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That sounds like a good idea. In the mostly black charter school where I taught, they did learn their culture and I hope some of those kids ended up doing well in their lives. I couldn't understand why they couldn't learn the mainstream culture but they just couldn't and were not interested.
It could be that they have to learn their own culture first. Find out who THEY are and be proud of themselves. I, being white, couldn't teach them that. The black teachers could and did.
I don't know what the susu/esusu way of saving money is but things like that are probably key to getting them to pay attention and become involved and interested. A lot of them just seem to tune out anything that is mainstream, probably due to anger and past hurt.
This is exactly it. Mainstream culture both is and is not theirs. Most whites can, for example, look at their surnames as a reflection of part of their heritage. What African-American can do that? Can they tell you anything about their particular ethnic origins? How many are interested due to skewed portrayal of Africa? So many learn their history from American history books which are terrible in giving them information. The younger generation needs proper perspective and purpose.
As a child of immigrants, there was not one thing an American history book could tell me about my personal history. My parents taught me everything. My personal history...and the history of African-Americans too. Required reading were books like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe or The Black Jacobins by C.L.R James, while movies were films like Sugar Cane Alley. People have start viewing the regular schools as inadequate and seeing it valuable to move beyond them. It seems there is still plenty anger and past hurt, and that can be seen in the behavior of the youth. But that's just my humble opinion that is sort of from the outside in anyway.
I don't think that would help.
What does learning about culture have to do with the here and now?
Learning about Africa,well,they aren't African.
I say teach the trades. Teach them according to ability.
But that won't work either. Most kids look up to basketball players and rappers.
I heard a 29 year old man say that he wants to be a rapper. He still wants to be a rapper at 29?
Geez.
Maybe show the postives of marriage?
Teach them how to deal with racism,I think,would be a great one.
Lots of people in general don't know how to deal with it. You better believe these men will encounter it.
They are African descendants. Their history does not start with slavery in the U.S. Their ancestors came from somewhere. Teach them past through present culture so that they have a more complete view. That way, instead of lashing out when faced with racism, they can hold their heads high knowing who they are. They should be able to laugh in someone's face because they so proud.
I wish it were possible through DNA or other means, for them to trace themselves back to their African roots and find out who they REALLY are. I remember that tv program, Roots, where they actually did that, not with DNA, but somehow they got back and learned who they came from.
When I think of some poor kid, standing near a beach somewhere in West Africa, and a group of men just comes up and takes him, never to see his parents or his home again, I can't even imagine how heart wrenching that would be. To have the parents and the rest of the family never even know what happened to their child.
Or what about a man, out hunting or just going for a walk and being stolen away, never to be heard from again.
All of us, even white people, had ancestors who were unjustly killed or who suffered terribly, whether it was for religion or just by invaders who wanted power over them, but to just be stolen, in such large numbers and then forever mistreated is a horrific outrage.
Back when I was in school the Jewish kids were taken out of school one day a week for an afternoon to learn about their heritage. If only something like this could be done for the black kids. Of course the Jewish parents had the money to pay for this extra education--a town can't afford to pay for it.
But something after school? Maybe. The only thing is, they should be taught positive enrichment, not negative. I saw some negative hate teaching that I did not agree with. How to hate the white people sort of thing. That does absolutely no good at all and it is ignorant and hurtful to teach that. Don't teach hate, teach understanding. Understanding of who you are and where you came from, pride in who you are. Then mix it in with the mainstream culture (somehow) so that they can see how they fit in and how they CAN fit in. Not how to hate people and never get anywhere because of it.
I'm white but would it do me any good to study my ancestry and find out that someone had their head chopped off or spent their life in a dungeon because they didn't agree with some king back in the 1700s? That the house some of them lived in was burned to the ground, babies were carried away, and the family was entirely wiped out? It might do me some good to know it and to know where I fit in, but better would be to understand history and why these things happened and that you shouldn't carry anger on about it. What happened, happened but it's done. Nothing can change it. Anger and hate will not change what happened but we can honor those poor ancestors by going forward and making things better so that their lives will not have been in vain.
They are African descendants. Their history does not start with slavery in the U.S. Their ancestors came from somewhere. Teach them past through present culture so that they have a more complete view. That way, instead of lashing out when faced with racism, they can hold their heads high knowing who they are. They should be able to laugh in someone's face because they so proud.
Yes, proud. Pride and then work through the anger and bitterness (which are totally understandable) toward achieving unity with the mainstream culture. A unity where they know who they are and at the same time they are one with the American culture. (The normal culture, not some of the crazy stuff you see on CD but one with the normal American people. Knowing that there are some who are whacko and know to expect that and how deal with it. I, as a white person, am at a loss as to how to deal with the whackos.)
In following the idea of what the Jewish people in my town did, they had been torn apart and the attempt was to kill off their entire population, to destroy all of them. The extra education must have helped them to relearn their culture and feel pride in who they are. Most of them seem to have been able to overcome it but of course, in their case, there was something to go back to. They had a deep and long heritage and it was well respected and it was advanced enough that someone would want to return to it.
For a black American to relate to an African tribe, that's quite a leap. They can't go back to that. But there must be good lessons to be learned from how those people lived. That's something I don't know about except they must have been strong and they could create beautiful things. I guess that must be a really hard part of it. It's like the Native Americans--their way of life was destroyed but what of their culture would they revert to? Making pottery? Shooting buffalo? Maybe their beautiful spiritual life? It's a little bit like being lost.
It might be good if, instead of just throwing money at schools, money could be put toward special learning for the black kids to give them back their pride and also to integrate them into mainstream society without anger and bitterness. If a large part of the problem is the segregation era, then maybe some psychological knowledge of why some white people were so cruel. I never saw segregation. I lived in the north where I know there must have been segregation but I only heard about black people not being able to drink from the same water fountain by watching tv. I had black kids in my classes in school and they were just kids to me.
It's a sad thing when so much life is being wasted. The women growing up thinking their men are worthless and the men thinking they ARE worthless and so the become worthless. Too good to waste.
I’m not just making this up. Seventy-three percent of black children are born out of wedlock. WAIT.
OH MY GEEZUS AND WHAT THE CUSS!! EIGHTY PERCENT OF BLACK CHILDREN ARE BORN OUT-OF-WEDLOCK!! This is according to a story in USA Today, dated April 11, 2012. Take a gander at the stark differences, and YOU tell ME which group is faring better educationally and economically:
"About 80% of first children born to black women were outside of marriage; 18% of these women were cohabiting. Among Hispanics, 53% of first children were born outside of marriage, and 30% of the women were cohabiting. Among white women, 34% of first children were born outside of marriage, 20% to cohabiters. Among Asians, 13% of first children were born outside of marriage; 7% of women were cohabiting."
Compare that with, oh ... ANYONE else, and you see we lead the pack. (After No Wedding No Womb, you’d have to be living inside a crevice and a stone not to know my take on this. Getting pregnant doesn’t “just happen” and no man’s penis trips and falls into a woman’s vagina.)
Where’s the black church on this issue? No outrage? Oh. They’re too busy co-signing the beating and choking of 15 year-old girls.
I’m going to get a little personal here. A month before my wedding, The Hubster and I were ... uh ... ”coloring,” and I said “Hey, why not let it slide with the condoms? We’re getting married in 27 days.” He flat out told me “No. I won’t risk it. You’ve already proven your fertility with Maxi Me, and I want to be sure that ALL my kids are born after your ring is on.” Welp; guess he told me. It was a good thing, too, because my husband can just blow in my ear and I get knocked up.
Because I know the parents of the groom, I know that they were just a teenie, tiny, eensie, weensie bit nervous about having a black daughter-in-law, but you know what helped a lot? Them knowing our family, and seeing that we were just like everyone else, except I’m chocolate and my husband is vanilla. His parents were also willing to grow and learn, and even bought a copy of SWIRLING: How to Date, Mate and Relate, Mixing Race, Culture and Creed so they could better understand the bride’s cultural experiences. Bottom line though, she was pregnant, and they were going to support their son legitimizing his child.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of the opposite going on in the black community, with black mothers front and center petting and protecting their sons, telling them they better not marry that tramp, because the baby might not even be theirs, blah blah blah. But in their defense, most of those mothers got pregnant without being married, so telling their sons not to marry women with whom they have impregnated is as natural as a puppy piddling on your Persian rug. I wonder though…might this resistance be only because marriage then children is so foreign, or something else, like jealously toward the girl, because the son deems her worthy of marriage while the mother didn’t have such an experience?
But the fact is, 50% of ALL children born in the US are born out of wedlock. That percentage may be somewhat higher among some groups than others for a variety of reasons, but it isn't like black people are swimming against the broader societal current. They are swimming very much with it.
why do you care, if you aren't black, which you probably not, it doesn't effect you..and your link claims all races have raising rates of births outside of marriage
Well, if there weren't massive societal consequences, then it wouldn't be anyone's business but the people having the children. However, the costs are huge in terms of disproportionate use of welfare, Medicaid, etc. Study after study shows that children in a single-parent household are much more likely to experience poverty, poor education, emotional problems, criminal records, etc. The list just goes on an on, and no one really disputes these findings. Yet when advocates in the African American community wonder about their overall lack of economic progress, they never seem to turn their attention to this issue, the elephant in the room.
In other words, single parenting perpetuates social ills. We as taxpayers pay enormous sums of money for the vast web of social programs designed to prop up people -- black and white and latino -- who can't seem to figure out simple family planning. And, to be honest with you, it annoys the hell out of me. It never occurred to me that I would have kids outside of my marriage. Yet we're making this into a societal norm.
Frankly no community values anything anymore. I agree with the posters in defense of the fine African Americans of this world. Many posters on here are meat and potatoes eating, Fox news watching wackjobs!
But the fact is, 50% of ALL children born in the US are born out of wedlock. That percentage may be somewhat higher among some groups than others for a variety of reasons, but it isn't like black people are swimming against the broader societal current. They are swimming very much with it.
It seems to be a problem in the "Western"/Westernized world in general.
The highest rates of nonmarital childbearing occur in Latin America (55–74 percent). The only other countries to share these high rates are South Africa (59 percent) and Sweden (55 percent). The range within Europe is huge: from 18 percent (Italy) to 55 percent (Sweden). Those in North America and Oceania are also high and rising, though New Zealand (47 percent) and the United States (41 percent) stand out, with more than four out of ten births outside of marriage in these two countries
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