It had some sort of strange attraction to me, because it was like looking at notes on bars for music, but not knowing how to read the music. So I felt some affinity and said, gee I’d like one day to know what that thing means.

(...)

For someone who carries out a life in research, in some sense that part of life never changes. It’s like you always have a homework assignment that’s due the next day, and you keep on churning and churning through it. So it’s the benefit, it’s not the actual pain.

The conclusion I draw is that talent is never enough -- you must have parents that value learning (obviously Gates' parents did, why else invest in an expensive set of the Encyclopedia Britannica).

And second, the value of hard work must be instilled at an early age so that it becomes second nature. Although Prof. Gates does not explicitly credit his parents in the short interview, I think it is a safe assumption that his work attitude was something he learned at home, not in school.