My parents were activist lawyer types, my dad was a civil rights lawyer. It was a lot of Martin & Malcolm, Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor, Huey Newton, Last Poets as a kid. Black Liberation Theology though no one called it that. As I got older it was Isis Papers, Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization. My dad even got heavy into Public Enemy as an older man.

We watched Eyes on the Prize in my majority black elementary school. I grew up in a majority black county in VA with majority black teachers so I don't have a lot of the racist school incidents people are sharing here. Well not in way that would make me feel powerless.

For example, I did have a 5th grade teacher who starting talking about how slavery couldn't have been that bad because "if you had a horse who you used for work , you wouldn't beat that horse unnecessarily. you would have to take care of it".

I came home and told my parents about that convo. My dad called the superintendent of schools that night (who was black), and the teacher apologized to the whole class the next day.

I remember this pwt white kid called someone the n word once and he got his ass whupped.

I was talking to my uncle last night who grew up in segregated baton rogue and one of the things he talked about was all the folks he looked up to were black. The doctors, lawyers, teachers, home builders. His parents were able to shield him away from segregated fountains and he grew up in a very black world and didn't encounter much blatant racism. I kinda grew up like that and really didn't inherent ideas that black people were supposed to be inferior or thought of as less than.

That's how I am trying to raise my kids even though there environment is totally different.



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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"