My friend Dizzle is talking to a guy who essentially does not want to go to college. He works two minimum wage jobs, which he hates, but apparently, they are better than putting one front in front of the other to apply to colleges. This is clearly a problem for my buddy, seeing that she is a third-year medical student.
I have advised her to leave it alone, for you can't make a grown person do what they do not want to do, even if it would benefit them in the long run. But Dizzle is determined. She has done everything in her power to get this guy into undergrad, including practically applying for him.
For the most part, he seems uninterested, assuming that since people like Bill Gates did not go to college, he doesn't have to get an education to do what he wants to either. I guess that is one way of looking at it, even though I wouldn't want to chance my future.
For the most part, he seems uninterested, assuming that since people like Bill Gates did not go to college, he doesn't have to get an education to do what he wants to either. I guess that is one way of looking at it, even though I wouldn't want to chance my future.
Anywho, Dizzle has stressed herself out about this dude for long enough, but she is not the only girl I know who has tried to point a brother in the right direction...with resistance from the other end. I knew a boy in undergrad named Andrew who once said, in a nutshell, that if you wanted a Black man, his lack of drive is just something you would have to deal with. Is trying to make a Black man a better man to the point of exhaustion one of the many crosses that a Black woman has to bear? One, by the way, that you will get little to no recognition for?
I would say off hand that the answer is yes; however, this bugs me, because when I have been low on octane, it was left up to me to fill up my tank. There has never been a Black man, from a father to a boyfriend, who has ever been there to push me across the finish line. Any strength I needed to do so I needed to draw from inside myself. I feel like I was raised to have to do this.
So if I was a brought up as a Black woman to have to get my own life together without help, why were Black men not taught the same thing? And why should it fall on my lap to pick up the ball for a brother where someone else dropped it, and why should I be jumping at the chance to do so?
Now this I can not answer. All I can say is that at this point in my life, I am consumed with trying to get my own life together, but I do not feel that I am exempt from what my friend Dizzle is going through. I will probably be writing a similar blog when I am thirty and a magazine publisher about my fiance who refuses to find a job.
1 comment:
I think, generally, this goes back to the short -lived integration and the rapid disintegration of the black family. it's been my experience that when a male grows up in a matriarchy, he has less drive than his female relatives and his mate. Often, the female relatives try to make up for the absence of the father figure in the male child's life. They excuse more behavior from the male child while often holding the female child accountable for her actions. I read once that mothers love their sons and raise their daughters. If you have a group of raised daughters and loved(read spoiled) sons, the result is often the situation you described above. The woman-mate must take on the mother role in order to relate to the male. I'm almost willing to bet that the young man's father was either not present in his life or emotionally unavailable.
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