The fear of the black male...

warning: little to no personal finance relevance

So as I was surfing the web this morning I noticed an article entitled:

Football wedding threatened

After clicking on the link which had this image adjacent to it:


I read the article -

then while I was listening to NPR I heard an article on how the impending home-run record challenge by Barry Bonds brings to mind the last home-run record challenge by Hank Aaron when the title owner was Babe Ruth.

Both stories happen to be more-or-less about sports but more importantly racism.

In one case, you have a black male who is star player for his team and after winning the Fiesta Bowl chose it as the perfect time to propose to his girlfriend - who just happens to be white. Now as his wedding date approaches, it appears he has been receiving so many death threats that he has hired outside security for his wedding.

In the other case, you have a Baseball legend threatening an older baseball legend's record and due to the fact that he is black receiving death threats as well.

Although the latter instance was over 20 years in the past the former instance is current and kind of shameful. If a black male achieves success it is a threat to the white male.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to try and combat the stereotype that is often spoken amongst the black community and probably spoken behind closed doors in the white (and other communities):

"Black people have bad credit, a bad attitude and rarely amount to anything"

It can be difficult though, when this ideal is subconsciously touted in the media, black comics re-iterate these ideas constantly, areas that are considered 'black' are usually lower-income & less maintained and when black people do become successful, they immediately move to the suburbs(which my parents did) so their children can get a better education, rather than trying to remain in the black community and lift everyone up.

There is also the culture within the black community of the 'crab mentality'. The idea being that if you put several crabs in a bucket you don't need a top; the crabs cannot easily escape from the bucket without the help of others, if one crab does happen to get close to escaping though, it's almost inevitable that crabs below him/her will grab a hold of them and pull them down. Thus no need to put a top on the bucket.

I've done my share of being a crab but I think those days are over, it can be disheartening though sometimes when you're reminded that racism does in fact exist.