“While it is justifiably demanded of whites that they examine their prejudices and feelings toward black Americans, there seems to be no eagerness on the part of black Americans to examine the aspects of their cultures that hold them back from full participation in our economy.” -Neal Boortz

I agree with Sadowski that this problem is slowly becoming an epidemic in a lot of urban schools where black students feel the need to “keep up their appearances” of not being portrayed as “white,” and so many of the them feel the need to dumb themselves down in order to feel accepted amongst their own community and peers. I never realized how much stigma there is around this topic and how it isn’t being talked about openly in schools. As Neal Boortz mentioned in the comment above, whites sometimes refuse to talk about their own prejudices and feelings when it comes towards black Americans because they don’t want to be perceive as racist whereas black Americans refuse to explore and answer the question why there isn’t a lot of participation nor effort for their children to achieve academically at school. I think for me, it is one of the most difficult concepts to understand as someone who was born and raised in a well to do suburban area and never had to deal with these types of experiences simply because my high school was predominantly white. 

I guess where I’m trying to get at is, for me as a future educator, I’ll never fully be able to understand the stigma around black Americans not looking at themselves as great students who can achieve and accomplish the same goals as white Americans without having the label “being white” at school. How can we, especially if we are white educators, allow black Americans to feel comfortable in their own skin without being marked as “being white” in the academic world for their achievements and feel proud of themselves without fearing the backlash from their community and peers?