tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8677466632419988907.post3930652583050648280..comments2023-09-06T07:37:03.268-04:00Comments on The African-American Pragmatist: What Can Black Folk Really Expect From An Obama Presidency?Iam Roberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07060619313994706619noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8677466632419988907.post-4213738847262499442008-12-13T22:16:00.000-05:002008-12-13T22:16:00.000-05:00Back in the day, I dressed preppy like white kids ...Back in the day, I dressed preppy like white kids (to the minimal extent that I could afford to do it) in an attempt to be accepted by whitedom. (Maybe I just liked Alligator shirts, but why, exactly?) I knew I was going along culturally to get along!<BR/><BR/>Perhaps Black kids now don't feel such a duty or urgency to imitate whitedom in order to be accepted by whitedom. Or perhaps they've come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time; white people don't look at what Black people wear, they look at what color our skin is.<BR/><BR/>If we dress impeccably, they say we're "slick". If we dress with hoodies, they think we're gangsters, regardless of what grades we get. <BR/><BR/>And ultimately, white kids imitate whatever dress we adopt, except that they are not punished for it because, after all, they're skin is white. Look at white kids with the most ripped jeans and oldest converse sneakers at a liberal arts college, and you may be looking at the sons and daughters of the wealthiest families in the country. As soon as their first internship begins, they'll shed their ratty-ass clothes, but we Blacks will never be able to shed the skin that arouses so many whites' ideation, emotions and behavior.<BR/><BR/>I learned something when I was in college, and I taught it to my mentee who graduated from Harvard Law School recently: It doesn't matter what you wear in college, because what you wear does not contribute to your gradepoint average or your ability to get scholarships for grad school. <BR/><BR/>White people might find wearing braids "radical" and "ghettoish", but if it saves you two hours per day on hair care, and a hundred dollars per month that you can spend on books or studying in the library instead of working in food service, then wearing cornrow braids may be the most logical thing you can do for your college or graduate school education. <BR/><BR/>Any white person who can't identify with it can go . . . get his/her head examined to determine degree and self-destructiveness of their color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior, be it benign, mild, moderate or extreme.Francis Hollandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11862777385923656061noreply@blogger.com