Word of Morgan

When I attended college, popular African-Americans would shun and ridicule black foreign-exchange students because of their differences. I observed this on three occasions among different groups, twice with an African student and once with a Jamaican student.

The majority of young blacks do not identify with positive role models like Barack Obama or well-spoken teachers like the African mentor pictured above. Instead, educated blacks are ostracized for being "white."

Mainstream black influences equate intelligence and white-collar success to whites. This is self-inflicted damage. While this may not be a widespread problem, it’s a crippling association and seems to be worsening.

Dangerous Role Models

A new thug culture has risen and snatched the coat tails of important facets within the black community, hampering the possibilities of a future colorblind society. There is nothing cool or special about acting like an uneducated dip shit. Early humans migrated from Africa. Technically, we’re all African-Americans. Urban youth (white kids included) are influenced by media, especially MTV. Modern-day black heroes are drug dealers, pimps, rappers who masquerade as gangsters, scammers, players, and gun-toting professional athletes. People need to expose and distance themselves from the thug culture.

White girls tend to idolize equally unfavorable role models such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, and Hannah Montana. Smart white kids are harassed as well but here’s the big difference, the label is ‘geek’ or ‘nerd.’ Geeks and nerds can cluster together and even develop their own subculture. Outcast black geeks are being excluded from their own racial identity, that’s dangerous.

White on Black Racism in America

Although blacks living in the inner-cities seem more defensive, most inner-city whites aren’t racists. People are so accustomed to living together, black people don’t really need to worry about hate crimes in the city. Inner-city white kids even try to emulate the black thug culture. The white racists involved in hate crime and discrimination tend to belong to organized hate groups and live in rural areas. It’s no surprise that most rural racists are ignorant.

Why are Blacks so Defensive in the City?

A group of people who suffer together share an extremely high sense of camaraderie because their shared humanity becomes so apparent during the struggle.

 Slavery and segregation have left an open wound in our society and people are still uneasy. Blacks feel opressed. Whites feel ashamed. There can be no closure or fair retribution because too much time has passed.

Here is a real life example of the defensive attitude. My fiance’s uncle stopped at a gas station after church to buy fountain drinks for his family. Two young black men stood in line behind him, paid together, and exited after him. He held the door, turned, and said, "There you go boys." One responded with, "We’re not your boys, cracker ass motherfucker!" They proceeded to punch him around the parking and he didn’t even fight back.

Here’s another. One of our friends traveled to Georgia for a vacation. She entered a convenience store and was shoved to the floor by a black man who said, "Your place is at the end of the line, white bitch."

Personally, my black friends have been much better to me than most of my white friends. However, I have been treated to distrustful glares and wary behavior in the city.

Edgy comedians, emerging media technology, and communication have dissolved some barriers. The new thug culture is rebuilding those barriers for our future generations and we need to go on the offensive to stop it.

Compassion and Hate

True hate seldom exists. We mask what we fear and fear the unknown. Hate is ignorance of the unknown, a reaction of self-preservation. People are afraid of being hurt, therefore, hate is a barrier, not an emotion. Hate is shallow and, introspectively, fails to take all sides, behavioral causes, and perceptions into account.

When people finally regard others as equal, they will know that we each share very personal and very universal elements of life (development from childhood, experience of pain, heartache, hunger, loneliness, excitement, pride, embarrassment, and defeat).

Understanding the universality of our own humanity develops compassion for others while providing a lens to see through the intimidating masks of others.

Referencing differing groups or individuals with a name outside your own it is an attempt to demonize them into something insignificant and subhuman, they are no longer thought of as people. When regard for humanity has been wiped away and replaced with something negative, it becomes easier to justify their extermination.

Targets of hate crime are pre-associated with a particular nation, group, race, gender, sexual preference, ability level, or generalized hate word. For instance, the biggest gay bashers commit acts of violence against their target. Why? Because they refuse to identify with the gay man. He is never thought of as human. Instead, he is a faggot, queer, etc.

A similar mental process takes place when we swear at people in traffic or flame on the net. People displace or mask the humanity of another before attacking. This is the face of hate.

Solutions

     1. Reject the thug culture. Organize and communicate with other groups. Boycott MTV and their sponsors, protest, or write to elected officials.

     2. Educate people around you about the prejudice and stereotyping on all sides. Think for yourself. Don’t be a follower. Make a stand when another person engages in racism or group discrimination.

     3. Create a new black geek subculture that makes it cool to be a geek. It should be free from any derogatory racial associations.

Technorati Tags: word of morgan, wom, neo-utopian philosophy, new, Utopian, philosophy, color blind, American, African, Jamaican, culture, racism, white, black, urban, debate, issue, political, problem, slavery, prejudice, discrimination, stereotype, reverse racism, society, association, fear, violence, teen, youth, gangs, group thought, follower, celebrities, MTV, Nazi, skin head, white power, movement, Aryan, Black Panthers

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Multiple choice exams are real time-savers for teachers and provide a convenient way to cram and cover more information within a limited time-frame. Students can assess the choices and guesstimate the best answer. Sometimes the point value of a question is split between several answers. Obviously, multiple-choice tests (MCT) have practical uses but there are important consequences for over-use that educators should be aware of.

Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, school systems and universities over-use the benefits of MCT to the detriment of their students. Critical thought and creativity should be paramount, not artificial deadlines and Scantron score requirements. Young students are being cheated out of their potential and collegiate students aren’t being prepared to face real-world problems.

In order to understand critical thought, people need to know the difference between wisdom and intelligence.

1) Wisdom is accumulated knowledge.

2) Intelligence is inherit cognitive ability (not to be confused with an I.Q. test result).

3) Critical thought is the ability to piece together limited amounts of information from various streams of information to form creative solutions. It’s based on intelligence. In other words, you either have it or you don’t.

Example

A patient develops a rare illness. The physician is a specialist of neurology AND immunology. The physician is unable to properly diagnose the patient because the illness involved both of his specialties. He was only able to think of each system, or stream of information, independently. His education consisted of nothing but monkey-memorization thanks to "cram and barf" Scantron tests.

Real Issue

Social science majors can rely on MCT more heavily because careers in this field don’t require critical thought. Lives aren’t at stake. The innovators and critical thinkers will naturally rise to the top in advancing their areas.

In medical and emergency service programs, critical knowledge is gained from a solid base of bottom tier classes. Often, students will cover an entire body system in one section. The MCT system allows students to completely fail one section of the class, or use it as a drop grade, and still pass through the course. If the student has problems grasping a particular section, this trend is repeated through several courses and you end up with a dangerous health professional.

Solution

Questions shouldn’t appear straight from the text book or study sheet. Student should have to deal with critical thinking questions that revolve around the section information and provide an answer that begins with the following two words, "I think."

Schools could remove educational benchmarks and deadlines. Core classes are lengthened to include a healthy reflection period, Q&A sessions, brainstorming, essays, projects, and real-life applications.

Life-dependent services should be completely restructured in education with a ratio of around 80/20 short answer, practical, or essay questions to MCT questions.

I choose all of the above.

If you would like to help develop creative solutions in a collective brainstorm, please join me in the Utopian Community where we can work together with other members to help create a better tomorrow for everyone.

Technorati Tags: word of morgan, harold morgan, neo-utopian philosophy, utopian, philosophy, critical thought, thinking, intelligence, IQ, wisdom, education, school, university, college, medical, physician, nurse

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!