A discussion I was having elsewhere, sharing my comments here.
My comments/concerns:
Note: the above isn't from the article but was posted in relation to this picture on fb The article is seperate.Twins youngest to sit A level maths.The Seven-year-old twins have become the youngest ever students to pass A-level exams. Peter and Paula Imafidon both passed A level maths despite being at primary(elementary) school and having had just three years of formal education.The twins from east London,(UK) sat the exams, which are normally taken by 18-year-olds students, (11 years ahead of the curriculum).They said that they had found lessons with their peers boring.They said: "Sometimes at school, the teacher goes a bit too slow for us, but we just encourage and help our friends if they get stuck instead."A spokesman for the family said they were "overwhelmed" with the results, but would not reveal their exact grades.
He said: "They both passed well."Peter and Paula Imafidon are Nigerians.
My comments/concerns:
medusanegrita said:Oh-oh. I see the Cosby/Oprah/immigrant syndrome here.
"Well if they can make it, why can't you other black lazy dumb butts make it in the public school system? This just proves that black americans don't have what it takes, and they are indeed physically and academically lazy to even strive. Afrikans, Asians, whites and others are just so far ahead of these lazy folks, who would rather sick on their butts with 10 kids that they can't support and draw a government check than to work hard and get what they want."
I took to calling it the Oprah/Cosby syndrome for this piece because this was popular sentiment back when the Cosby show was popular. On the show he was popularizing himself and TV wife as a doctor and lawyer raising 5 kids. The show was great and funny and solved everything in 30 minutes. It never dealt with racism or any racist institutions that many of us claim hold us back or hinder us from succeeding. Whites used that show and Oprah as a model to scapegoat under-privilege blacks who weren't doing well and said 'why don't you be an example and credit to your race like these two - Cosby and Oprah. You lie about racism or use it as excuse to blame the white man for your shortcomings, WHEN IT IS YOU BLACK MAN/WOMAN!'
The sentiment about american blacks is still pretty popular, but not only by American white people. It also popular with immigrants both white and black. Again, if you are Afrikan or any other immigrant I say it's an unfair statement for you to make since I can make the same statement about other less and under-privilege Afrikans and or those who live elsewhere. But I guess the argument may be that the United States is the 'land of opportunity' while Afrika, Central and South America, India, the MidEast, and Asia is not considered to be so, so everyone expects that black americans should be doing better collectively than we currently are.
I am proud of these black children, I really am. I love to see my people succeed and get ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. They look so much like American black children, which to me says were aren't too far from each other despite the mixing that went on here. But I'm caught between feelings of admiration and envy. And the envy is not just for me, but for ALL of my people who trouble themselves academically and socially; those who fall behind, those who fail to make it, those who struggle out of struggle's a** to get through the system and its institutions; and for those whom children like these will make it just that much harder for anyone else to understand what obstacles (personal and outward) lies in our way to succeed.