Black childhoods are socialized to expect unfairness and work twice as hard

Evidence

I grew up in a small town too, not in Wisconsin, but on the coast of Mississippi. But my hometown, Moss Point, doesn’t look much like what Ryan talks about. Of course, people dreamed dreams and worked their behinds off. But their job security waxed and waned with local industry. One day the shipyard was hiring. The next day it was laying people off. Money and class mattered. The town was more than 70 percent black. The local schools struggled, and black unemployment was terribly high. Everything about my childhood let me know that I had to work twice as hard for opportunity and that I shouldn’t expect the world to be fair, because the world isn’t fair to black people. Here the American Idea wasn’t neat and tidy. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 89

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the divergent childhood epistemologies of America across race — Ryan’s optimism vs. Moss Point’s lesson that ‘the world isn’t fair to black people.’
• XREF: connects to: Black children are reported to social services more often than white children.; Believing in equal opportunity coexists without felt conflict with blaming Blacks’ lack of effort — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2186; Concrete school discipline differences reveal unequal freedom and expectations by race — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 543 (+7 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Black children are reported to social services more often than white children.; Believing in equal opportunity coexists without felt conflict with blaming Blacks’ lack of effort — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2186; Concrete school discipline differences reveal unequal freedom and expectations by race — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 543 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Minority children resist full internalization of discrimination-preparation socialization #complicates (0.88) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1997
• Doing well in school can be coded by minority peers as betraying one’s culture #complicates (0.85) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1300