Most people I talk with now days don't seem to get the connection of integration and the disappearance of the black community.
Black folks don't have communities anymore,we just have neighborhoods where we are push into and exist.
Some of us don't own anything in our neighborhood except for a few folk who were lucky enough to get a mortgage,that is now under water.(Mortgage is more then the house is worth).
Before integration we had everything we needed to live and survive in this country,from school systems to supermarkets,at least in Baltimore where I grew up.
And from what I have learned about the Black Community of Pittsburgh before integration it was the envy of the Black communities in the mid-west.
So here's what I think has happen when legal segregation was ended in this country, it allowed Black folk to do some of the things White folks had always been able to do, and we went hog wild crazy!
We started to abandon the communities that served us for generations for the house in the suburbs or in the white neighborhoods.
We were offered a MasterCard and charge account at Macy's and that completed the trip to madness ville
for us.
Many of us began to think that if White folks said it was alright to do or buy we agreed and brought it also because we believed we were on the road to the American dream.
We abandoned the neighborhoods and the schools and colleges that had served our community well for the University that had been off limited to us.
Today the HBCUs that have given our community the leadership and professionals for generations are not on the radar of most black youths coming out of high school.
I have talked to many young black kids here in Pittsburgh,along with their parents and always asked them where are they planning on going to college.
Most say Pitt or some other school here in state,none seem to have a clue about the existence of the Howard,or Fisk Universities.
I'm curious as to how others feel about some of the points I have made.
Big mac
1 comment:
I don't think integration is the culprit. Integration just made what was already there in our heads visible and that's the brainwashing we all receive as Americans that White is the standard.
We are all brainwashed to believe this from birth. I think it's becoming less of an issue but during the early days of integration I think it was a very serious issue that affected most African Americans.
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