Education and Racism

Two things are on my mind, and I am going to try to bring them together.

First, the recent post by Fruit Fly got me thinking again about college. Growing up, college was always a long-term goal instigated by my father. I am the youngest, and only male, of my siblings. I think that my poor dad may have, at one time, put a little bit of "last hope" pressure on me.

You see, both of my parents are college graduates. As were their parents. But while I was growing up, my sisters were free spirits. It was not until the last 10 years or so that they "got their (collective) acts together."

Actually, I had planned to go to a four-year college, but my "money" slipped away when my grandmother passed. She had set up a trust-fund for her grandchildren to attend higher education, but that evaporated when she died. I was stuck half-way though my local JC with nowhere to go.

While attending the JC, I took a sociology class. We were actually in-class when the OJ Simpson verdict was presented over radio. We had around 15 white kids, 5 hispanic kids and 5 black kids in the class that day. We listened to the verdict, and discussed.

If you've never been through Napa, 5 African Americans in a class of 25 is extraordinary. This is the second thought on my mind, brought to light by Reese. Reese mentions the lack of black people in the desert. I hope that she doesn't care about the score if she ever visits the Napa Valley.

Anyhow, the division of opinion was particularly interesting because it was during a sociology class. The black students started cheering, the white and hispanic students caught their collective breath and wondered who bought off the jury? Civil lawsuit aside, it still seems obvious that OJ was (is) guilty. To all (5) black students, it was obvious that he was innocent, and should be completely exonerated.

Can simple skin color so profoundly change the way that we think about things?

Was it racism that caused us (non-black students) to believe that OJ was guilty? Was it racism that caused the black students to assume that he was innocent?

I could have finished college, but I'm basically lazy. All of my friends that went to college eventually moved back to town, many of them to their parent's house. Having been on my own for at least 5 years earlier I asked myself what they were doing wrong, and why college cost so much when it could not provide real-world experience? While I was trying to find a way to subsidize just another semester, my friends were coming back and buying me beers on their parent's credit.

Again, I've always been lazy. I could have taken a 3rd job to put myself through college. But Yuck. I tell you what, I make a hell of a lot more than my college friends.

Perhaps innate intelligence is worth something, after all.

Wow, this post was a mish-mash of random posts and comments. I was not able to come to any kind of stasis. I think that I meant to discuss the importance of college, and the increasingly non-issue of racism.

But I failed on both fronts. These topics are far too big for me.