Who Do You Trust?

When the world gives you lemons you’re supposed to make lemonade, right? Well, what if you have to ask a neighbor to borrow some sugar?

I ask this question in an effort to understand why Blacks or African Americans (or however a person of African descent in this country wants to be identified) can treat their own people in the professional world the way they do?

I was recently let go from my job of 2 plus years at a “prominent” black attorneys law firm (The Law Offices of John L. Burris) because of a personal relationship between the head attorney and the office manager. While working at this firm, it was a well-known fact that the two had been involved romantically, and the unwritten rule is “if I have to choose between her and anyone else it’s her” regardless of the issue!

With that said, I am a young black male student who is confident and quiet about how I handle my business and affairs. The only thing wrong with this is that in most black communities it seen as a weakness to be a quiet individual who does not complain. So, at the Law Offices of John L. Burris, I was seen as an outcast, which is okay with me, but most blacks don’t like that outcast role or even to be thought of as un-cool! Personally, I see this as defense mechanism against all the insecurities that we have as a people, which in return makes other races not able to deal with the “colorful” personalities that make black people seem slightly obnoxious and dim witted.

This now brings me to my main point: Why do the majority of black people see the negative as something to embrace and not something that we should distant ourselves from?

Why is it that when someone of another race says that we need to change from within, we expect to get bailed out by some “civil rights” activist but when one of our own (please see Barack Obama) says something about taking responsibility into our own hands we want to be mad. Why is it that the vast majority of blacks embrace being loud, physically dominant, or obnoxious? And trust me if you are reading this column then you most likely don’t live in a heavily black populated area or are around these types of black people. But I, on the other hand, was born and raised in Oakland, Ca and I can tell you from living in the city with the heaviest black population in the Bay Area that it is all too evident where those negative stereotypes come from! With that being said, how do we change that which comes from inside? Those very same insecurities that got me fired are the very same insecurities that have black business’s falling apart or running on color people time! What a joke that we embrace such behavior!

So in conclusion, do we as educated black people just leave our less enlightened counterparts suffer because they don’t realize the harm they do to the race as a whole? Or, do we try to educate them on these problems? I think that there should be programs in schools just for African American students to address these problems while in school and at the very least understand that we have these inbred psychological insecurities and that they come from years of enslavement and oppression. Further, every race, not just blacks, should have to take a cultural competence class to understand the African American so that we can better understand each other!