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.
Wanting to act or be dumb, regardless if you are black, white, blue purple or green for that matter, is probably one of the most idiotic things I have ever seen in my life.
But the writer got it right. The Parents are the ones at fault.
Just wish there was a way to get it through their thick skulls that you reap what you sow.
"Wha'happaned? Why do black kids today wish to realize every stereotype that the slaveocracy wished to tag blacks woth in the 19th century. It is enough to make me weep."
Because they have been brainwashed by a certain select type of white person to behave that way.
The Democratic Party successfully put blacks back into slavery, and they never had to pick up a gun to do it.
They simply used the government welfare system to coerce and entice them back onto the plantation (so to speak).
Oh well.. it's within their power to change their futures. Always has been, always will be.
"The Democratic Party successfully put blacks back into slavery, and they never had to pick up a gun to do it."
Well, it is the second time they have done it. They did the same thing between 1885 and 1925. The Jim Crow laws dated to that era, and were all passed in state legislatures controlled by Democrats.
One of the saddest things about the book I am researching (on black troops in the Civil War) is the process of forgetting that was forced upon the nation during the first two decades of the 20th century. In the late 19th century dozens of books were written about the black contribution in the Civil War, most by the participants. These memoirs make fascinating reading.
These books tailed off in the first decade of the 20th century, and between 1910 and 1930 no "serious" Civil War historian felt that the black contribution (nearly 200,000 men) was unworthy of study -- and that slavery was just a peripheral issue in the war.
Between 1925 and 1953 not one book was written about blacks in the Civil War. It took Cornish's book "The Sable Arm" in 1955 to make it a "respectable" area of study.
I have seen a lot of eerie parallels in the historical revisionism of the Civil War that took place between 1885 and 1925 and that which I have seen about the civil rights movement between 1975 and today. Most of it by the same political party.
This article is spot on. Compare how the MSM treats Condaleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell with their current treatment of Tookie. It proves that the Liberal Idealogues brissle at success and celebrate failure.
"Remember back in the 60's when blacks talked about wanting opportunities to succeed? Now it seems they want excuses not to."
I saw a "What's Happenin" episode recently on TVLand, and the plot of the show was that the Waitress Character was very offended when she found out she was hired as a Secretary to "add a little color" to the company. I was amazed at the quick turnaround that has occured in our society. Now, we have "diversity" that means nothing more than the color of one's skin.
I was quite amazed.
WWFDD? He would be kicking them in their butts up and down the street! He had a firey temper and would have been outraged at the activities of these so-called "African-Americans"!
And they will tell you what lazy, worthless slugs the generational "African-Americans" are. They have absolute contempt for those living on the RAT Plantation.
In short, the new "African-Americans" have an advantage...they don't have leaders, such as Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al.
I have a few older co-workers who are still within the "entitlement" viewpoint, and won't do the extra little things to get ahead. It's pathetic.
As others have stated, its easy to spot this when white Libs attack Black conservatives and Libs promote gangsta (lawless) lifestyles in the entertainment media.....keep black kids dumb & in the street (this means you Hollywood, RIAA and MTV).
Black Americans appear to be getting the message. Few really want to return to the Demo/Lib Plantation in New Orleans based on the interviews I've heard.
Bump!
It will happen as the result of Second civil war or it will be the cause of The Second Civil War. Yall remember the last time we freed some slaves here...
Put into proper English it means, "It's a foregone conclusion, my man."
The problem with judging someone strictly on their 'pronunciation' is that there are different dialects in this country, outside of any racial consideration.
I've heard plenty of white people say "hep."
I find Farrakhan and his ilk despicable, but if there's one thing that they differ from black Leftists (I consider the NoI a right-wing social movement) it's that they are taught to REJECT welfare, pursue education, live a dignified life and abstain from alcohol or disrespecting their women.
Lumping in Farrakhan with gangsta rap culture is pretty silly.
You go, Mandisa! Keep your head high and your spirit strong, and remember: you are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Um, with all due respect, how do you know that Calvin Broaddus (aka Snoop) is dumbing himself down?
Not trying to pick a fight, just noting that I have never once heard Mr. Broaddus speak a proper English sentence.
Cut Mandisa a bit of slack . . . every girl her age wants to be a movie star or a model.
I call it "ghetto talk", but "gansta speak" sounds better. If my daughter wanted to marry a guy who came in with, "Yo, homey, w'as up?" he'd find his butt out the door. But an intelligent, charming, and (most of all) NICE young man I would give a chance no matter what color. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about that for at least another ten years or more.
Neither have I, so perhaps he's just as stupid as he sounds.
It's what Bill Cosby has been saying all along.
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