<p>@ redsox2002</p>
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<p>You “gotta admit” that black immigrants are the most educated group in America. Yes, more educated than any other group, including native-born whites, not just immigrant groups. And you have to realize that African immigrant levels of success are much, much, higher than African-American levels of success. Their incomes are higher, they hold better jobs, they and their children hold higher degrees. You’re comparing immigrants to domestics and I don’t see why. Maybe because its the only way your argument works?
Compared to other immigrants, Africans have the most (percentage wise) HS graduates, the most fluent English speakers, the most college graduates, and the most holders of advanced degrees. How’s that for making a name for themselves? Yet their average income, either family or personal, is lower than that of Asian and European immigrants. And more of them end up on public assistance. And more of them live in poverty. And fewer can find high skill occupations, despite the fact that more of them are employed. And fewer of them own homes than all immigrants, Hispanics included. How’s that for pay off for hard work?</p>
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You “see” “many.” Great evidence! It’s so not anecdotal! And “many” is such a precise and meaningful word!
Do you realize how incredibly desperate someone must be to get pregnant, to entirely change her life, just to have medicaid? My mother works in health too, administrating school based health centers. And she sees these girls, even in elementary schools. And she sees how the school system has failed them, how their parents have failed them, their communities. She sees girls about to come mothers who don’t even know how to keep track of their own menstrual cycles, who have been taught that coitus interruptus is a good method of preventing pregnancy. Yes some of them are willfully ignorant, partially, but they haven’t been educated as they should have been.</p>
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<p>And AA and Hispanics “get to go” to Harvard. Because obviously, no AA or Hispanic deserves to go to Harvard. Because obviously, they just let them in. And because obviously all the rejected Caucasians and Asians were only rejected because AAs and Hispanics took their spaces. And they only don’t get financial aid because AAs and Hispanics took theirs. I’m sure you don’t mean to sound like this, but you have to realize that you do.
Harvard has said that that as much as 60% of their black population has recent African ancestry. Same for Brown, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Duke and Berkeley. So at whom are you really mad?</p>
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Gosh that is so classic. Divvying up the racial groups into the “good” ones and the “bad” ones. I wonder if you’ve ever “complimented” an AA or Hispanic friend by saying “Oh, but you’re not like the other ones. You’re not like ‘them.’”</p>
<p>ETA: As for the FA thing, my sister’s Asian friend (born in China, permanent resident status) goes to Harvard for practically nothing. And our neighbors, who are Chinese/ Hungarian Jewish go to Harvard with FA, though one sister has more than the other. I don’t know if their brother got much aid at Stanford.</p>
<p>Also, just adding to the awareness of being black thing, I definitely agree. Part of the reason I overdress is because I don’t want anyone to see me and assume that I’m economically disadvantaged. I want people to know that my parents are married and that I was born in wedlock (not at all to offend people who were not. Two of my three siblings were not. My niece was not, and maybe 5 of my cousin’s children were not). That they are/were employed in enviable jobs (my father, 62, is retired now). I act smart because I don’t want people to assume that I’m dumb. I’m quiet and passive because I don’t want people to assume that I’m a loud aggressive black woman. I want people to know that both of my parents went to college, Cornell, GW, and Tuskegee. I want people to know that <em>both</em> of my mother’s parents had Master’s degrees, and that they didn’t do that because they were rich, that it wasn’t easy, but because they worked hard. Because my grandmother was willing to move from her home at 14 because there were no HS for little black children where she lived. That my father, who had never been anywhere, who had gone to the same school all his life, whose parents, I think, didn’t graduate HS, left his family and got one a plane for the first time at 18 to go to college. And that he inspired his sister, who got her doctorate in Psych at UCLA, to follow in his footsteps, to become salutatorian at the HS where he was val, and to go to Tuskegee too. I want people to know that I’m hardly a first generation student, that my grandmother’s grandmother, who was not only black, but also a woman in the 1800s, and who was born a slave, went to college too.
And because I’m trying to convey all of this to people, I get really, really mad when people try to explain away my intelligence, or any of these other things, by assuming I’m mixed (I’m rather light). I’ve had a teacher say to me “You’re so smart and articulate. What’s your [space where she’s trying to think of something to say that’s not incredibly offensive] background?” Legit. And she was thoroughly disappointed when I responded with the states in which my parents were born.</p>
