Sorry to do this, but this bears repeating, even though I posted this a few moments ago at A hungry man is an angry man; a hungry mob is an angry mob | culturekitchen:
we need more black and brown people in medicine, in nursing, in media, in relief and advocacy work. We need more French and Creole and Spanish speaking people in positions of power in the United States. We need to look at how bad immigration laws have cheated this country of the best and brightest of African Diaspora from it's universities, its businesses, it's technology, it's science.
We need to look at the fear-mongering in Haiti coupled with the average demograpics of the relief workers hitting it's ground as a prime example of the systemic racism that is so entrenched and yet so subtle in the United States culture that cannot but help seeing in starving black man or woman with hand out but machete in hand as a big black monster waiting to attack them. We could do better as a country. We could be better as people. We could be building a better multiracial, multiethnic and multilanguage future today if only, if just only, we'd be more weary and aware of the prejudices that holds us back.
Having more blacks and latinos in college cannot just be about upward mobility. Honestly, we have not had upward mobility in years what with wages being stagnant in the US for what some believe has been specific to the last 25 years. We need to see more black and brown faces who are multi-ethnic and polyglot because we need a cultural revolution. Not just in the United States, mind you, but in all of The Americas.
Education doesn't cure people of bigotry but it does minimize it; especially when your teachers, one of the most primary positions of authority in our culture, are black and brown and multilingual. We don't just need them in urban or inner city school, by the way. We need them in suburb and and rural schools. And we most certainly need them in more university departments; especially in more technology and science and research centers.
This doesn't mean though that I propose this as the only answer. Honestly, I believe it is ultimately the wrong one.
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