bitch
yo doug. cause i'm a lazy ass, could you set up some sort of lob poll -- and we don't have to confine it to lob. could ask for participation from other lefty email lists.
Poll would be something like: based on your own experience, do you think that, in your high school, being smart or an intellectual made someone
popular at school? Did smart kids in your school have a lot of friends or were the friend of a lot of other kids?
yes, this is actually related to the issue. :)
^^^^^ CB: Yea, I see the relation to the thread topic. I was thinking on this thread that in the American tradition, not only Black American, kids who do well in grades are less popular. It's general. "Nerd" is a derogatory term for smart kids. I think it originated in predominantly white schools from a while back. For one thing, kids who work hard raise the curve and make everybody work harder. Also, B.'s other post says:
"Shit, conservatives have a far more realistic understanding of capitalist economics. There aren't decent paying jobs for everyone, so precisely what is going to happen when all the hoodlums turn themselves around and start living white? hmmm? that gonna get them an office job downtown making 65k? Who exactly IS going to do the dishes? Flip the burger? Mop the floor? Trim the hedges? eh?
^^^^^ CB: Exactly. What if every kid in high school was an A student and eligible for college ? The system is not prepared for all kids or even most kids do well in high school. I think long ago the anti-academic underground culture was cultivated so that it would be cool not to do well academically, so that everybody wouldn't be an "A" student, so that only a minority would go to college, and there would be auto-workers and other factory workers, janitors etc. This is in the white majority areas as well as Black. Not liking academics is an All-American thing.