Success is like Suicide
"Success is like suicide, suicide, this is suicide; If you succeed prepare to be crucified." - Jay Z
This post will have another personal tone, due to current circumstances.
Something I rarely talk about is being an ethnic minority. It’s something that I have lived with my entire life, so I assume I take it as a given. There have been struggles and issues with my own identity development personally, but all and all I have come to a sense of who I am from all of it. I find myself only considering the ramifications of being a minority when other people bring it to my attention these days. I guess the irony of it is that I live with the ramifications of it every day. It is perhaps why I fail to address them, because they are too much to consider when you are already living such a busy life. However, now that I am about to graduate with my Masters degree, these ramifications have become too strong for me to turn a blind eye too.
While most individuals who leave home to attend college may relate to what I am about to write about, the situation is a quite different for someone who comes from a minority background. For one, you are already in a minority. There are certain subculture stipulations which come with that. What I am about to elaborate on is becoming even more of a "minority" within a societal minority role. It is the outcome of ambition, success, luck, and desertion. A few things that when mixed together create a quite unique, but isolated situation.
Consider these numbers. Within the United States, about 40% of us obtain a college degree. Those of us who have a Masters degree...about 7.6%. And those of us with a Ph.D? Only about 3%. Keep those numbers in mind.
Coming from an ethnic minority into college is a unique experience. You enter a world where most people do not look like you or share the same customs as you. While we are all American and share a similar culture, they are not the same --- this is stressed even more by regional differences. If you go out of state to a different region or coast, then the experience of you being "different" is magnified. You have to learn to speak a new language while using the same language, to carry yourself differently while still dressing in blue jeans, to appear the same while you are trying to catch up to everything that's changing. You are in the same country, but everything has changed.
Then there is the stigma. You are teased for being the "token this, or the stereotypical that" and you don't know why. It's rarely malicious in intent, but you notice it. Perhaps it is because you thought of yourself differently when you were home. When you were home no one saw you as the stereotypical anything. It's one of the reasons you are in college, because you were an "Oreo" or a "Twinkie". Back home you might have been the nerdy smart kid everyone made fun of. Now you are the stereotypical minority that no one ever saw you as before---or perhaps you never considered yourself as. It is a switch that is quite unexpected.
But you adjust. You meet people, establish relationships, some people learn who you are and accept you for that. You learn how things work. You discover the new YouTube video references that everyone else seems to get but for some reason you were missing. The cultural jokes start to make sense after a while. After a year or two you come to feel like you actually belong. And it's a good thing. Now you can focus on academics and the social drama that everyone else was concerned about, because you are now comfortable in your own skin again. You look forward to going home to show everyone how much you have grown and changed. You want to show them that you have made a difference -- you are different. College has been good for you. Although you will soon learn that the saying, "You can never go home again" is the most profound, painful, and isolating thing you will ever get to know.
When you return home, you feel like you are home. For a while at least. Mom is cooking her usual meal. The mail man arrives at the same time. Your sibling annoys you the same way. Your room is different, but mostly the same. Same sheets, same smell. Same ole you. You belong in both worlds. But slowly, you notice all the small things that have changed. Your aunt has a new boyfriend and everyone forgot to tell you about him, although you speak to your family on the phone every week. Your cousin has grown 6 inches and his voice has changed. There is some new inside joke within the family. You realize for the first time you don't get it. There was some local event and it was the biggest thing for six months, but by the time you figure it out, everyone is over with it.
Then there are your friends. The ones you use to hang out with and share a life with. You go to the same hangouts, and for a while it seems like you never left. You talk about high school and the old times, and you relive the moments that helped to make you the person who you are. Then they start talking to you about their engagement, pregnancy (or pregnancy scare), or some other profound life change that has occurred. And you wonder to yourself, "Where was I for that?" You hear about a high school flame who is now married, or a best friend who is in jail or was killed in a war. Your best friend from kindergarten was busted on drug charges. Why did no one tell you? These are no small details. You try to relate with concerns regarding school stress, since that's now the biggest thing in your life, but they aren't the same. How are you supposed to relate?
You go to the neighborhood store you went to all your life, and the clerk asks you, "Where are you from? You have an accent." An accent? When did that happen? You remark, "Sir, I grew up here". He asks you, "Are you sure? People round' here don't sound like that."
You realize that somehow you just are not on the same page anymore. You feel two steps behind. You are different, because you took a risk and left these things behind. However, you carried them with you. The memories of your peers, the teachers, the sounds, the voices --- they were all there during those years in college. They motivated you in your college years (rather it was to escape or to embrace). It’s not like it was easy (although, it might have been at the time) to leave. It’s not like you wanted to completely forget about where you came from. But in the process of adapting to a new environment, you had to change and incorporate new things into yourself. It is this process that has set you apart from everything you once related too here. It furthers isolates you within your own home.
That's when you slowly began to realize that you don't really know where you are anymore. Everything looks the same, but somehow everything feels different. You grew up here for most of your life, yet you feel like you are a foreigner. And suddenly, you find yourself missing college, because you feel like you don't fit at home anymore. You realize that this was a place for you. But now, you just don't quite fit anymore.
A few years past, and you think you have found your place. Things are stable for a while. Then graduation comes and threatens all of that. All of your friends are leaving for new jobs, further education, and the works. Then you wonder where you are going to go. Are you going to stay here? You have adapted, you know how this world works now. But then you realize why you came. You came because of the people back home were supporting you. You want to give back, to go back. But somehow, you know that home isn't home anymore. You have new friends, people who more than likely know you better than your friends before. Your family has changed. The people who grew up around you now view you as an outsider. You are "educated" now --- above them. You have lost some of your accent. You sound different, you dress differently, and you talk about different things. Even though you may not even feel like it, they see you like this. You are no longer "black" or a "brother" or one of them. But to you, that's what everyone else still sees you as. To you, you are still in the same skin that society has already judged you for. The only difference is that now you get it on both sides of the aisle.
You could return home, but you are different now. You are no longer that bright eyed high school-er. Can you make yourself fit again? More importantly, do you want to? Or do you want to build something new someplace else?
The answer is difficult. Plain and simple. The experience of college itself changes the individual. As time has progressed, you have changed. You are no longer the person you were four, six, or nine years ago. This isn't a bad thing. But by being a minority, you grow up and adjust to certain norms. You are a minority not just because of your skin color, but where you come from, how you act, how you sound, how you relate to others. You are a part of a tight nit group. While being in college you are seen as a minority (abet, not all the time, and it isn’t the DEFINING principle---but remember, it is ever present in nature), back home you were just you, within a sea of others like you culturally (and more individuals who shared the same skin color usually). Now you are a mixed breed.
Success is like suicide. You have to give up a lot to adopt, change....to grow. To be successful. Remember those numbers I quoted before? Now imagine if you are ethnic minority. Imagine relating to others within your own ethnicity, or even other minorities. That if, you even complete college:
“According to the most recent statistics, the nationwide college graduation rate for black students stands at an appallingly low rate of 43 percent.* This figure is 20 percentage points below the 63 percentage rate for white students” - http://www.jbhe.com/preview/winter07preview.html
“In 2004, 17.6 percent of all African Americans over the age of 25 held a four-year college degree” - http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/48_blacks_highereducation.html
“…just over a tenth (11.4%) of Hispanics or Latinos had a four-year college degree” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
As for graduate degrees:
“African Americans (4.6%) and Hispanics (3.1%) were only one-half and one-third as likely to hold advanced degrees as whites (9.1%). The percentages of African Americans (3.7%) and Hispanics (1.9%) with masters degrees represented also represented approximately one-half and one-third, respectively of the percentages of whites with a Master’s degree (6.2%) in 2000. Whites were more than twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to have professional degrees (1.6% vs. 0.6% and 0.7%), and doctorates (1.3% vs. 0.3% and 0.5%).” - http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/college.htm
I am not saying that education is everything. I’m not even saying that ethnicity is everything. Those are just parts -- each with their own weight. I am saying that the experience of college and gaining a degree is everything. It is this experience which shapes individuals at a critical developmental period in life, and possibly makes it hard ---especially for minorities, to relate to people they once did so naturally. The process of being more “educated” makes you more of a minority within a minority. It's not because you are “better”, as some people perceive you to be, or think that you think you are; because you are not. You are just different--- You were before. Now you are more so.
It is this difference that makes it harder to relate to individuals who go through different life experiences, especially within minority groups, whose life experiences often differ from the dominate culture. It is this difference that makes being who and what you are even harder---an ever more isolating experience. And perhaps, that’s the hardest part.
"Success" has a cost. Is it, or will it be, worth it? Is this even success? Or is it what we have been sold, what we have been told that would make us happy?
"Suicide. This is Suicide."
Another good resource on the break down of ethnic minorities with advanced degrees : http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015/tables/table_26_1.asp
This post will have another personal tone, due to current circumstances.
Something I rarely talk about is being an ethnic minority. It’s something that I have lived with my entire life, so I assume I take it as a given. There have been struggles and issues with my own identity development personally, but all and all I have come to a sense of who I am from all of it. I find myself only considering the ramifications of being a minority when other people bring it to my attention these days. I guess the irony of it is that I live with the ramifications of it every day. It is perhaps why I fail to address them, because they are too much to consider when you are already living such a busy life. However, now that I am about to graduate with my Masters degree, these ramifications have become too strong for me to turn a blind eye too.
While most individuals who leave home to attend college may relate to what I am about to write about, the situation is a quite different for someone who comes from a minority background. For one, you are already in a minority. There are certain subculture stipulations which come with that. What I am about to elaborate on is becoming even more of a "minority" within a societal minority role. It is the outcome of ambition, success, luck, and desertion. A few things that when mixed together create a quite unique, but isolated situation.
Consider these numbers. Within the United States, about 40% of us obtain a college degree. Those of us who have a Masters degree...about 7.6%. And those of us with a Ph.D? Only about 3%. Keep those numbers in mind.
Coming from an ethnic minority into college is a unique experience. You enter a world where most people do not look like you or share the same customs as you. While we are all American and share a similar culture, they are not the same --- this is stressed even more by regional differences. If you go out of state to a different region or coast, then the experience of you being "different" is magnified. You have to learn to speak a new language while using the same language, to carry yourself differently while still dressing in blue jeans, to appear the same while you are trying to catch up to everything that's changing. You are in the same country, but everything has changed.
Then there is the stigma. You are teased for being the "token this, or the stereotypical that" and you don't know why. It's rarely malicious in intent, but you notice it. Perhaps it is because you thought of yourself differently when you were home. When you were home no one saw you as the stereotypical anything. It's one of the reasons you are in college, because you were an "Oreo" or a "Twinkie". Back home you might have been the nerdy smart kid everyone made fun of. Now you are the stereotypical minority that no one ever saw you as before---or perhaps you never considered yourself as. It is a switch that is quite unexpected.
But you adjust. You meet people, establish relationships, some people learn who you are and accept you for that. You learn how things work. You discover the new YouTube video references that everyone else seems to get but for some reason you were missing. The cultural jokes start to make sense after a while. After a year or two you come to feel like you actually belong. And it's a good thing. Now you can focus on academics and the social drama that everyone else was concerned about, because you are now comfortable in your own skin again. You look forward to going home to show everyone how much you have grown and changed. You want to show them that you have made a difference -- you are different. College has been good for you. Although you will soon learn that the saying, "You can never go home again" is the most profound, painful, and isolating thing you will ever get to know.
When you return home, you feel like you are home. For a while at least. Mom is cooking her usual meal. The mail man arrives at the same time. Your sibling annoys you the same way. Your room is different, but mostly the same. Same sheets, same smell. Same ole you. You belong in both worlds. But slowly, you notice all the small things that have changed. Your aunt has a new boyfriend and everyone forgot to tell you about him, although you speak to your family on the phone every week. Your cousin has grown 6 inches and his voice has changed. There is some new inside joke within the family. You realize for the first time you don't get it. There was some local event and it was the biggest thing for six months, but by the time you figure it out, everyone is over with it.
Then there are your friends. The ones you use to hang out with and share a life with. You go to the same hangouts, and for a while it seems like you never left. You talk about high school and the old times, and you relive the moments that helped to make you the person who you are. Then they start talking to you about their engagement, pregnancy (or pregnancy scare), or some other profound life change that has occurred. And you wonder to yourself, "Where was I for that?" You hear about a high school flame who is now married, or a best friend who is in jail or was killed in a war. Your best friend from kindergarten was busted on drug charges. Why did no one tell you? These are no small details. You try to relate with concerns regarding school stress, since that's now the biggest thing in your life, but they aren't the same. How are you supposed to relate?
You go to the neighborhood store you went to all your life, and the clerk asks you, "Where are you from? You have an accent." An accent? When did that happen? You remark, "Sir, I grew up here". He asks you, "Are you sure? People round' here don't sound like that."
You realize that somehow you just are not on the same page anymore. You feel two steps behind. You are different, because you took a risk and left these things behind. However, you carried them with you. The memories of your peers, the teachers, the sounds, the voices --- they were all there during those years in college. They motivated you in your college years (rather it was to escape or to embrace). It’s not like it was easy (although, it might have been at the time) to leave. It’s not like you wanted to completely forget about where you came from. But in the process of adapting to a new environment, you had to change and incorporate new things into yourself. It is this process that has set you apart from everything you once related too here. It furthers isolates you within your own home.
That's when you slowly began to realize that you don't really know where you are anymore. Everything looks the same, but somehow everything feels different. You grew up here for most of your life, yet you feel like you are a foreigner. And suddenly, you find yourself missing college, because you feel like you don't fit at home anymore. You realize that this was a place for you. But now, you just don't quite fit anymore.
A few years past, and you think you have found your place. Things are stable for a while. Then graduation comes and threatens all of that. All of your friends are leaving for new jobs, further education, and the works. Then you wonder where you are going to go. Are you going to stay here? You have adapted, you know how this world works now. But then you realize why you came. You came because of the people back home were supporting you. You want to give back, to go back. But somehow, you know that home isn't home anymore. You have new friends, people who more than likely know you better than your friends before. Your family has changed. The people who grew up around you now view you as an outsider. You are "educated" now --- above them. You have lost some of your accent. You sound different, you dress differently, and you talk about different things. Even though you may not even feel like it, they see you like this. You are no longer "black" or a "brother" or one of them. But to you, that's what everyone else still sees you as. To you, you are still in the same skin that society has already judged you for. The only difference is that now you get it on both sides of the aisle.
You could return home, but you are different now. You are no longer that bright eyed high school-er. Can you make yourself fit again? More importantly, do you want to? Or do you want to build something new someplace else?
The answer is difficult. Plain and simple. The experience of college itself changes the individual. As time has progressed, you have changed. You are no longer the person you were four, six, or nine years ago. This isn't a bad thing. But by being a minority, you grow up and adjust to certain norms. You are a minority not just because of your skin color, but where you come from, how you act, how you sound, how you relate to others. You are a part of a tight nit group. While being in college you are seen as a minority (abet, not all the time, and it isn’t the DEFINING principle---but remember, it is ever present in nature), back home you were just you, within a sea of others like you culturally (and more individuals who shared the same skin color usually). Now you are a mixed breed.
“According to the most recent statistics, the nationwide college graduation rate for black students stands at an appallingly low rate of 43 percent.* This figure is 20 percentage points below the 63 percentage rate for white students” - http://www.jbhe.com/preview/winter07preview.html
“In 2004, 17.6 percent of all African Americans over the age of 25 held a four-year college degree” - http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/48_blacks_highereducation.html
“…just over a tenth (11.4%) of Hispanics or Latinos had a four-year college degree” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
As for graduate degrees:
“African Americans (4.6%) and Hispanics (3.1%) were only one-half and one-third as likely to hold advanced degrees as whites (9.1%). The percentages of African Americans (3.7%) and Hispanics (1.9%) with masters degrees represented also represented approximately one-half and one-third, respectively of the percentages of whites with a Master’s degree (6.2%) in 2000. Whites were more than twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to have professional degrees (1.6% vs. 0.6% and 0.7%), and doctorates (1.3% vs. 0.3% and 0.5%).” - http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/college.htm
I am not saying that education is everything. I’m not even saying that ethnicity is everything. Those are just parts -- each with their own weight. I am saying that the experience of college and gaining a degree is everything. It is this experience which shapes individuals at a critical developmental period in life, and possibly makes it hard ---especially for minorities, to relate to people they once did so naturally. The process of being more “educated” makes you more of a minority within a minority. It's not because you are “better”, as some people perceive you to be, or think that you think you are; because you are not. You are just different--- You were before. Now you are more so.
It is this difference that makes it harder to relate to individuals who go through different life experiences, especially within minority groups, whose life experiences often differ from the dominate culture. It is this difference that makes being who and what you are even harder---an ever more isolating experience. And perhaps, that’s the hardest part.
"Success" has a cost. Is it, or will it be, worth it? Is this even success? Or is it what we have been sold, what we have been told that would make us happy?
"Suicide. This is Suicide."
Another good resource on the break down of ethnic minorities with advanced degrees : http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015/tables/table_26_1.asp
Comments
Post a Comment