Filmmaker Spike Lee says young blacks ignore education

Modesto Bee ^ | 2/6/03 | AP

[Question_Assumptions]

I read somewhere recently that the average SAT for a Caribbean student is 1300.

It wouldn't surprise me. I worked with one Jamaican programmer who came from a very low-class background (I don't think that any of her siblings had the same father she did) and who grew up in the Bronx. She mentioned that the Jamaican blacks felt that they had to do better in school because they didn't want to be lumped in with the American blacks. This totally stunned a white co-worker who had never been aware that there are class differences within blacks. That, of course, is another curse of liberal views on race. They perpetuate the myth that all black people are the same, regardless of background or where they live (totally ignoring, for example, tribal differences in Africa, where tribal identity if usually stronger than national identity).

I've also heard that Carribean blacks have average incomes greater than the average, though I'm sure that their concentration in urban areas factors into that. This is what irks me so much about the people (some here) who do believe that blacks have less intelligence, genetically, than whites. Thomas Sowell and others have done a good job of pointing out that the problem is cultural. Which is why the solution is cultural, which no one is allowed to say because that means that you have to point out that there is something wrong with the culture that American blacks have.

When I was in junior high school, we had a black kid from the islands who was really very smart. He had a big fight in history class with a teacher who tried to lump him in with the typical American black student. The teacher fell all over himself apologizing to him.

That also doesn't surprise me. For a long time, one of my Jamaican friends would say that he was Jamaican, not black. One funny story was that the Jamaican friend and an American black friend walked into a McDonalds speaking "white" English to each (they they weren't with any white friends but the Jamaican doesn't speak black English but does normally speak "white" American English with no accent, even though he can turn on the Jamaican accent when he wants). The black worker behind the counter leaned over and said, "You aren't from around here. Are you from the college?" Basically, she was stunned to see two black people not talking like she thought two black people should talk to each other. They got a big laugh out of being told that they weren't "normal" black people.