Dr. Boyce: No One is Going to Feel Sorry for You About Racism
This is a note to parents, adults and anyone who cares anything about the future of the black community: We’ve got to teach our kids how to get out there and hustle. What I mean is that in this world, racism is going to always be an obstacle, but it can’t slow you down if you are a determined human being. Also, we live in a dog-eat-dog world, where people are not going to feel sorry for you when you don’t get what you want.
Most of us endure various forms of discrimination in the workplace. We deal with people who don’t want to see us succeed and who are unwilling to give us opportunities. But the fact is that we must still encourage ourselves and one another to push our kids to be the best that they can be. If you are strong, focused and know how to go out there and get your own, then you don’t have to wait, hope and pray that someone else gives you an opportunity. Real opportunities MUST BE TAKEN.
So, the point is simple: Laziness should have no place in your household. I recommend that you let your kids know that people who don’t work do not deserve the benefits of hard work. The same energy we put into exceling at basketball and football in the Pee Wee Leagues must translate into an equally ambitious desire to excel in Math, Science and all educational endeavors. The same way that little Indian or Asian kid wins the national spelling bee because his parents had him learning three languages by the age of five, we should also be pushing our kids in an equally fanatical way.
To the victors go the spoils, and we must train our kids to be eerily competitive.
The video below makes my point:
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AMEN!!! Now when i said this same exact thing 20 years ago, people was saying i had a bad attitude and this mentality would get me into nothing but trouble. but you know what is funny, those same people cant believe that now, i have played pro basketball not just in the usa, but in 6 foreign countries, modeled in magazines, been in 2 movies and had different kind of jobs when people did not want to give me a chance cause i am black and i was better than the next person..
But this thought is not a new one, Dr. B.; it’s as old as the African is on these shores! The idea of freedom “by any means necessary” leaves little room for lazy people; yet it creates its on set of socio-economic problems. They include how “the hustle” gets put in to everyday practice and, in turn, how the “spoils” of victory are passed on to the next generation of black folk.
Dr. Boyce
It’s about time and I hope you keep emphazing that education is the key. Basketball, football etc., have a role in our children’s lives, but the odds that your child will become an NBA or NFl star is very remote. Helping your child strive to be the best student in his or her’s classroom should be your goal as a parent. Jewish, Asian parents get it…EDUCATION is the answer.
Can I get a woot woot?! Finally, somebody needed to write an article that dealt with this.
With $913 billion in buying power we would not have to look very long for opportunities if we spent that money among ourselves instead of immediately handing it over to people with utter disdain for us. We throw our money away buying trinkets and bullshit. It is like nails on a chalk board when I hear rappers talking about gucci and versace…..smdh ….crystal or whatever that p**s is. with spending power equal to the wealth of the 16th richest country on earth we could ensure we were prosperous and protected from the treachery of racist whites. But no….
Glad to hear that somebody else of stature is recognizing this problem in the Black community besides Dr. Bill Cosby! Black youth are going to have to learn to read and write their way out of poverty as well as around the adverse effects of racial discrimination.
We also need to stop getting pregnant out of wedlock and marry first so that our children can have two-heterosexual-parent homes! It is shameful that almost 80% of our Black children are b*****d kids! These are recipies for disaster that too many of our so-called leaders perpetuate by failing to discourage uneducated, single-mother homes. How many of our Black churches have more weddings than funerals? How many church leaders and
church members are “shacking”? It’s deplorable!
Nobody is going to “give” our children jobs! A job means that
you are helping somebody else make money and build his
business. And if one cannot show that he can help produce
profits or benefits and reduce or eliminate losses in somebody
else’s business or organization, then he will not get a job!
I advise every Black who seeks employment to read Black author Kevin Smith’s book, Paychecks or Profits. I also advise all Blacks to spend money with our own people, like the Asians, the Latinos, and the Whites do. Their own people can get jobs in their community. We have hardly any businesses or jobs in our own communities. We are the only ethnic group in America that
chases after others to take our money so that they can provide
jobs for others.
Let us assess why it is that we Blacks remain on the first rung of the economic ladder, without continuing to blame the White man for all of our problems. HE AIN’T GON’ DO NOTHIN’ ABOUT IT! So, why continue to spend generations talking and conferencing about what the White man did and still does? WE have to do
something about the problems that he created for us! Because if WE don’t do something about it ourselves, nothing will EVER get done!
Yes, the President is right to make an executive order to try to elevate education for Black youth. He is wise enough to see how to mitigate the disparities. It is and always has been EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION!
JD, I agree with much of what you’ve said here. However, bill cosby and others like him are not in a position to speak nor should their opinions be held up as examples. The truth is much of the condition of our people in the cities of this country can in part be traced to cosby and other black bourgeoisie who after the struggle in the 60′s gave them new avenues to live and mingle with whites abandoned our neighborhoods leaving behind the poor and uneducated . Instead of remaining and helping to build our communities up…instead of using their education to start and expand black businesses and erect independent schools THEY accepted jobs working for yt building his wealth and buying homes to live near him. Now yt is leaving these bourgeois blacks and returning to multi-million dollar brownstones and apartments in the hoods they so desperately abandoned. You cannot be taken seriously if your critique only points the finger at poor black people while southwesterly forgetting the there are three pointing back at you.
While I support pushing our children to excel academically, we must also teach them their civil and human rights and how to fight against discrimination.
Hard work is as fundamental to our way of life since the beginning of time. Glad there are people who believe like Dr. Bill Cosby. Racism is here to stay, its not going anywhere, its embedded in our cultural society and its synonymous with economic. Education, hard work, faith, community cohesion and love of self, to name a few, are the only weapons to fight racism.
Personal responsibility should be part of this discussion.
No proud ethnic group wants” sorry”. All people who have been victims of crimes(thru racism) want and is rightfully entitled to retribution/reparations.The Jews got theirs/The Native Americans got theirs/The Japanese got theirs/.Don’t count welfare/food stamps/ Set a sides,because the majority who gets them are white Americans.It has been calculated that America owes African Americans from “free-labor “from the 18th century to the 20th over 5 trillion dollars(give or take or a billion).The aMOUNT DON’T TAKE IN ACCOUNTS OF MURDER/RAPE ,ROBBERY eTC. hOW LONG SAID THE GOOD/GREAT Dr.MLK,!
@teri you can talk all that mess you want, at the end of the day the black man must get educated and compete!!!!!.and teach your girls if a man does not have a plan for his own life ,he cannot have one for you and him outside the bedroom.
I agree with you whole heartedly!!!! Why do I have to be bourgeoisie, because I became educated and moved to a better neighborhood, and decided to be a diverse individual???? Why do I and others have to apologize for my or our own success??? That is the problem with blacks now. We think that when one person makes it, we are supposed to give handouts to everyone. I’ma tell you what my God mother told me, people are screaming blacks don’t build their own neighborhoods and independent schools, once you get rich, come give it to the poor people who have nothing, well, they have nothing because they did not make the right decisions. We have choices and they made the wrong ones. We need to start doing for ourselves instead of looking for others to do for us. My nana always said when people see you doing for yourself, then they will come and help you. Your skin folk are not your kin fol.
You don’t “have to be” but you are. Many many other ethnic minorities don’t move away from their own people once they “make it”. Koreans don’t. Orthodox Jews don’t. Chinese don’t…..but you do. Why? Who said anything about you, “once you get rich giving it to poor people”??? You see its this kind of selfishness coupled with a deep self hatred that combine to create the problems we have as a people. Smh its not about you giving your “riches” to your poor brothers and sisters it is about you realizing that your riches don’t make you white nor do they make white people hate you any less. So recognize that ultimately there is no “making it” without a collective sense of us as a people making it. We understood this in the 60′s and in prior decades…that is how we united to confront and defeat legal racism. It is how we built thriving communities….wealthy communities..not just economically but culturally. Communities like Rosewood, Fl..Tulsa, Ok, Harken, Ny. as I said the “ghettos” the black bourgeoisie ran away from are the “in place” to live now …for whites. Suburbia is a social flop. They are filling the void left by the departure of self loathing black bourgeoisie and turning these neighborhoods into meccas for other educated and well to do whites…gentrification. so know that while there was always poverty in our neighborhoods when we were together but not a poverty of our sense of US as a people united with a common destiny. The poverty and violence, miseducation and backwardness that exists in our communities is a direct result of the despicable hatred of your own people and a belief that “makin it” means living around and giving your intellectual capital to white people…who to this day still detest you. Our destinies are tied whether we believe it or not. Bourgeois European Jews made a similar mistake. Surrounded by people that had historically hated them they allowed their success to blur their ties to other Jews to loose sight of their need to be united in such a hostile environment..even if that hostility had taken a less overt form. The germans taught them well the folly of their thinking. It is a lesson they have decided they will never forget. I hope that it will not take a similar calamity for us to learn and remember who we are and what it took for us to survive. Indeed this does make sense to “educated” people.
“mess”? I assure you what I say is not mess. Education is vital but we must define “education”. you sitting in a school run by white people being taught from a curriculum created by white people….is that education??? Why do we not have our own schools? Why do we not develop curriculum that teaches us those things we need to know to elevate us mentally, spiritually and physically so that we can “compete”. Surely we haver better sense then to think that those with whom you must compete would prepare YOU to compete against them. How have we become so foolish and silly?
RACISM IS NOT JUST A THOUGHT ITS A CRIME AGAINST MANY PEOPLE AND THAT WILL SLOW ANYONE DOWN IF THEY SURVIVE IT. HOW CAN YOU SAY WHAT YOU SAID? RACISM IS MURDER, ATTEMPTED MURDER, RAPE, ROBERY, THEFT, ILLEGAL IMPRISONMENT AND ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC DOUGLAS K. STEWARD IN WASHINGTON DC FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR ALL NOT JUST SOME!!! 2024877564
I agree. If blacks keep being advocates of reverse racism, then this will only make things worse. I do not advocate racism in any way or form.
Stunned, yes, that may be the word to describe the consistent response to almost anything worthy of debate. If one listens they will hear a world full of critics about what is wrong with the world. We need this or we need that. My one question, what are you doing about what you think we need? If there’s a problem with education, fix it. If there’s a problem with not enough jobs, create one. I’m not sure but I think we can do it, what do you think?
Thank you ,Dr. Boyce, for this article. As US blacks compete in a global economy, we are competing with people from Mexico, India, and China who haven’t grown up with our American narrative.