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<p>Well I am particularly fortunate in this respect my teachers have always thought I was incredibly intelligent and encouraged me. Before and after I got accepted my teachers told me that I would get accepted even when I doubted it myself. What is odd is that I have not had a black teacher (in an academic subject) for a really long time.</p>
<p>FWIW Debate, you make me feel better about MY kids bubble. Few, if any Black kids in it, but WAY smaller than yours. They see outside of it regularly. My son loves his bi-weekly visits to the black barber shop in the next town, and is asking to go to public school after a “taste” of whats outside. I’m not completely sure what that’s about, but be knows there, “A Different World”</p>
<p>Aw c’mon. NO WAY you can get in and out of San Fran without low income (NOT especially African American ) issues being in your face. Not just the homeless, but little kids hustling for money.</p>
<p>It was a band trip so we went to the Wharf and to a upper class high school for the competition and stayed in the Hilton. They tend to try to segregate the areas we visit. The same thing happens for debate tournaments, state and nationals occur in wealthy areas with nice schools. It is only local debate tournaments that are in bad areas. Science fair is the same way, and even football. In pretty much every EC, it is always suburban kids against other suburban kids.</p>
<p>Dbate… if you have time, I think it would be good to read this book: [Amazon.com:</a> Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (9780393320787): Elijah Anderson: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Code-Street-Decency-Violence-Moral/dp/0393320782]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Code-Street-Decency-Violence-Moral/dp/0393320782)</p>
<p>maybe you can get it from the library? It is sitting on my bookshelf upstairs.</p>
<p>You can read the first chapter for free here: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/anderson-code.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/anderson-code.html</a></p>
<p>Why would I want to read about the inner city?</p>
<p>Because the majority of the population lives in cities?!? Because it can be special, diverse, educational, and fascinating… … because it might speak to you, on another level…and then there’s the FOOD! Well, not in a book, but I’m thinking in person…</p>
<p>How did you GET to these places in San Francisco? Buses, cars, trains? I still don’t get how you don’t “see” it…And DC?? when I lived there, off the tourist beat, it was like a %*$@ third world country! That was fairly east to avoid, though.</p>
<p>You don’t have any extended family that is still “caught up”. Wow…</p>
<p>BTW… who cut’s your hair? I remember the first time I realized some people got a perm to put curls IN their hair…</p>
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<p>I suppose it is impressive for a person to have a more insulate life / skewed perspective of poverty than most teenage European royalty.</p>
<p>But damn, I’ve lived in suburbia for years and I’ve never, ever encountered anybody who thought 100k was the poverty limit. Jesus H. Christ.</p>
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<p>We flew to San Fran and then took travel buses around and I never saw any poverty the entire time I was there, although we only went to certain parts of the city. When i was in DC I was with a Congressional youth thing so they tended to highlight the good parts and that is where we went. </p>
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<p>On my mom’s side no, my step-father yes, but I never considered them poor in the least. Poor seems to be a pejorative that I would never put on any members of my family. </p>
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<p>We get it cut at the black barber, to come to think of it, it is in the “ghetto” but I just didn’t really noticed (You would be surprised how many nice cars people in the ghetto have). Perhaps, i am not insular so much as inattentive.</p>
<p>Don’t flame me, but OP’s parents do not make enough money to be that insulated, ten times of that, maybe. My kids, my friends kids, are not that insulated. They have all done enough volunteer work (making those brown bag meals to pass out to homeless people in NYC and Newark) to know what it means to be poor. All of us also know you can’t get into those ivies without volunteer work. My kids know how much most people make, what it costs to own a car, apartment, travel economy air vs business or first class. OP, I don’t buy the fact you don’t know what it means to be poor. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were going to Yale with FA. There will be 50% of people having more money than you.</p>
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<p>Actually you can, the only volunteer work I did was teaching science classes at my high school over the weekend. </p>
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<p>I suppose you are trying to make a veiled comment that I am not “rich enough” to be ignorant. I don’t think I am rich, heck a few pages back I said I thought we were poor, because not only did my parents only make 120, I was also at the lower end of the wealth spectrum when it comes to my friends. You don’t have to make obviously rude comments about how people make more money than I do, I never once asserted that I was rich, but I do take offense when random people attempt to insult me by “bringing me down to my economic level” via off-handed comments.</p>
<p>How much money do you make btw, since you have the desire to insult people in this way. It is one thing to make comments in regards to people’s conception of the world but to insult me in that manner is really offensive.</p>
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<p>dbate, that’s got to be one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard a black kid say. What makes it even sadder is that I’ve heard it before. Can you imagine a white kid in this country saying they find being around so many white people, “jarring”, and that seeing whites at the DMV or in a store where they constitute the majority, made them “uncomfortable”? Honestly, ask yourself why that is. If, on the one hand, you think Black in America II is BS because black people aren’t vastly different from whites, Asians and Latinos, why do you recoil so viscerally from black folks? You don’t see any sort of cognitive disconnect there?</p>
<p>Ultimately though, I’m convinced that it is not possible for a person to feel so negatively toward people of his/her own race without it realizing damaging implications for one’s own self esteem.</p>
<p>^ I think “recoil” is a bit strong for what Dbate described.( Silvermoondock said recoiled). I don’t think being a “bit uncomfortable” is NECCESSARILY “so negative”. But there IS the dating thing so…</p>
<p>" Poor seems to be a pejorative that I would never put on any members of my family"</p>
<p>Debate; I never said “poor”. I said family “caught up” in the inner city. But now that you mention it, you felt YOU were poor, but your step-relatives weren’t?</p>
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<p>You’re kidding! Admit it, your real name is Carlton Banks, isn’t it?</p>
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<p>I think I just got really acclimated to being around white people. I feel bad about it, but it doesn’t really impact my interactions except in terms of dating.</p>
<p>Oddly enough I have always had high self esteem in academic matters and never until recently even considered race as some detriment to intelligence.</p>
<p>OP, a lot better than your parents, but my kids are a lot more aware of what’s going on. There is no way my kids would think 100,000 is poverty. They have a little bit more appreciation in what it takes to make 100,000.</p>
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<p>Whatever, save you condescension for someone else. I don’t care.</p>
<p>This kid most definitely lives in a bubble. Just be glad that you’re blessed, but being blessed is no excuse for ignorance.</p>
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<p>LMAO! I knew this kid reminded me of a TV character.</p>
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<p>Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve yet to hear of any white kid who felt “uncomfortable” being around other white folks. I’ve heard more times than I can count, white kids saying they felt “uncomfortable” being around “so many black people”, but certainly not around their own race of people.</p>
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<p>There are actually alot of black kids who feel like this, out of the black people i know the guys prefer white women and have said that they are uncomfortable around black men. The one black girl who is a friend doesn’t date black guys and said that black women don’t like her. So I think it is more common than you think.</p>
<p>I’m watching Family Matters right now btw. </p>
<p>Right at this moment Urkle is in the ghetto about to be jumped by low-income Black (and White) youths.</p>