Negro John Education

Jay Macleod’s ethnography, Ain’t No Makin It, sheds light on the institute of education in America and how the country’s capital economy both mirrors and produces inequality by creating hierarchies that make social mobility obsolete. He does this through the use of two groups of predominantly Caucasian and predominantly African American youth who reside in the same low income neighborhood and attend the same school. He soon learned that in contrast to the Hallway Hangers, the predominantly white group who for the majority believed that there was no escape from their socioeconomic background, the Brothers, the predominantly African American group do aspire to hold middle class jobs in the future that provided stable incomes and commit to long term relationships with significant others. However, in his pursuit to conclude his research on the two groups MacLeod found that with the exception of one or two, members from neither of the groups were able to climb up the social ladder and bring about change to their status. Although the two groups did share a common upbringing, they differed in race, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes and therefore their failure to achieve success cannot be seen as mutual.

The achievements for which the graduation speaker praises recent graduates from the narrator’s school differ from the narrator’ hopes for herself and her classmates in the aspect of success and achievements. The speaker praises the whites when it comes to being successful in their field of endeavor and always given the priority in many facets of life. He even gave the bragging rights for them. He made them feel the racial discrimination where whites are being favored over the blacks like them. They get all the attentions and assistance unlike the colored people who are not given the good opportunities for their future. The whites make sure that they are superior in every step of the

Throughout The Color of Water, we find a heavy emphasis on obtaining a quality education in order to secure a successful future. Despite having to deal with poverty, prejudice, and single-handedly parenting 12 children, Ruth always championed quality education. “Her motto was, ‘If it doesn’t involve your going to school…I could care less about it and my answer is no whatever it is’” (McBride 27).  However, the word “education” does not explicitly pertain to academic learning, but also covers instruction and learning outside of the scholastic environment. McBride recounts several instances where his mother, Ruth, lectures them about their educations saying things such as, “Educate yourself or you’ll be a nobody!” (92).  Ruth

In “Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education”, bell hooks writes about her experience with her family as she, a young educated black woman, first of her family, goes off to Stanford University. While her parents’ attitude towards her leaving her home to further her education was not the best, hooks used this struggle to make an educated point that while pursuing a higher education, it is important for young adults to maintain family and community values. While reading this essay, I not only agreed but also connected personally with hooks’ point about never forgetting where you come from due to my family’s immigrant background.

Education is a wonderful asset to anyone. With a good one the sky is the limit, and without one opportunity may never come knocking. In today’s society, so much emphasis is put on education. How many times have we heard the saying “if you get a good education, you’ll get a good job and make a lot of money”? Even today, my parents remind me of how much a college degree would add to my marketability. But when does it become too much? Is it possible that one could overlook the more important values in life in search to become a “learned man”? In Richard Rodriguez’s story Challenging The Traditional Classroom he examines his life as a student, and the affects his learning has towards his attitude about family and heritage.

The dominant white male of the story speaks the following statement, "Now I like the colored people, and sympathize with all this reasonable aspirations; but you and I both know, John, that in this country the Negro must remain subordinate and can never expect to be equal of white men" (373). This is a fundamental sentiment that white people in the American society during that time held on to. In this essay W.E.B DuBois shows how this black man, John, was treated in his hometown after returning home with a college education. Both blacks and whites reject his new views. However, to whites the black John represents a devaluing of the college education. If a black person can have a college degree, then having a college degree must not have value. After this reaction from society John started to think, "John Jones, you're a natural born fool" (369). This behavior from society kept the average black person stagnant, and unmotivated.

In this particular body of work, Woodson discusses many issues that arose and mistakes made (and appear to still be relevant) in the educating of people of color. One such issue and summary discussed, is the disdain the learned African American develops for his fellow less formally educated African American brother, for himself, and for life in general because “he has been estranged by a vision of ideals…he can not attain” (6). He must exist in a social body that he must not associate with socially, and yet has no alternative. The self-hate that is taught,

The Negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a Negro. His brain is not fitted for the higher forms of mental effort; his ideals, no matter how laboriously he is train and sheltered, remain hose of a clown. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner [sic] born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations a head of him.

At Tom’s school, Chicago Grammar School, the Negro children were often separated from the white children, the only exception being in smaller classes where there were only five to ten students. Tom could never understand why the two types of children were separated. When he talked to them during recess he realised that they were just normal people. They may not have had the exquisite items that Tom had but they were people - people who could afford to send their children to the prestigious school of Chicago Grammar.

Being middle to lower class is not ideal for anyone to experience. It always feels as though the government and its current state is blocking you with a wall (pun intended). I personally see Educating myself is a way to climb that wall, to break away from the standard of “your black and female you probably won’t go far in today's world”. For me, I see the cost of wanting to do something with my life. Your old friends start to look at you and think “what happened”, your family, unfortunately thinks that you are “acting white”. Well, I think that is total bull crap, but this striving to educate myself has put in a place that I don’t think that I want to be in. In the essay by Richard Rodriguez “The Achievement of Desire” talk about when he got older he realized that he had abandoned his culture to be educated and somehow fit in. He discusses Hoggart’s scholarship boy. In a few aspects I am this “scholarship boy” I tend to think that if it isn’t proven or not from a textbook that it isn’t worth learning. Rodriguez also said that he read a list of the top books in high school, but he never really understood them. Rodriguez also felt shamed by his parents because they didn’t speak English and they weren’t educated “The scholarship boy’s parents are poor and are educated as my own and as he says”He (the scholarship boy) cannot afford to admire his parents. He permits himself embarrassment at their lack of education.” (341) So in this essay i’m going to discuss why I think that I can relate the Hoggart’s the scholarship boy but also how we differ. Rodriguez’s interpretation of Hoggart’s scholarship boy is not the original idea but he took the main points and changed them to fit him. That’s why i’m more like Rodriguez’s scholarship boy than the original.

In A Case Study: Theo Wilson and Lynn Johnson, both of which had many similarities in terms of experiencing things on a daily basis, but how they viewed themselves as well as how others viewed them, their race, class, gender and sexuality played a huge significant factor in their lives during different eras in the United States of America. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Southern segregated urban communities differed from Northern segregated urban communities in a variety of ways from then to present day. Additionally, amongst the differences there was a lot that changed that changed within the work force as well as the family.

In chapter one of this book, the author narrates his story how the experience he had with a friend by the name Pineapple who she had met six years earlier while she was in a kindergarten class. While the author was discussing with Pineapple, she revealed that her class did not have a white child instead they were all black or Hispanic. I believe that public schools in America have a great purpose for the school going children and therefore, there should be no need of segregating students of color. The main purpose of the American public schools is to prepare students for higher education. However, when I was young, I believed that the purpose of public schools was to prepare the students for higher paying jobs. However, I have come to realize preparing the students was not the main goal of the public schools. Instead, the schools are meant to give the students’ knowledge which they can use in the future to further their education or to prepare for any career. I realized that when students are prepared for a workforce

Education is one of the most essential necessities of a personal life because without education, we would not have a brighter future. In two essays “Learning to Read and Write” and “A Homemade Education”, Malcolm and Douglass describe what they have gone through in order to become more successful in their pursuits in life. While Malcolm X lived part of his life in prison, he spent his time writing numerous definitions from a dictionary amongst the walls and tables. The elements of the dictionary motivated him to not only become a free man, but a well educated one at that. Douglass, who also taught himself, began his life in slavery. But after a series of attempts, he escapes from slavery and pursues into his

A person’s outlook, or perspective, is molded by not only the events they experience across a lifetime, but also the knowledge they acquire. Generally, having more knowledge leads to decision making and critical thinking skills that are beneficial to an individual and those around them. However, not everyone has the same opportunities to attain equal amounts of knowledge, or experience events that strongly influence perspective, due to racial or societal barriers. This is seen throughout the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, in which Jeannine Crucet follows the journey of a first generation, Cuban America college student and how her childhood education and cultural experiences have a large impact on her first semester away form home. This character, Lizet Ramirez, struggles to adjust to her new life at a prestigious liberal arts school in northern New York since she graduated from an underprivileged school in the slums of Miami. By use of figurative language and rhetorical devices, Lizet’s perspective slowly begins to break free from her early life experiences, as she discovers what is means to be successful while embracing her background. Throughout the narrative, Crucet utilizes anecdotes to prove that education influences an individual’s perspective in a positive way.

The film relates to the book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, where Annette Lareau believes that a family’s social class position predicts an individual school success and their ultimate life chances (Lareau, 2003, p. 29). Lareau (2003) highlights three reasons why social class matters for blue-collar workers, one is the organization of daily life, the second is language use, and the third is interactions between families and institutions (p. 11). Working-class or blue-collar workers tend to communicate poorly compared to white-collar workers. The central difference between blue-collar