But Hey, What Do I Know??

As evidenced by the sports obsession, black academics suffer greatly. It does not matter how good a teacher is if the parent has not cultivated an atmosphere for learning and it does not matter how substandard a teacher is if a child wants to learn. Depending on which report you access, blacks nationwide have a dismal 51 percent or 68 percent high-school graduation rate. So we will go with the 68 percent figure. Even at that rate, the only group that mirrors that low level of achievement are Native Americans. If one understands who the real Native Americans truly were, then this should be a disturbing number to look at. Hispanics are next at 76 percent. Whites are at 85 percent, and Asians are at 93 percent. Guess which culture most of your doctors and engineers are coming from? As blacks continue to complain about the lack in education, it is not a lack of resources that they should be complaining about. The thing that is lacking is the initiative on behalf of the child, his coach, and the parents. In 1902, Rev. W. M. Alexander said this: "A large percentage, if not a majority of colored children, are born and grow to the age of man and womanhood in illiterate darkness because their parents have no conceptions of the blessings of education." We seem to be happy giving our dollars to other cultures but not our own. And when a black business fails, we cry racism or predatory lending, and in some cases that has been a factor. But how can we cry racism when a business fails when we will not even support it with our dollars? Only 2 percent of the one-trillion-plus dollars in black America gets spent in black communities or businesses nationwide. We have three businesses that thrive that are black-owned in the black community: the church, the beauty shop, and the barber shop. We are the biggest employers in our communities; the only problem is we are not employing ourselves. We are employing other groups, which hire their own people, and at the end of the day they take all of the dollars we pumped into their establishment that day into their homes, bank accounts, and communities. This increases our unemployment, and they send their children to private schools and universities and they take nice family vacations every year. All of this is done at the philanthropy of black folks.