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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.
Exactly - it isn't a black or a white thing - it's parents AND teachers AND a culture that discourages people from exerting effort to do and be their best. It reminds me of a discussion I had a long time ago with a school teacher in Germany. He said they made a point of teaching their students not to compete, NOT to try too hard, or try to be better than other people because it just wasn't fair to the people of lesser ability AND not everyone could succeed. If they tried and failed they would be miserable. It was better just to let the government take care of them. I see a LOT of that attitude in America today.
All in all, it's a rather amazing commentary on some aspects of black culture, especially coming from Mr. Rock.
Agree. I was watching the local news last night and they had a story on one of the high school basketball teams going to State (or something like that). They sent a news crew out to the high school rally and ended up interviewing a few of the kids. It was a mixed-race bunch--hispanic, white, native american, etc., but all the kids they interviewed spoke in 'gangsta', or whatever it's called--MTVSpeak, maybe. "Is like this, no whad ahm sayin'? We gonna do dis, we gonna be on top, no whad ahm sayin', yo?".
It's rather interesting that blacks have adopted the fascist idea of racial purity. But there's a catch! Their idea of the racially pure master race is one that can't spell and has no intention of learning how.
Is this ever true! A brilliant blue-eyed blond boy of my acquaintance (now a man) went through harassment and hazing, even by the teachers and principal. I recognized it as the same abuse his brilliant mother, who had also skipped a grade, had suffered in school in the 50s.
Fortunately for this boy, his mother was on hand to champion him, as her parents had not been for her, and he went on to success in a private high school and top-notch university.
"I am not sure that is a uniquely black problem, I vaguely remember similar problems when I went to HS some 30 years ago. It didn't matter what color your skin was though. If you had some smarts, you were a target of some ridicule or shunning."
Not necessarily. Look at the black and brilliant Tyra Banks, who has her own talk show and successful long-running "top model" show, just renewed for the 5th season. She is just 32. She is using her beauty as a stepping stone to a lucrative career as a brainy producer and media magnate. Look for her to become the next Oprah, who is undeniably one of the world's most extraordinary public benefactors.
Not at all. See post 47.
One of our local high schools had a lock down a few weeks ago. 6 girls got into some kind of brawl. Evidently, problems of this nature have been increasing at the school and in the district. If so, I wouldn't call that environment conducive for learning.
They aren't "white" values, are they? Almost every black person who succeeds talks about how his mother inspired him or her. The phenomenal Baltimore brain surgeon Ben Carson comes to mind. He grew up with a single mother in a ghetto, yet her insistence on homework and good values propelled his natural intelligence. He became head of neurosurgery at the nation's premier hospital, Johns Hopkins, by the time he was 35!
His mother couldn't even read, but she would scan his homework papers, hand them back and say, "You can do better." What a brilliant mother, who once was a maid but now lives in a wonderful home due to her son's accomplishments and her own inspiration for him.
Thing is, as a Generation Xer I can recall growing up in the 70s when the general focus of teen angst was to prove yourself cool (no matter what color your skin) by showing an extreme apathy towards higher learning. I can think of several films directed at teens in the 70s where a student who was known to be enthusiastic about learning and excellence was scorned as not worthy of admiration. I know this has been going on since at least the 50s, but it seems to me that it has only served to serve the Leftist agitprop. The quasi-conspiracy-theorist in me wonders if this isnt a deliberate thing fomented by those in the education and film industry. They talk of rebellion, but they do everything they can to make sure that the rebellious have no clue.
"Do I wanna be a Grade A student?
If you are, then you think too much. - Billy Joel, Still Rock and Roll To Me
PING
I am currently writing a book about the live of black trooks in the US Civil War. One thing that characterized virtually every black soldier that joined the Union Army was their thirst for education.
These guys would spend their off-duty hours learing to read, write, and do arithmatic. They brought books with them on picket duty, so they could work on learning. They stayed up late nights learning. They wanted something that they had been denied as slaves so badly that they would sacrifice just about all of their free time to get it. Not just the kids in the units, but men in their 30s and 40s.
(The other universal characteristic was their pride in their appearance. Black soldiers took great care of their equipment and uniforms so as to appear like soldiers -- like men of war.)
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.
For Trooks read troops. Coffee hasn't sunk in yet.
Ditto. My high school was roughly 65% white and 35% black. If my memory serves me correctly, we started out with a freshman class of over 800. The graduating class was about 400. It was equal opportunity for expulsion and dropping out of school.
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
Sounds like an up and coming Condi Rice. God bless her.
Durn, I was looking forward to a book about Trooks?
I was waiting for my wife to come out of a hospital one time and I saw two black guys meet for the first time. They were both in full uniform FUBU, Raiders stuff, Air Jordans, do rags and Bling. The greeting was slap and pose with much slang until they mutually discovered that one was a lawyer and the other a stock broker. The conversation changed instantly to talking about job, wife and kids all in perfect English.
It is sad that black males regardless of success level and intelligence feel it necessary to assume a stereotype to get along with his fellows.
Yeah, I was razzed for being smart back in high school (1970's). It appears the problem is much more pervasive in the black "community", though. Not being black myself I have to admit basing this on what I have read rather than personal experience.
The big difference is there was never any question of my doing well in school from my parents - I was expected to without making a big deal about it. In addition, there were plenty of other smart kids around, I was hardly unique. Many black kids do not seem to have those advantages. Unfortunately these are not advantages that can be legislated or mandated, they have to come from within.
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