PG County, is this for real?

[SpeedThink]

Originally Posted by Jalux

Thanks for your commentary, Enyo. These are my thoughts in response to your comments:

(1) Academic scores are what we go by, regardless if you don't think they have an appreciable relevance to intelligence. Intelligence is simply the ability to grasp new information. Your commentary conflates intelligence with knowledge, which is the understanding of subject matter. One impacts the other; that is to say, the greater your intelligence, the faster and more adept you will be at learning new concepts. Anyway, if Asian American children are excelling in school grades, that is the metric that we go by. They are retaining the knowledge required for application. This translates into the fact that as adults, Asian Americans destroy all other races in earnings, to include whites.

(2) Asians "knowing" how to game the system as you assert is merely unsubstantiated conjecture. I would venture to guess that you aren't a member of the secret Asian cabal that discusses how to take over schools all across the world, so you wouldn't really know what their unified collective thoughts are. (The preceding is obviously sarcasm-- the 'secret' of success of Asians in America is for parents to employ all resources into the cultivation of access for children, while children are indoctrinated to focus on education as a priority)

(3) I'm intrigued by your comment about Nigerian immigrants. Please share your citations that validate this.

Reading and researching while being inspired to learn is the key coupled with hard work.


As a black man with multiple baccalaureate degrees who has worked in private industry for over 20 years, I can attest to a "corporate narrative" that other co-workers who were non-black were intellectually superior. This mindset was quite pervasive to be quite honest.

Coming from a single parent household that was mired in poverty presented a challenge. However, I accepted this challenge and relegated myself to outworking everyone else. Consequently, I had a grasp of complex subjects and the eloquence and articulation to relay complex ideas exceedingly fast.

This was a threat, as I eventually realized as it was against the "corporate narrative."

Yes, it has been well documented that Asians have performed quite well on standardized tests and are attending colleges and graduate schools in record numbers. Especially on the West Coast.

Also noted are the educational attainment and successes of Nigerian and Caribbean immigrants.

Yes, it has been well documented that African American women in particular are attending colleges and graduate programs in record numbers.

The successes of all of the afore-mentioned groups does not overshadow the need for African-American male youth, in particular, to continue to succeed regardless of the prevailing thought in many sectors of not being successful or very intelligent.

[Enyo]

Originally Posted by SpeedThink

Reading and researching while being inspired to learn is the key coupled with hard work.


As a black man with multiple baccalaureate degrees who has worked in private industry for over 20 years, I can attest to a "corporate narrative" that other co-workers who were non-black were intellectually superior. This mindset was quite pervasive to be quite honest.

Coming from a single parent household that was mired in poverty presented a challenge. However, I accepted this challenge and relegated myself to outworking everyone else. Consequently, I had a grasp of complex subjects and the eloquence and articulation to relay complex ideas exceedingly fast.

This was a threat, as I eventually realized as it was against the "corporate narrative."

Yes, it has been well documented that Asians have performed quite well on standardized tests and are attending colleges and graduate schools in record numbers. Especially on the West Coast.

Also noted are the educational attainment and successes of Nigerian and Caribbean immigrants.

Yes, it has been well documented that African American women in particular are attending colleges and graduate programs in record numbers.

The successes of all of the afore-mentioned groups does not overshadow the need for African-American male youth, in particular, to continue to succeed regardless of the prevailing thought in many sectors of not being successful or very intelligent.

The push to uphold that infamous narrative is quite real. It's kind of funny because if you go to the Middle East, Asian people are associated with poorly educated servants because of all the Asian migrants that go there to be drivers, construction workers, maids, nannies, etc. Traveling, or just having awareness of other parts of the world, can really change your perspective.

Speaking of traveling, that was another thing I liked about the more posh areas of PG County. We, as black children, were encourage to travel the world - not just our region or even our own country. My sister (Oxon Hill graduate) went on a school sponsored trip to Japan. Even now, I meet people from black PG County all over the place. Shoot, I met one at work a few weeks ago here in Hawaii. We grew up 10 miles from each other.

[adelphi_sky]

Originally Posted by Enyo

Speaking of traveling, that was another thing I liked about the more posh areas of PG County. We, as black children, were encourage to travel the world - not just our region or even our own country. My sister (Oxon Hill graduate) went on a school sponsored trip to Japan. Even now, I meet people from black PG County all over the place. Shoot, I met one at work a few weeks ago here in Hawaii. We grew up 10 miles from each other.

Not just the more posh areas. I grew up in PG along the SE DC border. I have most likely been to more countries than my relatives who had more middle-class childhoods in other states. It is difficult to get my wife's brothers to even travel to DC. And they used to travel along the east coast as kids.

It just depends on the person I guess. We went to the beach every other year. I also had grandparents in PA and OH. I'm not really sure where my preference for traveling came from. But I find it therapeutic to get the hell out of the DC area and the country every year. lol

[Enyo]

Originally Posted by adelphi_sky

Not just the more posh areas. I grew up in PG along the SE DC border. I have most likely been to more countries than my relatives who had more middle-class childhoods in other states. It is difficult to get my wife's brothers to even travel to DC. And they used to travel along the east coast as kids.

In "other states" meaning outside of the DC area? Because I'm solely talking about blacks in the nicer parts of PG county.