I was browsing and found this and was impressed with a lot of the comments made.
I agree that our Black society has a problem with keeping it real. To me keeping it real, should have nothing to do with "bling blinging" and the like.
As many of you know, I am a teacher. I teach high school and some days they cause me to shake my head and want to do my **THANK GOD I AM OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL DANCE**. The priorities are aaaaaalllllll mixed up. For instance, the beginning of this month I told them they had to have a copy of
To Kill A Mockingbird in class by today. They had darn near 3 weeks to buy a $6.00 book or get it from the free bookstore. Today in my one class 7 kids had their own copy out of 23. Then some of my hood rat/chicken headed students started complaining that there lives are too busy to go get a book, they don't like to read, etc. Then some kids were like they were out of the book. Yet these are the same kids that if they are out the newest Jordans or the latest Platinum Fubu will do a cross country search to get the outfit or the shoes that they THINK will make them all that.
Okay enough of my teaching tirade/vent. My ultimate conclusion for now is this "Keeping It Real" mentality is going to be the death of some of our kids. Some of these parents need to reprioritize and teach their kids values. But at the same time some of these parents need to do the same.
I am tripping that some of my students' parents with a number of kids barely making minimum wage are driving Explorers, Expeditions, Navigators, etc.
Then I have students with cell phones and pagers yet talking about they cannot pay their library fine or buy a $6 book that will be 50% of their grade