Every time I have a conversation with somebody black about "why don't inner city blacks...." do this and that?" behind closed doors some of these people sound like the worst of republicans.
I know black people watch the same television, movies, and news casts and pick up the same stereotypes about blacks that white people do, especially stereotype loving republicans. But it still hurts to talk to black folk like this. It hurts deep down.
Apparently, it's just beyond some people to understand what it is to go to school and work at it without any signs that there's hope for your future.
There are exceptional human beings, of course, so exceptional since 5 years of age that are geniuses or simply determined to find a way to thrive even if they barely have enough to eat and dodge bullets on the way to school. Maybe that's the kind of person that will get all A's and make millions no matter what circumstances they are born in.
There are exceptional human beings, of course, so exceptional since 5 years of age that are geniuses or simply determined to find a way to thrive even if they barely have enough to eat and dodge bullets on the way to school. Maybe that's the kind of person that will get all A's and make millions no matter what circumstances they are born in.
But you shouldn't have to be that exceptional to value your own life enough to imagine what you could do with it as an adult.
Yet that's exactly what some people who have never experienced life with middle class money or better expect of the poor. It's also what poor people who were damn lucky that their hard work paid off expect of the poor that they left behind.
Well I have a dream that I started dreaming long before I ever heard of Harris Rosen. And I was watching "Oprah" when I started dreaming it with my eyes open.
She could
- refurbish the school
(I've seen huge holes in walls, pipes dripping, roofs leaking)
- pay for security to keep the computers etc, in it
- put free childcare in the neighborhood
- give all the students money for college regardless of grades
What if Oprah made the environment hopeful looking and put the hope light at the end of the tunnel with scholarships?
What would it be like if Denzel Washington copied her?
Then Danny Glover?
What if poor black people saw rich black people coming to help them in a very public and powerful way. What would that do to black hope in the black inner-city before the money even arrived?
What if this caught on in Hollywood like adopting black children? Angelina and Brad, Sandra Bullock, and Madonna might adopt a neighborhood as well.
What if billionaires outside Hollywood didn't want to be out done and they started adopting inner city neighborhoods?
Am I dreaming or does Oprah have the power to change the United States in ways a lot less trivially than she has done so far? She had more power when she had her show on a network station. But does she still have this power? Does she still have enough power to make something like this popular? Does someone else?
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