Sjon and Furious for President!! Ok now since my candidancy has been announced please go out to the polls. Wayne you are absolutely correct in your statements on how we may not enjoy some of the freedoms that we all enjoy now in the future. As a categorized Negro, African American colored person, I must say that our educational value has always been different from the white community.
Scholarship in the ghetto is not only discouraged but looked upon as impossible. Thankfully you were able to home school your children. You could raise them up in the high ideals of faith and values. That was your right however the disturbing trend that dates back centuries for people of color is the fact that resources are miniscule for us and the working poor. Economically the masses of our people cannot compete. Among the undeducated in socities throughout history you find poverty, sickness and disease. That train is never late.
The Remnant of us who make it sometimes struggle with our individual responsible for the community. What further divides our country is the fact the working poor of this country(the middle class) buys into the system of race, class, and inequality. It's a lottery type of mentality. We find ourselves chasing our proverbial tails. While the richest 1 percent of America truly builds wealth, we dream of the opportunity that we may get there to! It is absoulutely foolish. Education in this country has become about what you can pay for rather than an endowment for all. That leads me back to my original statement. Education was only supposed to be for a certain class of people in the first place. I digress I hope all can see my point..
furious
Brother man,
My grandfather was a sharecropper. He never owned anything until after he retired....he bought a singlewide trailer and put it on my dad's place. .My father was raised picking COTTON by hand. My dad rode to town on a mule and wagon, in the 40's because they had no car. My father told stories of my grandmother sending him to the neighbors' to borrow something to eat. My grandfather took to making moonshine and almost got put away in prison. I think there was some praying going on somewhere. My grandfather then moved to a ghetto and worked in the citrus factory in Dade City, Florida. He lived right there with the black folks, ate dinner with them, a black midwife delivered one or two of his children, my uncles.
My people were always dirt poor until my dad. My dad decided early that he wanted to make something of himself. He had no college education, but got a job working in a grocery store and became a meat cutter. From there he worked to buy a small 13 acre farm. He would work hard all day...then come home and work the farm. Little by little he paid it off and bought a bigger farm. Raising cattle was his dream. He loved it. I can give you names of black people I know who did the same. What resources did my dad have? Gallons of sweat and coming home from work and from the fields with his gnarly hands bleeding. The man was a workaholic.
I sat right there in the same classroom with black boys and girls... We all had the same opportunity to learn.
My first job was pulling weeds and hoeing in a huge watermelon field...right along with the black folks.
The next job was as a stock boy in a grocery store....working right along with black folks.
My last job, before becoming self employed, was in a big warehouse with a few hundred black men and women, doing the same jobs and had quite a few black bosses. Some of these people broke away from the factory, as I did, and went on to bigger and better things.
Brother, the place where I live in the country is surrounded by hundreds of acres of beautiful land....OWNED by ...you guessed it...families of black folks. There are MANY businesses around here, owned by black people. One of my black neighbors is a physician. Her husband is a successful building contractor. Why? How did they do it?
What special "resources" are available to me that aren't to you?
How did we homeschool our kids? First, my wife quit her job 21 years ago. Initially, she would cry because she was worried that we couldn't live on my paycheck, which at the time, was less than 5 bucks an hour. When the kids started to reach school age, she bought the homeschool curriculum and started teaching. Later, she learned that she could buy their materials off the internet. I think she gets their books now for around 200 bucks a year or less. That's about all there is to that. But the teaching, grading etc. THAT takes time and work. But it's worth it.
How do you make it on one meager paycheck? By working two or three jobs and sometimes doing without a few things.
I personally know other folks who worked two or three jobs...black folks.
Living in a big city, I know, has to be a very different situation. Country and city folk always seem to see things from a very different perspective. I know of white folks who are dirt poor. Where I am, the opportunities look to be the same.
