rjrcin Turned down for an IRS job hiring eighty people. Very insulting. No way are that many people better than I am. - February 27, 2011 add/view comments (0)

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WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY

I started noticing this reality at a much younger age than most people. It first became apparent when at my all-black elementary school, I started noticing that I was basically the only person there who was smart. I also seemed to be the only person who attempted to follow the rules. I don't know why black people, particularly young blacks in the inner-city, think that it is bad to be good, I just know that as someone who was being taught at home how to be successful, it was the worst possible environment for me to have been raised in.

It is hard to maintain a focus on success when everyone around you keeps distracting you with irrelevant stuff like rap, basketball, fighting, and certain clothes.

When I got to high school, I thought I would finally have a break from ghetto %#&@$! when I earned admission to the best school in the city. Unfortunately, many of the black kids there were just as ghetto as the ones I had left behind, didn't seem to be all that smart, and were so numerous. So I didn't get the psychological break I needed that was necessitated by being around niggaz for what seemed like 24/7. I didn't get the experience of being around people for whom "ghetto" wasn't "normal."

I still managed to earn a full college scholarship, and I thought I was on my way. Unfortunately, when I got to college, it became apparent just how much normal development I had missed out on by having to be around niggaz all the time. It probably kept me from having the type of access I needed to information that would have helped me make sure I picked the right school for me, and the right major to study, and I missed out on the social development that I would most likely have gotten had I not been mostly around ghetto kids I didn't fit in with.

So I just decided to finish my degree and everything would take care of itself. No one told me that while I was in the process of escaping the ghetto, employers had changed the rules so that everything I was working for would end up being worthless. I accomplished my goal of getting my degree, but I'm still stuck around these ghetto-%#&@$! niggaz because employers decided that now only certain degrees matter. So I put up with all that %#&@$! for all those years for what? So I could end up working at a Greyhound Station because after trying for almost 5 years I couldn't get a real job. So I could end up going to community college, which takes everyone, including ex-cons, hoping extra education will eventually get me a real job.

So it is frustrating to succeed where others not only failed, but in some cases, didn't even try, and my reward is to still be stuck around the same %#&@$! that I invested time and money into education in order to flush from my life. A good-paying job was part of my strategy to get over my past, but someone must have decided I don't deserve a good life despite my hard work.

It seems like the least likely path to success for a black American is to surround himself with other blacks. How can we improve as an entire race, so that we are no longer on the bottom of all the good categories and at the top of all the bad categories, when so many of our people don't care about school, don't care about how they act in public, think the ghetto is cool, basically just aren't trying to improve themselves? And what can be done so that people like me, who didn't want anything else but get away from these clowns, not slip through the cracks when it really matters, getting a job that pays well, after making it to adulthood without becoming a teen parent, gang member, or ex-con? If anyone deserves good things to happen in life, it's people like us.