Black In America – Part C

Okay, I am still reeling from CNN’s Black In America series.

So, I was thinking, again, they portrayed that light is right and dark is not a walk in the park. They insinuated that we, as blacks, can/could only succeed if we go to white schools, marry white, live in mostly white neighborhoods and be friends with whites. I am all for diversity, but don’t portray some of our lives as one-sided.

I am a product of public schools. My elementary school was mostly black. My junior high school was 100% black (we’ll speak on that one in a second) and my high school was mostly black. My siblings and I were raised in a middle-class, working-class black neighborhood most of our lives (except when our parents were in doctoral programs). I attended a black college for undergrad and another for one of my graduate degrees. My parents are black college graduates (undergrad). My brother is a black college graduate. My sister didn’t attend an HBCU. WHY didn’t CNN portray “success” on any of those fronts? Everything they showed as “successful” was going to majority schools, living in mostly white neighborhoods, and marrying white. To each, his own, but don’t portray black life as one-sided. WE ARE SUCCESSFUL in our own rights. My best friend went to 100% black schools from Pre-K through undergrad. She is successful in her own right. Most of my other friends graduated from HBCUs and are successful, in their own right. We all grew up in black neighborhoods. We didn’t get our houses shot up. We didn’t end up with 3, 4, 5 kids out of wedlock. We didn’t sling drugs. Where were our stories, CNN?

Back to my 100% black junior high school. The school I attended was 100% black. We slaughtered EVERYONE in the city (white, black or other) in academics, sports, arts, etc. Other junior high schools HATED competing against us because they knew they were in for a defeat. Where was that story, CNN?

My five years as an undergrad in engineering where the school I attended, at that time, was #2 in conferring blacks with engineering degrees, with the #1 school edging us by 10 people and their school was three times the size of ours. The school were I earned my master’s degree in engineering graduated more blacks in engineering that any other school in the county and had the LARGEST career fair out of ANY school (white or black) in the southeast. Where was that story, CNN?