Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Link to a great post on Black in America...

I came across this post on a blog. Written by what seems to be an American black. It's confusing to use African American when I'm about to talk about Americans (naturalized) that were born and raised in Africa, or those born here but raised in Africa. I guess all are African Americans but the African is in variations or degrees so to speak.

Anyway, its a great post, read it if you can. I just wish he knew how much worse it gets when you have an accent and they ask if you learnt English in the plane. Or worse if you were rescued from a refugee camp, or something even dumber, if you can imagine it, they ask it! And about talking white, what about you speak good English? It's not broken! And did you pick up your vocabulary at college? Worse, the "you're a fast learner" because they assume you learnt all you know in the US! I don't know who's worse, the people that ask, or the people that assume they know what they don't and make dumb statements!

And within this line of thinking, was anyone hounded by colleagues after Oprah aired her show on SA. Never saw that episode but I loathe it. Everyone was looking at me with sorry eyes, asking even dumber questions. I gave them a snappy education of their lives. Told them to flourish and shun ignorance. Advised them that a half educated person having been shown the projects during a drug bust and an ensuing police chase and shooting would ask the same questions of America if they had been shown nothing else of it. Told them to make of that statement what they would. Also told them ignorance was understandable because of flawed media coverage before the internet. But for them with access to the net for at least 8 hours a day, I advised they google "Africa" and learn something. One lady told me no one had ever explained that to her as clearly as I had just done.

What was it someone once said about unlearning all teh junk you have learnt so that you have a chance of learning something real??? Tell them all I said to think about that statement and to wear the shoe if it fits!

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