[firefeng]

As per a request, article here. Scroll down past the irrelevant blogger's comments to get to the meat-n-taters of the issue.

Choice excerpts:

Many black people, especially women, are enormously fat. Some are so fat I had to arrange special seating to accommodate their bulk. I am not saying there are no fat white students—there are—but it is a matter of numbers and attitudes. Many black girls simply do not care that they are fat. There are plenty of white anorexics, but I have never met or heard of a black anorexic.

...

Blacks not only mispronounce words; their grammar is often wrong. When a black wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” he may actually say “Whar da badroom be?” Grammatically, this is the equivalent of “Where the bathroom is?” And this is the way they speak in high school. Students write the way they speak, so this is the language that shows up in written assignments.

It is true that some whites face a similar handicap. They speak with what I would call a “country” accent that is hard to reproduce but results in sentences such as “I’m gonna gemme a Coke.” Some of these country whites had to learn correct pronunciation and usage. The difference is that most whites overcome this handicap and learn to speak correctly; many blacks do not.

...

Anyone who teaches blacks soon learns that they have a completely different view of government from whites. Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by having students write about one thing the government should do to improve America. I gave this question to three classes totaling about 100 students, approximately 80 of whom were black. My white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We
need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.”

...

There is a level of conformity among blacks that whites would find hard to believe. They like one kind of music: rap. They will vote for one political party: Democrat. They dance one way, speak one way, are loud the same way, and fail their exams in the same way. Of course, there are exceptions but they are rare.

Whites are different. Some like country music, others heavy metal, some prefer pop, and still others, God forbid, enjoy rap music. They have different associations, groups, almost ideologies. There are jocks, nerds, preppies, and hunters. Blacks are all— well—black, and they are quick to let other blacks know when they deviate from the norm.

Etc., Etc.

I was particularly fond of the part about how blacks are incapable of falling in love, how blacks only graduate because teachers get exasperated and want them out, and how Professor Chester makes a precious rapport with his white students but his black students are apathetically immune to his advances.

It's obvious how I feel about this article, but make sure you actually read the article and not just the parts I've quoted.

[kangaroo]

Interesting read - thanks. A lot of it comes off as being overly stereotypical but I have a feeling that a lot of stereotypes hold weight when you actually get into some truly black inner city neighborhoods and schools.

I'm white and I attended a high school in Southie (South Boston) for a year and actually saw quite a bit of this activity. It's not that generally the black community are dumb or incapable of falling in love, it's just that there was a hell of a lot of conformity going on. The black kids that did well in school or listened to Led Zeppelin or dated white girls or paid attention to their white teachers were generally picked on and demoralized far more than I was as a white kid (the 10% minority in said school).

That was nearly a decade ago though so I can't say for sure if things have changed for better or for worse. It's probably going to take some real leaders in the black community to usher in a change in black mindset and black communities rather than dickbags like Sharpton, and it's certainly not going to happen overnight. The media and people (of any race) really need to be able to discuss these sort of things openly and honestly without fear of being labeled racists and bigots. Part of that is on minority groups that will complain about anything and everything, but a lot of it is on the media and society as a whole with its habit of tip-toeing around any real problems and issues in fear of said interest groups or in fear of being labeled racist. The article kind of reminds me of The Boondocks episode "Return of the King".

In the end though, throwing money at these schools without addressing issues in the community and in society first isn't going to fix everything. Disregarding a teacher in a black community that writes something like this and automatically labeling him racist is part of the problem. He could have sugarcoated it. He could have left out the ebonics. He could have added "In general" or "There are a lot of black students __". But sugarcoating never leads to any meaningful discussion. I have a feeling the resident black FWs will have more valid experiences and opinions on this than my own.

[Arkley]

There's really not much to say about it. One could point out the obvious and say it's riddled with biased and very thinly veiled racism, as well as a completely unveiled conservative slant. One could be a prick and point out that the situations he describes probably did happen and the descriptions of the students in question are probably accurate. And beyond that, there's not much else. It's very much a case of "I'm not racist, but them Negroes suck at everything."

The picture he paints is very believable and I don't doubt that what he describes did transpire and probably continues to, and he does have a half decent point here and there, but finding them is like mining for raw diamonds in a sceptic tank - even if you wade through the shit and find one you still have to cut away the crap and polish the hell out of it before it's worth a damn. It's unfortunate that his encounters with black students (which, in the grand scheme of things, are pretty limited) have resulted in such biased opinions. The are plenty of white people in the south of the USA (along with other places in other countries, etc) who're just as obnoxious and ridiculous as the black people he's describing, and there's bound to be a school full of them somewhere. I wonder if attempting to teach them would lead him to believe that all white people are hopeless drains on society that aspire to be nothing more than greater drains on society than they already are.

[Takune]

So feng, are you playing the typical middle-aged housewife who has never taught anything smarter than a labrapoodle in this thread? Cause you gotta show your tits if you are.


If you come back with anything but "I have been in the teacher's situation", I'd be delighted.

[Cruzandercerberus]

Eh there's some truth in there.

From a political standpoint, blacks are monolithicically democratic.

From a cultural standpoint, they have issues.

Despite more money per student than any other school system in America Inner City public Schools in Southeast D.C. are cesspits of corruption, nepotism, and Apathy. Those black schools who don't have ridiculously huge budgets in southern states may or may not be worse. Warehousing rather than addressing the problem kids to create positive looking metrics and receive a bigger budget next year is probably part of the problem.

No you can't talk about it without someone going into a indignant righteous rage and invoking Hitler or Stalin.

Yes, the guy who wrote this is an idiot, an overt racist, and a jackass.

Yes, itemizing things makes it easier for people to compare me to Joseph Goebbels for posting in this thread.

[1337NancYBoY]

There's really not much to say about it. One could point out the obvious and say it's riddled with biased and very thinly veiled racism, as well as a completely unveiled conservative slant. One could be a prick and point out that the situations he describes probably did happen and the descriptions of the students in question are probably accurate. And beyond that, there's not much else. It's very much a case of "I'm not racist, but them Negroes suck at everything."

I must agree. However, regardless of the author's obvious bias, the picture he paints depicts a scene of a malignant, cancerous culture that's devouring almost all the potential of the demographic in question. This isn't the first time I've encountered such a testimonial - my best friend who currently resides in Hartford CT, grew up in a very similar climate, surrounded by very similar individuals.

The so-called 'black culture' of the inner-city thugs, gangsters, and drug dealers is the root cause of 99% of the problems faced by the people living in those conditions. It is a sickening display of mindless conformity to ideals that leave one expecting to both be imprisoned often and die young. Few people have any idea whatsoever the amount of pressure from peers and family members those growing up in such a climate face to become as similar to their contemporaries as possible - any difference at all is perceived as weakness, and anyone thought to be weak is ostracized and spat upon. While this may be true of any school in any county, the level of violence in these situations is certainly not.

We might all like to think that we have, as individuals, forged our own way - that we think for ourselves and would continue to do so because that is an essential liberty granted to us. But we didn't grow up in the 'hood'. The most we had to worry about for standing out was getting pushed into a locker now and then and being called a fag. I sincerely doubt very many of the people here would uphold that ideal with such veracity were we to be faced with genuine violence - the kind that comes in the form of a knife in one's ribs or a gun in one's face - this is the self-perpetuating disease that eats away at these people. It's a culture that idolizes petty crimes; theft, assault, vandalism, and to act outside of it is to make oneself a target of such.

Blame in this issue is thrown around by politicians of all stripes and colors at everything from music, to The Man™, to them gawt-damn darkies(!), to drugs, to the fucking school system. However, I'm pretty sure I know how this situation developed - the same wall all self-perpetuated systems of decline develop - accepting defeat and inferiority became easier and, in the short-term, more beneficial than striving for betterment. Why should some dirt-poor motherfucker bust his or her ass in school to get good grades, a scholarship, then bust his or her ass in a far more challenging academic setting for several years in the hope that he or she will one day get a good job when it's far easier to spend his time selling drugs, or her time popping out babies for a fat welfare check? Looking from the perspective of someone who has seen only the worst and lowest form of our society, only violence and hate without any escape, can you honestly say you'd take the harder road that might not lead anywhere? Can anyone with even a meager understanding of human nature expect such?

The tragedy is, no government program is going to make things any better, only more expensive for taxpayers and with a steadily diminishing return. The only way people in such a situation can extricate themselves is by wanting to succeed, and you can't make someone want to improve or save themselves. What we can do, however, is start recognizing the aspects of pop culture and media that idolize a lack of social contract, personal responsibility and nonchalance toward consequences for the ridiculous bullshit that they are. Our recent and lasting interest in the 'thug lyfestile' as anything other than a sick parody of masculine ethos has undoubtedly been cause for more apathy and failure than weed and alcohol combined. The irony in this is that the people who think they're aware, who think they empathize and wish to see and share in such a culture are the ones who are hurting it more than any racist cop of city official. For every one black kid that can make it because of the market our fascination has created as an artist, there are at least a hundred who march unquestioningly to the tune of vacant ideals placed on an ever-growing pedestal.

Given that, it's easy to see the causes of the apathy that so frustrates said teacher - why the fuck would some hood listen to a middle-class white guy about the rewards of hard work and the value of personal honor and nobility when some fuck with a multi-million dollar record deal is telling him how to achieve happiness and success by going in a completely different direction? Who would you listen to, your teacher or most, if not all, of your friends and family on what ideals are best? That these kids are poor isn't the problem. That they're surrounded by a bunch of other small-minded idiots spouting bullshit, is.

[pathwriter]

I don't doubt for a moment that much of this is true. At the same time, though, all the black kids I went to school with (in a northern Ohio city whose population was close to 50% black) were capable students on par with the white students. I was enrolled in private Catholic schooling, though, because my parents didn't dare let me near Ohio public schools. I've met the black products of Ohio public schools, however, and they're nothing at all like what this teacher described. I have no doubt in my mind that there are schools and classrooms just like this, but they do not represent every "heavily black" school.

The questions to be asked are why this culture of ignorance, crime, and parasitism persists. In part, it's because it works. Up in Youngstown, there's a GM plant in the next town over (might've been closed recently, don't care to check). Before that, there were the steel mills. Residents of Mahoning and Trumbull counties have worked in one and then the other for their entire lives, not because they enjoy the work (their constant strikes and threats of strikes are proof of that) but because the idea of leaving and finding a meaningful career doesn't occur to them and the difficulty of picking up roots and abandoning the culture their parents or grandparents created is frightening. And these are largely white people I'm talking about now, so it's hardly a unique phenomenon in black communities.

Relying on the government to find a method of fixing it is rather like relying on the tri-state lottery to pay your student loans. Happenstance or persistence may eventually accomplish the task, but there are probably more reliable and viable means. The public schools in Youngstown were so troubled by violence that the school board eventually mandated school uniforms that, ironically, were dressier than what I was wearing at my private school. The result was a profound drop in violence. I cannot say for sure why that is, because core black culture is frighteningly conformist and enforces that conformity with an iron fist. Enforcing conformity, albeit one that appeals to the parents and teachers rather than the students, doesn't sound like a winning plan. Perhaps it was the implication that the adults actually intended to use their authority. I cannot help thinking that a large part of the reason why unruly black classrooms remain unruly is because no one has the drive or ability to get them to toe the line. Mandated uniforms might be part of a possible solution.

Or maybe not. I had a class of high school students of varying levels of math proficiency taking a placement exam to enter my university last week. Only two of them were white and they were both very definitely from poor circumstances. All of the kids knew one another, so it seems rather clear they came from one of the local high schools in a predominately black area. Although they were loud and rambunctious while waiting for their classmates to arrive, when it came time to take the exam and several needed my assistance (they are forced to use iMacs that are several years obsolete, it's insulting), they were utterly polite and well-mannered. Somewhere in their lives, someone had imparted on them the truism that there's a time to goof off and be loud and a time to buckle down and work, as is fairly evident by them being accepted to college (it's a state school, but OSU is moderately picky by the standards of public universities).

The article written is clearly biased against black culture, if not black people. If I had to deal with that kind of nonsense daily, I cannot claim I would have a different reaction. I think a black person who was not a participant in that culture would eventually have the same disgust. Maybe it's simpler to call it racist, but I think that's buying into the wrong side of the problem. The culture needs to be fixed, not the tone of the culture's skin. How to do it? I have no clue. It's a marginalized culture and, as such, strongly resistant to change. The willful lack of education exacerbates the problem.

Voices like this, even if we find them objectionable or uncomfortable (white guilt may or may not exist in truth, but it is imposed on those of us with pale skin regardless), ought to be heard. It's typical behavior to hide a problem away, never speak about it, pretend that something is too fringe or sensationalized to be worth paying attention to, but if there's even one classroom in the United States that matches this description, that's a problem.

I do wonder, though. The writer of the essay is clearly a member of the white literate culture, so he's strongly at odds with the black welfare culture (or however you want to designate this social disease). What if he was complicit in their culture, though? I know there are predominately white classrooms that are every bit as bad as this, though not necessarily in the same ways, but as the teaching staff is likely a product of the culture of their students, no outrage or report is made. I've certainly seen it in the disgusting behavior in some of the northeast's Catholic schools, whereby education takes a back seat to sex, drugs, and crass materialism to the point that grades and recommendation letters are effectively bought and sold instead of earned. The United States tolerates disease vectors like Paris Hilton and Bernie Madoff more readily, but are they any different than a welfare queen with six kids or 23-year-old high school sophomore peddling dope and crack?

[Villainous]

At first I was discouraged a teacher could write something like this, but then I LOL'd so hard, especially at this part:
My students had only the vaguest notion of who pays for government services. For them, it was like a magical piggy bank that never goes empty. One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”
“Many black people make over $50,000 dollars a year and you would also be taking away from your own people,” I said.
She had an answer to that: “Dey half breed.” The class agreed. I let the subject drop.
On topic tho, if you want to improve black students, you gotta improve their schools. Anyone that wants to believe these kids are ignorant just because they're black can go on doing just that- but it won't fix the problem. Which will, ultimately, bite them on the ass years down the line when that same kid is crawling through their window at night.

[pathwriter]

Improve their schools how? Expel the lot of them? Money gets thrown at a lot of these schools disproportionately and it's been difficult finding any proof that it accomplishes anything. Really, that's true almost everywhere. Our immediate reaction to a problem is to hurl currency at it in the hopes that it'll somehow go away. At best, it does nothing but waste money, at worst, it fosters corruption.

[Villainous]

Hmm, well, in not too many words, we have to make it look like we care. If you go to like, PS 121 in Harlem, there's 50 kids in the class and 30 desks and 10 books and an underpaid teacher who doesn't give a shit. If you go to Newton South (sort of a swanky exam school) you see 10 kids in the class, they all have laptops, and the teacher might be a Ph.D that Newton South has lured away with attractive compensation.

Now, the kids look around and see this (and I'll admit, black kids might take a bit more offense than typical) and think nobody cares about them, so they start acting out, and shit rolls downhill from there. If I had to pick ONE thing to improve public schools more than anything, its PAY the fucking teachers already. Pay them WELL. We need to attract quality education professionals- I want to see shit like tenured university professors competing for jobs at public schools. There also must be performance-based compensation (NOT based on standardized tests tho) obviously I don't have all the answers, there's a few tho.

[Saniiro]

Interesting read - thanks. A lot of it comes off as being overly stereotypical but I have a feeling that a lot of stereotypes hold weight when you actually get into some truly black inner city neighborhoods and schools.

There's a lot of nonsense in there, and some slight inaccuracies, but there is also a lot of truth in a good bit of it...

I'm African-American; I grew up around black people, in mostly all black schools, and exposed to the black community and some of the stuff said in that, while it sounds ridiculous, DOES hold weight in reality.

Growing up I got a lot of grief, especially when I was younger, about "talking White", as in using proper English as opposed to the commonly circulated dialect associated with the black community. The examples of grammar issues are a bit inaccurate, but yeah, that's pretty true.

I can tell you from experience that weight is looked at A LOT differently in the Black community as well... I often look at women I know who complain about having a "fat ass" and think "...that's a problem?" because of the years of conditioning from being around black dudes who talk about how great that is.

Views of Government and authority, from my experience, are a lot different in the Black Community as well. 7 out of 10 Black people I know are gravely opposed to cops and are brutally convinced that all cops are just out to get them. Admittedly, though, that's pretty standard across various segments of my friend circles, since I'm a musician and a good half of the folks I know are as well (you can figure the rest out yourself on that one.)

And the conformity thing is pretty well true as well. I mean... It's not limited to "Rap", but in my experience most of the Blacks I know are into very segmented types of music and styles of living (clothing, etc).


I'm not saying that all of this should be taken as a end-all write off for how African-Americans act, but there is a disturbing amount of truth to the attitudes talked about in there... At least in regards to what I've experienced. Half of my band is black, including myself as I stated, and we're all exceptions to a good chunk of this and I know a lot of African-Americans who are notihng like this.... but I have, as I keep saying, seen a lot of examples of most of that.

//shrugs// Just my experience.

Hmm, well, in not too many words, we have to make it look like we care. If you go to like, PS 121 in Harlem, there's 50 kids in the class and 30 desks and 10 books and an underpaid teacher who doesn't give a shit. If you go to Newton South (sort of a swanky exam school) you see 10 kids in the class, they all have laptops, and the teacher might be a Ph.D that Newton South has lured away with attractive compensation.

My HS was brand new, my class was the first to do a full 4 year stick. After we graduated the next class was just a fresh set of Black/Hispanic kids who had access to top-of-the-line laptops/computers and two in-HS college programs (like the one that landed me my current career in GIS) and all they did was squander their chances at success, eventually getting it to the point where they are now fighting desperately to keep the school from losing its accredation. We had college professors, professionals from tons of job fields, and even locally famous musicians teaching music classes; Even my class was full of people who just took a dump on the entire thing, so from what I've seen it's that "The world doesn't want us to be anything" attitude that is more the problem than anything else. I was out of school for chunk of my childhood and has mass problems with reading because there were times when my folks just couldn't handle it all (I have a sis who's less than a year younger than me, so everything went for two), yet I make more than double what my best paid friends make and have two novels in the works; not to mention my sister is currently studying abroad and is fluent in like 3 languages...

Sorry if that sounds like bragging, but I mean to make the point that it's more the attitude than anything else.

[Flokk]

The funny thing about these discussions is that there are all of like two and a half positions that people stand on and nothing short of a life-threatening situation will probably ever change anybody's mind; this stuff takes a lifetime of indoctrination (whether it be towards racism, towards ignorance, or towards basic human decency) to become internalized to this degree. I've listened to this shit my entire life being a half-black guy in a white town and I've come to realize that there's just no such thing as an objective point of view on the matter. People dress it up lots of different ways, and will deny the nature of their actual feelings til kingdom come, but it always boils down to pretty much the same thing in the end.

Also, repulsive OP. That kind of ugly never loses its lack of appeal.

[Cream Soda]

best part of the article
"raping babies to "cure" AIDS"

[Cruzandercerberus]

On topic tho, if you want to improve black students, you gotta improve their schools. Anyone that wants to believe these kids are ignorant just because they're black can go on doing just that- but it won't fix the problem. Which will, ultimately, bite them on the ass years down the line when that same kid is crawling through their window at night.

Despite more money per student than any other school system in America Inner City public Schools in Southeast D.C. are cesspits of corruption, nepotism, and Apathy.

Corrupt government, liberal democrat, one each. The money never makes it to the kids. Mostly it's busy employing administrators to file their nails and ignore the kid doing somersaults in the hallway during class.

[pathwriter]

Hmm, well, in not too many words, we have to make it look like we care. If you go to like, PS 121 in Harlem, there's 50 kids in the class and 30 desks and 10 books and an underpaid teacher who doesn't give a shit. If you go to Newton South (sort of a swanky exam school) you see 10 kids in the class, they all have laptops, and the teacher might be a Ph.D that Newton South has lured away with attractive compensation.

Now, the kids look around and see this (and I'll admit, black kids might take a bit more offense than typical) and think nobody cares about them, so they start acting out, and shit rolls downhill from there. If I had to pick ONE thing to improve public schools more than anything, its PAY the fucking teachers already. Pay them WELL. We need to attract quality education professionals- I want to see shit like tenured university professors competing for jobs at public schools. There also must be performance-based compensation (NOT based on standardized tests tho) obviously I don't have all the answers, there's a few tho.

I agree with this, but I promise you that it's not just black schools dealing with the fact that our education system is in the shitter. Plenty of predominately white schools are understaffed and, moreover, staffed by the underqualified. There's a system-wide problem. My high school, in spite of being privately funded, had to make do with books that were over a decade old, some older. The French and Spanish I learned might have been up-to-date when the books were published, but if I speak to someone my age now from Mexico or Spain or France, the few bits of non-standard put into the books are totally foreign to them (I have yet to meet a native Spanish speaker who recognizes the phrase "Qué tal?").

There are definitely overprivileged school districts and, really, the very idea of school districts is insane. There are many parents of every skin color trying to fight the idea that because they can only afford to live in a given suburb, they're denied the education that is available over in the rich neighborhoods. The disproportionate distribution of wealth across racial lines exacerbates the problem, to be sure.

At the same time, though, there is something fundamentally wrong with a significant part of black culture, both urban and rural. Whereas white men overwhelmingly own businesses compared to white women, the reverse is true in the black community. Black women are the bread-winners and entrepreneurs. Some could make the crass argument that it's because they have children to support and the father isn't in the picture and, hell, there's probably too much truth in that, but there is something deeply wrong in black culture. A lot of it is certainly baggage, but I come from white heritage that carries similar baggage yet has, over the past three or four generations, risen above the mistreatment.

I don't know that the schools are the place to start, certainly not the high schools. By that point, the notion that welfare or drugs or basketball are the available roads has already been hammered in deep. I've seen the same shit happen among the white trash I grew up with, up to and including members of my own family. If the education system needs an overhaul, it should be done bottom-up, not top-down. Giving minority students privileged access to post-secondary education made a certain kind of sense on paper, but what it has ultimately done is given a pass for undereducated students to get into college where they are statistically likely to drop out, anyways. The problem is deeper and earlier than where it is being confronted.

I agree that somewhere at the heart of it, we need good teachers to want to teach. University professors have no business going near primary school, by the way, they're already children enough without associating with their emotional peers. Bigger salaries might help, but having actually taught primary education, I know that I don't have the right kind of passion for it. I might opt to teach for a few years if it paid quite well, but is the system helped by the disinterested and rapidly burned-out? I would do well in secondary or post-secondary education, but when we have people who are 18-years-old reading at a second grade level, we have to look back to the second grade teacher to figure out why instead of blaming the tenth grade literature teacher.

[firefeng]

Well, these replies have certainly been enlightening. Only about 10% of the black people I've known have resembled the effigy painted in this article, so the entire thing came across like a thinly-veiled Klan-bash.

That may have more to do with my intolerance of stupidity affecting the people with whom I socialize, though...

[pathwriter]

That may have more to do with my intolerance of stupidity affecting the people with whom I socialize, though...

Bingo. Largely disparate cultures do not mix. They might talk, but at the end of the day, they go back to their own homes.

[Vigilous]

So, here's my question:

Why is it that a bunch of nerds, fags, darkies, and social outcasts can have an open, frank, and honest discussion about race - and on an MMORPG forum no less - but the rest of the country gets by with a half-baked, water cooler drivel mocumentary hosted by a multi-ethnic grab-bag of a vagina?

[Cruzandercerberus]

Because people who are "Experts" in race relations are largely racial advocates who have no interest in open, frank, and honest discussion.

[Tetsuma]

Some things I do agree with in the OP's post, but I see it as a stereotypical writing over from personal experience. For example; my fiance's father thought I was the stereotypical black guy, but when I actually met him I proved him wrong and showed him I am doing something with my life and not just being lackadaisical over getting an education.

I grew up mainly around whites, and seemed to always be the "oreo" of the group. My fiance' (who is white) has been around black people all her life.. mostly all her friends are black or mexican girls/boys. I will admit she talks the ebonics of the language that black people have horrendously created out of conformity to be different from other people, but she still talks normally (and sometimes mumbles..) when she talks. My music and her's are much different.. I listen to a lot of Metal, rock, Thrash music and she listens to R&B/hip-hop.. I tolerate it but I still don't think it's music. My point is that blacks act the way they do I think because they don't get much attention or help from people because people see some blacks as unwilling to learn and plain lazy, so why help a race who can't help themselves?