Gabriel on being elitist

First and foremost, I would like to thank Sen. Hillary R. Clinton for making this new term possible for everyone’s enjoyment. I must say that it is a great leap forward from the terms that I am used to hearing about Blacks on television. Every positive term that I hear about Blacks pertains to the athletic world. Blacks with ‘mad hops’ are called freaks of nature, Black athletes that are strong are called workhorses, or beasts, Blacks that are swift, agile and fast are compared to deer. Basically, even compliments for prosperous Blacks are demeaning and seek to rob Blacks of their humanity by comparing them to things that are not human in the least. With that being said, I will explain my definition of this new ‘elitist’ term being thrown around from Hillary supporters to those diehard Fox News (if you can call it that) fans.

To those who haven’t realized it yet, when Sen. Clinton (and others like Ralph Nader, Sen. McCain) tried to call out Sen. Obama by saying he was elitist, she (and they) just meant that he is a smart, uppity, too big for his britches n*gger. For those who wish to disagree with me, I look to the actual old school word elitist. Webster (the dictionary…not Immanuel Lewis) defines elitism as ‘leadership or rule by an elite’. Webster’s defines elite as ‘the socially superior part of society’ and ‘a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence’. Hmmm, in laymen’s terms those definitions sound like rich, White people. Hmmm…isn’t Hilary not only White, but also rich? By golly…she is! One could ask why she chose to use that term to try and call out Sen. Obama. The answer is simple. She wasn’t going for the old school term; she was going for the new term. Sen. Obama made a statement that many people know to be true. He called them out on their safety blanket of guns and religion. The statement attacked one of her strongest fan bases. So because they were so wounded from these hurtful and ‘untrue’ words, so decides to call him out:

Head of Campaign Office in Kentucky: Let’s call him a n*gger. That’ll show that spear-chucker.
Clinton: No…we can’t do that. Even though all he’s only some random mixed guy who happened to pick up a book before he picked up a basketball, all billion (slightly overestimated) of my supporters in the Congressional Black Caucus and all the old Black people like Bob Johnson will turn their backs on me and my elitist ways.
Head of Campaign Office in Kentucky: That’s it! We can call him elitist. We can hide the fact that you’re the wife of a former two term president who sent NAFTA into effect by calling him someone who doesn’t relate to the poor and working class, even though you make millions of dollars a year and he just got through paying off his college loans.
Clinton: I don’t know…
Head of Campaign Office in Kentucky: Come on…he’s no different than any other n*gger. He just happens to have his college education and a law degree from Harvard. We used to call them dumb n*ggers. But with more and more of them going to college and taking our majors (random liberal arts degrees that will do nothing for anyone who doesn’t go to Law school or get their PhD), we can call them elitists when they develop or learn new ideologies and philosophies that help better their situations! That way it won’t be cool for those porch monkeys to learn!
Clinton: Hmmm…that sounds a bit Viacomish to be…but sure, what the heck!

NOTE: IT MOST LIKELY DID NOT HAPPEN THIS WAY…BUT YOU GET THE IDEA.

But yeah, being an elitist is cool. One can still represent their intellect, class consciousness, Blackness and not have to resort to that pesky n-word that the Black Vatican buried a year or so ago.

My name is Gabriel…and I am an elitist.

Gabriel on Education

Education is one of the most vital things that a person can possess. However the education in the United States is severely lacking in relation to other developed (oppressive) nations in the world. Yes kids don’t know basic math and science, but they also don’t know basic history…that is relevant to them. This might lie with the children, or it might lie elsewhere (like the lack and poor quality of educators in the United States). I will use myself as evidence.

All through-out my academic life (until college) I have been a reasonably smart person. Almost all of my standardized test scores have been in at least the 85^Th percentile. Until I got to high school and thought it was cool to do nothing (biggest mistake of my life) and be dumb I had pretty good grades. In fact, despite the fact that my high school GPA sucked so bad I got offered half tuition at some prestigious private school that cost approximately 30,000 a year (tuition) at the time, and at another school I got offered a full ride (everything would have been covered) to study physics. I say all of this not to gloat (which I don’t have a problem with at times), but to say that even with my gifted nature, I was poorly versed in things that directly affected me. I have been corrected many (too many i.e. more than once) times on Black history by White people. In elementary school I was taught that Martin Luther King was given an honorary doctorate by some random college and that is why people referred to him as doctor (I still might not…PhDs in philosophy aren’t worth the extra two-syllables for acknowledgement…yes I’m a hater). I didn’t think anything of it, so I was like “uh…ok” (I was like eight). I didn’t question it, and I kept it stored in my brain as fact. Now while I cannot afford to blame my ignorance on this subject to inept teaching, (I should have researched all this and educated myself fully on the subject before I rambled about it in an earlier blog) it does not excuse the fact that I was taught false facts (from an educator) about one of the most influential people in history.

The aforementioned example just displayed the problem with what is wrong with this country (I’m not talking about the fact that being in a certain social location allows you to fully be educated on every aspect of that social location). It is the fact that while certain people are very gifted at one aspect of their education, they are extremely lacking in other areas. Children (at least in my experience) aren’t pushed to be well rounded as much as they are to be “gifted” in a specific area. As long as a child can burp all of the former presidents in the history of the US, it doesn’t matter if little Johnny Douchebag can’t multiply 7 by 8. Mediocrity is far too accepted in our society, and it shows in the educational system.

A few months ago, my friend ‘Fishcake’ and I were talking about the differences in the educational system in the US and in other places. Fishcake mocked Americans (yes he is foreign born) with the common saying of “I hate (insert natural/physical science or skill here)”. I hear that phrase all the time, especially when the topic of my second major (math) comes up with people I share sociology (first major and the people I’ll be walking with if I go to my graduation) classes with. They act impressed and say “Wow, I can’t do math, I hate it.” My mind immediately goes into a “get the heck away from me” mode, but then I am calmed by the small underlying complement of their ‘wow’. But the true thing that really confuses me is the fact that some of these people are well read and intelligent people. It isn’t like they got into college by sleeping with important people (for the other people sleeping with VIPs might have helped), they have earned the right to be in their position in college. From my own experience it doesn’t matter if you are terrible at something. In most cases if the human mind is given a reasonable task, with enough effort, it can achieve it. I hate foreign languages (a lot…a whole lot), but even with my sheer distain for them I can still communicate in Spanish, and given more effort be able to communicate a little bit in other romance languages.

In continuing with this cycle of mediocrity I arrive to those people who I truly do not like. Not because they are bad people, or they have wronged me in some way, but because their logic doesn’t make sense. It does not take 6 years to get a bachelors degree in anything that isn’t a physical or natural science. Anthropology, Any language (including English…yes, even 19^th century European lit.) International Studies, Regular Communications, Pan-African/African American Studies, Political Science, Psychology (yeah, that’s right), Social Work, Sociology, Woman (or Womyn) and Gender Studies…none of it takes that long. In fact I’ll go as far as saying that if you only have one major and it is one of those (and you didn’t change your major to it), then you should graduate in no more than 3 years.

The fact that there are many people taking 3 extra years to graduate is a joke. I met not one, not two, but three people who had the mentality that 6 years was a good goal to get out of college. Seriously…I don’t care what the circumstances are; barring severe physical, emotional or mental injury there is no excuse. I got done with all of my Sociology classes in two years. And in two of those semesters I only took one Sociology class. I know several people who changed their majors drastically from something like Computer Science to Anthropology and he got out with relative ease. But that isn’t all… one of these douchebags had the nerve to say that they wanted to take time off because they needed a break. Sociology is not that demanding of a task. You sit around and use common sense to observe social interactions between people. Little kids do that walking down the street. It is not something that is ‘break worthy’.

But yeah…stuff like this makes me want to club a baby dolphin and yes… I like dolphins. But I have to work on aspects of my life that beam with mediocrity so that I won’t be a hypocrite.

Gabriel on Louisville

After conversing with an old classmate/friend who recently graduated I have decided to make it known to the rest of the world that Louisville, KY sucks…a lot. While at a law school fair day a few months back (at a college that will not be named, but is outside of Kentucky), a representative was there from UofL’s law school. A group of people I made the trip with, myself and the representative started talking and comparing the city of Louisville to the city of Lexington (where I attend college…long story). He was going on about how diverse and how progressive it is (SIDENOTE: I really don’t like this term for reasons that will most likely be explained later). The whole time he was giving us this spiel on how Louisville was amazing like we didn’t know any better.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is a wonderful city with very diverse historical culture, lots of things to do, and a great educational system in which to raise one’s children…if one is speaking about in relation to the rest of Kentucky (or Southern Indiana. Louisville owns you). But in relation to (in descending order from my favorite to my least favorite) DC, Atlanta, NY (I would never live there), LA (I would most likely never live there either) and other established cities, Louisville sucks.

People (typically freshman in college) from Louisville tend to come to Lexington and think that they run things (yes I was once one of those before I started not being a douchebag). It always amuses me to see that fierceness of people from ‘Tha Ville’ or ‘Derby City’ (which I don’t like because I think of slave plantations for some reason whenever I think of racehorses) dissipate when someone from an established city comes around. Recently I heard a story about some FSP kids and their encounter with one of my friends who is from New York.

NOTE: FSP stands for Freshman Summer Program (sorry I couldn’t come up with a witty acronym that truly expressed my distain for most of those ignorant little douchebags). It is where the evil Roman deity of debt that drains approximately 6500 dollars a year from my (future) bank account provides kids fresh out of high school (most of them Black, from Louisville, and from two high schools in particular) with a chance to earn college credit during the summer before real college starts all while making all Black people (on this pasty campus) look like bad.

Basically someone from Paducah, KY (it’s okay…I don’t know where that is either) was trying to run his mouth and represent his hometown. He started using some hand gestures that looked similar to a P (or someone with really bad arthritis). Fast forward through some questionable language and the punk from Paducah got put in his place. While this example was of someone from Louisville, it is exact to how people from Louisville think they can act. Sadly if this kid who had ran his mouth off to someone fresh out of Louisville and not a real established city it would have been worse…much worse. You would have heard someone yell “L-w****!” and the misunderstanding most likely would have ended in violence. This brings a few items to the forefront to distinguish Louisville from established cities.

1. People from established cities don’t really have nicknames for their cities. They don’t need them. People outside of the general area (as well as the rest of the world) know of these places. Good examples of crappy cities that think they are established, but really aren’t: Tha Ville (Louisville), The Natti (Cincinatti), Naptown (Indianapolis) just to name a few.
   
2. People from fraudulent cities tend to treat other cities, towns, places in the surrounding area like crap because they have to prove their worth. People from Louisville think they are better than people in the rest of Kentucky (and southern Indiana…did I mention they really suck), people from ‘The Natti’ think they’re better than the losers in Northern Kentucky that claim them.
   
3. You can’t buy a New Era Fitted (baseball cap that are popular with Black youth and their non-Black emulators) with your city’s initials or letter on it without having it custom made (or stealing a hat from an established city because that city just so happens to share a name or initial).
   
4. People from fraudulent cities have to go to real cities to shop. You don’t know how often I hear of people making day long treks to Atlanta just to buy clothes that haven’t hit Louisville or Cincinnati yet. Or people having to order Jordans from their relative or close friend because they refuse to release that color in a state where Derby is the major highlight of the year (Derby sucks too by the way).
   

But the main reason why Louisville sucks is because there is nothing for young, educated, people of color. Unless you want to work for a college there is nothing really great for anyone who is young, educated, and a person of color. Nothing ever happens (except for Derby…which sucks), so there is a massive amount of brain drain. Typically someone from a small town will go to school, graduate, then proceed to head into Lexington, unless of course they are from Lexington, then they will make their way to Louisville. People who wish to make anything of themselves (for the most part) will see that the best city in Kentucky (Louisville…duh) has nothing to offer because being the best city in Kentucky is like being the smartest kid on the short bus. CONGRATS! You still ride the short bus!!! These people then leave and go to established cities to contribute to their true culture and value in the grand scheme of things. Rather than have it fizzle out when they work and Humana for 50 hours a week and their main reason for living is to attend the Male-Manual, and St. X-Trinity football games every year even though they don’t have children (or relatives in general) that go there.

I need to leave Kentucky…something terrible!