Posted on 06/02/2006 10:48:13 AM PDT by celejrm313
What does it mean to be a black man? Imagine three African American boys, kindergartners who are largely alike in intelligence, talent and character, whose potential seems limitless. According to a wealth of statistics and academic studies, in just over a decade one of the boys is likely to be locked up or headed to prison. The second boy — if he hasn't already dropped out — will seriously weigh leaving high school and be pointed toward an uncertain future. The third boy will be speeding toward success by most measures.
Being a black man in America can mean inhabiting a border area between possibility and peril, to feel connected to, defined by, even responsible for each of those boys — and for other black men. In dozens of interviews, black men described their shared existence, of sometimes wondering whether their accomplishments will be treated as anomalies, their individuality obscured by the narrow images that linger in the minds of others.
This unique bond, which National Urban League President Marc Morial calls "the kinship of the species," is driving many black men to focus renewed attention on the portrait of achievement and failure that hangs over the next generation. A recent spate of scholarly studies have brought urgency to the introspection, as the studies show the condition of poor, young black men has worsened in the past decade despite the generally strong economic conditions of the 1990s.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The nation's most accomplished black men usually have a story to tell about what they overcame, who influenced them, how they survived.
Edward T. Welburn, chief of global design at General Motors Corp., says his interest in cars was stoked by observing his father operate a West Philadelphia auto repair service.
Guidance counselors at John B. Slaughter's high school in Topeka, Kan., laughed aloud, Slaughter said, when he told them he wanted to be an engineer. They had never heard of a black engineer, and they told Slaughter he should pursue a trade. Slaughter ignored them and graduated from Kansas State University in 1956 with a degree in electrical engineering, launching a career that took him to the helms of the National Science Foundation, the University of Maryland and Occidental College in Los Angeles.
Is that to imply that all imprisoned black men are wrongfully imprisoned?
"As a black man, you often think that things can go either way,"
Well, now that is unique because men of every other race are fully confident that everything is going to be all right. /sarc
This article is just one more steaming load of manure.
Ever since I got my membership card for the White Male Power Structure Club I knew I would be just fine.
This author, and the people he is aiming at, need to read Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals".
He does his usual sterling job of debunking the liberal tropes about why blacks are performing more poorly in a variety of metrics.
They should also talk to Bill Cosby.
What this says to me that it's the choices that black men make that will determine their own future as it is quite obvious that they are as capable as anyone else on this planet.
Where the nation was once largely segregated along a black-white divide, the country has become more racially and ethnically mixed, creating opportunities — and new sensibilities. Erin Smith, 23, who recently graduated with a business degree from Howard University, once considered himself a militant. "You kind of get groomed, in a way, in that totally pro-black environment at Howard." But as he began to pursue his business dreams — a fledgling multimedia company he created his freshman year and a real estate venture with his father — Smith started to expand his thinking.
"I saw myself as potentially being kind of racist," he says "of closing myself off to people. I'm still pro-black, but we don't need to totally focus on race. We're all part of the human race. I kind of grew a little bit. I look at life as a puzzle — day by day, you get a new piece. Some young men think success is 20-inch rims, flat-screen TV. They only think of success as what they see — and that's what they see."
My heart bleeds for them. In the meantime they are breeding like rabbits without supporting what they breed, they are working Government jobs they dont qualify for. They are killing each other in record numbers and using dope and selling it.
Yeah lets cry for them.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8069
It is long, but hang in there. What the kids themselves say it is not someone else's fault but that learning is too much work and it is not cool. Can you imagine being the parents? But I imagine the parents are somehow passing on to the kids that what they are doing is OK. They are accepting for their kids the same bad parts of the culture that they pulled themselves out of.
Let's face it. To succeed in this country, you have to accept that part of white culture that teaches people how to succeed and you have to shun that part of black culture that teaches people how to fail.
I don't want to cry for them. I do think it is shameful - for blacks and whites - to talk about black men as if they are children. I am not blind or stupid. I know racism exists and will continue to exist. But I do believe, that for the most part, the majority of whites are non-concerned with blacks to the point of they don't care sharing buses, drinking fountains, stores, beaches, and so on, with them. Most whites, I believe, are tired of the kind of crap portrayed in this article. Instead of pointing to one group of blacks and saying they are successful - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, et al - and then point to another group of blacks and say they sold out - Michael Steele, Lynn Swann, Condi Rice, et al - they should point out that all of them are successful. They should point to groups such as The Temptations, Supremes, Chi-Lites, and say this is what music and entertainment is and not the death, destruction, and despair of urban hip-hop. They should say over and over again that there are evil and good blacks as well as evil and good whites.
What is ironic is, according to Sowell, this black culture of failure was adopted from whites.
Shhhhhh!!!! Man, you ain't supposed to make that public!
It's the media that has so influenced back youth. I recall article in the NY Times weekend magazine idolizing rappers.
Look that won the Academy Award for best song.
The media is able to hammer our troops almost into the ground, and they have done a job on young black people.
But somehow I think things are changing.
Perhaps that's what you actually hear, but what the liberal left would like you to hear is that the entire country has adopted the oppressive, segregationist polices of the old South and that the White Power Structure is alive and well.
Now if we could just figure out a way to oppress the Asians and Hispanics............
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