Being black..., ...Is no excuse for failing. Options

[Kontroll]

Listen, I'm not racist. I'm just bringing up a topic that I know is on alot of people's minds.

Everynow and then I see these movies, or whatever...people saying that black people can't get anywhere in life because they are lazy, or because they are black they can't get anywhere in life.

I was sitting infront of Jeremy's house waiting for him to answer his friggin door. I was thinking about Albany(Where I live for the most part) and how it's just run down. Most of the people that live there are black.

I was thinking about how I see all this crap about how black people always say they might as well as just give up and deal with what they got. In movies, or even in real life. It pisses me off because the color of your skin does not affect your brain at all. It's an excuse and not a reason...

...if it was a reason then every black person would be in poverty. Is this not true? And you can't blame it on your environment because there have been many black people who have over come it. So, why do some black people just give up and don't try to succeed?

I know not only black people do it, but I'm just bringing this one up first. I'll talk about white people some other time just to be fair.

Input please. If this is in the wrong forum, just move it. Thank you.

[flaymzofice]

^ naturally otherwise where would such tellings find their source?

However, I think it's about more than just a label. It is society's nature to believe what we are told even though we are the ones generating the stories being fed to us by the media (kind of chicken and egg in that respect). And I believe it's more associated with education than genuine belief in one's ability to better one self. Where I live in London, we have one of the lowest pass rates for any kind of academic qualification (starting at high school level). Here, black, white, purple kids are all in the same boat - they are constantly being undermined by the education system, one which is not entirely willing to help them succeed. Kids require motivation, but if their teachers give up after only putting in 25%, why should the kid bother putting in anymore? And then the reasons for failing start kicking in and yes, I do agree to an extent that racial discrimation in the classroom will always factor into it, but that is just one of a number.

And then there's environment. Yes, there are those kids who get out of the 'ghetto', who make great success stories of themselves, but when all your friends are hanging out, chilling after school, not bothered by work and having a good time, what kid won't choose play over work? I coach tennis in an area even rougher than mine, and there was this one kid (yes, black), one of the most naturally gifted tennis players in that whole county and he knew, and they knew it. The club basically took him on as their own son - driving him to matches, giving him free coaching, paying his tournament fees, tennis clothing, feeding him, letting him stay over before a big game. He started when he was 9, not too late to have let the 'bad' influences creep in yet, and he was in this positive environment pretty much five hours a day, six days a week, for the next six years. Then one day, he just stopped going to training and now even his own aunt couldn't tell you where he was. He was given opportunities other kids in that area could only dream about but he threw it away. That's not a stereotype; that was him being unable to fight the way of life his non-tennis playing friends were immersed in.

The need to fit in overrides a great deal of ambition when you're a teenager, especially if the education you were provided with was insufficient to encourage you otherwise. And even then, even with support and belief in you, things don't always go right.

Stereotypes will always exist but yes, to an extent, they are an excuse for failure, though not always innocent of the fact.

P.s., as to people stereotyping themselves, well, yeah, I'll raise my hand to this. A lot of the time, stereotyping is meant as a form of reverse psychology. Unfortunately for me, I'm one of those on whom it provokes the exact opposite effect. If you tell me I can't do something, rather than spurring me on to prove you wrong (maybe it's a wire shortage in my brain but I just can't grasp where the satisfaction in this concept lies), it angers me so that I subscribe to your prescription and so I'll fail just to prove you right, and your subsequent failure to achieve the intention of the application of reverse psychology, will be my success (though obviously, only minor and superficial and largely, to my own detriment)