With it being Black History month, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the black race. I hope this doesn't come out as being all over the place because I have a lot to say.
Two of the top trending topics in the US on twitter this week were #RatchetJeopardy and #GhettoJeopardy. Initially, reading the tweets was humorous until I read one tweet in particular and it rubbed me the wrong way. The tweet read, "A black mans weakness." Most of the answers I read were, "What is reading out loud." Now, I know for a fact that I can look back 3 generations in my ancestry and find that at least one (if not more) of my 8 great-grandparents did not finish high school. Some may not have even finished junior high. That's not that long ago! My train of thought is basically that there's a reason why blacks reading levels aren't as high as our counterparts. To me, it's just sad that this is funny to us. I also read that in some inner cities schools, blacks participating in class and actually trying to learn is referred to as "acting white" by other blacks and/or minorities. This is absolutely mind blowing to me. That's probably the most ignorant thing I've heard in my life.
All of this just makes me think about how our ancestors would feel about our black community today. For instance, the whole "acting white" scenario. Our slave ancestors weren't even allowed to learn AT ALL! I would assume that they'd be furious that we have books and teachers right in our faces and refuse learn to because we've categorized it as "acting white". Even with the #RatchetJeopardy and #GhettoJeopardy trending topics on twitter, why are we degrading ourselves this way for the world to see? Also, a new thing is recording fights and posting them online. Again, why are we doing this to ourselves? I know our ancestors didn't fight for our freedom for us to behave like this.
Another thing that I despise about our black community are people making a career out of living off of the system. I know that it is necessary sometimes for some people. I also know that we do have to overcome a lot of odds. Some of which are that we are a minority and that 67% of our households are single-parent. I do understand that we are going against all odds BUT there's NO reason why some of us should be abusing the system for a lifetime. No excuse whatsoever. We always want to blame the white man or blame society which I do agree with TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. But from everything I've written so far, aren't we the blame more than anything else? We are beating ourselves! We are the only race that has crime against each other. We have the famous bloods and crips gangs in LA. What other race has gangs against each other?! Even in the 90's with the East and West coast rappers feud that ended in Biggie and TuPacs deaths. What was the point of feuding?! Shouldn't they have been proud of each other and supporting each other because they all made it?! I guess not. We are beating ourselves and killing each other. That doesn't make since AT ALL! We haven't engraved in our minds that we have to try to be better, HELP EACH OTHER, not put each other down or kill one another. I feel like a lot of us give up before we even try. What's the point of even living then? Some of us still have that slave mentality. Only we can get ourselves out of it.
I don't want to be completely negative toward the black community. I just know that we should be doing better and we only have ourselves to blame. There are tons of thing that we're good at though. For example, sports, music, comedy, acting etc. We have entertainment down pact. We have a ton of scholarly blacks. One is our President. I just have a problem with more of us going to jail than college. I feel very fortunate to have my bachelors degree and am making moves towards pursing my law degree. I feel I have made my ancestors proud and hope to keep doing so.
We need to do better. Point. Blank. Period.
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