Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil
LOL. The Black beat is just like the commonalities that other races, ethnicities and cultures share with one another. You hear some of it but you don't have to hear 100% of it to know how to identify. The biggest thing is to not appear so detached that you seem judgmental and holier than thou. That works both ways, though.
Blacks of higher socioeconomic status will do things like golf and traveling (camping should be reserved for the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts as far as I'm concerned  ). However, since most Blacks of higher SES are first generation well-off, older Blacks are fully aware that what they enjoy doing is not what they were socialized to identify as Blackness. As a younger Black person you wouldn't have known that so you didn't know what the hell those Blacks were talking about.
I think it's important to note that Blacks of higher SES do not abandon the racial and cultural identifiers of Blackness. And when Blacks of higher SES think they have fully assimilated and fully identify with whites of higher SES, they are reminded of the instances where Blackness carries more weight than SES. The -isms aside, there are still things that some Blacks of higher SES will not do that some whites of higher SES fully identify with. |
I had this experience with my college friends who are Latino/Hispanic/Spanish speaking/how they self identify that they had never been camping or rafting, and outdoors activities were unsafe or just crazy. One person explained to me that where their family was from in other countries, camping is dangerous. Animals will get you, people will get you, and the equipment is very high cost. We started out by going to a camp site near us, where you're just off the highway and can see the lights of town from a hill, rented equipment from the student center, and had a good time.
They're not doing the crazy remote backpacking trips I do, but they will go car camping and are becoming more comfortable with the outdoors. I can see a definite area where outdoors groups and companies can start bringing out of doors experiences to people who aren't monied and white, but they will fail if they don't find out why they aren't going in the first place. Boy and girl scouts is a good place to start, as well as Boys & Girls Clubs who have camping. I worked at a BGC camp and we had the kids all year at the club in the city, so the two weeks in the summer wasn't a blip on the radar. We got kids into the outdoors and on weekend trips by defraying costs and being there after school. This BGC covered all kinds of kids though, and the ethnicities, economics, and home lives of these kids was all over the board.
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