What a waste of talent.
Stumbled across this on a cable back channel called Aspire.
“Black College Quiz Show” is a straightforward derivative of the old (really old) game show called College Bowl, which I used to watch with my grandparents.
It’s intended to spotlight the scholarly attainments of students at historically black colleges like Howard, Morehouse, Spelman, Tuskegee, Cheyney, Dillard, Fisk, Hampton, and quite a few others. When I discovered it, I thought ‘cool,’ and settled in to be impressed and pleased.
I was impressed but far from pleased. In fact, I was sickened, almost to the point of despair. Here’s the thing. All the students on the show are clearly smart, articulate, and capable of great things. Quick to the buzzer, confident of their answers.
But all the questions, and I do mean ALL the questions are about things black. Civil rights history, black pop stars and athletes, black politicians, black scientists, black writers and artists, and African geography.
It’s an intellectual ghetto, an act of self segregation that literally induces nausea. These kids are clearly smart enough to learn anything. But they are aimed, forced, jammed into a focus on things African American guaranteed to isolate them from everyone who is not African American. Ethnic pride is fine. But if the only topic I ever learned about was Scotland, I know I’d be pretty much screwed. Like all these kids most definitely are. Dead on the altar of a depraved religion called Victimization.
When did this nation go so so crazy that it dooms its young in the name of political correctness? Is there any reason why a young black woman cannot be asked a question about James Madison or Wolfgang Mozart? Apparently it’s much more important for her to be confined to a corner of anger and resentment than bloom in the glory of a western tradition she and her brothers (should) share with everyone else.
Sick. So tired of seeing sour faces and myopically pissed off eyes. It’s supposed to be a positive and upbeat show. Instead it’s a damn tragedy and a self fulfilling prophecy of the long road to bitterness and nowhere.
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The show sounds downright… racist.
I take heart that the smart kids are hopefully majoring in other things like English, History, Engineering. I can’t imagine they’re all in African American Studies. I would guess that they’d recognize the cul-de-sac for what it is but boned up on this particular subset of knowledge to win the competition and grab the scholarship. Is that too optimistic of me?
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Yes.
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When in college, I tried to get on a couple of these shows — College Jeopardy and The Weakest Link. I answered the questions very well, got several levels in, then wasn’t called back. Wasn’t what they were looking for.
Perhaps the show runners are pre-selecting for this kind of stuff? The question writers, the producers, the host, and the competitors are essentially all in it together, giving this narrow corner of knowledge its pedestal. The point, I suppose.
But I’m pushing back because I see the other kind of student on a day to day basis. I can’t make a big generalization, but I eat lunch with, teach, and coach some kids that are the exception that gives me hope. These aren’t kids who go on to college to lock into this segregated view. They become all kinds of things.
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Not blaming the kids but the black culture. They’re being taught how to be professionally black. Shameful.
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I should have put this in my Top 100…
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I don’t know if I’ve been oblivious to it or not, but it seems as though in the past couple of years people have been working overtime to segregate themselves. People don’t even want to be just male or female anymore. Facebook adds 60 new genders that make absolutely no sense. The silliest I’ve seen is “Pansexual”, people who don’t identify with a gender because they love everything…EVERYTHING. They segregate themselves, then demand equality. This idiotic self worship in the name of helping humanity. And then they get pissed when I tell them I don’t give a shit. This is turning into a rambling rant, so I’ll stop (old habits die hard, eh?).
I just can’t deny that it’s all coming true. Which leads me to believe that this self segregation that’s going on is going to squeeze out a very small, but fine tuned, group of people that will be left standing inside the box, and they’ll hit the boiling point.
I just could not see this in 2001.
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