The Rambling's of a Thoughtful Student

"The floor of the white man's failures is the ceiling of the black man's expectation."

The quote is interesting and can be directly translated that the failures for a white person may very well be the best that a black person can reach. A racist short sighted concept that leaves out the idea that every individual has the power to reach their own level of thought, knowledge and the like. I hate people who judge others by color but sadly I cannot help but find myself doing so at times also. It's hard to not match one's actions and lifestyle to that of their ethnic origin. I remember the first time meeting my friend John and thought many things such as stoner, hippy, rich kid, stuck up, and obnoxious. Turned out that he was none of these things but after years of meeting people we begin to build stereotypes that make us develop these preconceptions of people. Color by default is how humans judge objects. We see color everywhere in every way both physically and mentally. Trees are green and brown. Green on top, brown on the bottom. It most definitely cannot be brown on top and green on the bottom or even red and blue. We tend to categorize things and leave them in their nice neat files ignoring the outliers that do exist. I cannot help but wonder why we do this, and if it really is bad that we do so. Everyone is proud of their own culture and the only way I believe that we can rid ourselves of these prejudice thoughts are to learn and love the cultures of others so that we no longer can judge others of their cultures for their cultures would be our own.

"The floor of the white man's failures is the ceiling of the white man's expectations."

In our society, although it has drastically changed over the years, African Americans and many other people of underrepresented races have been looked upon as being way under the superior "white man." This quote implies that the black men are only able, if lucky, to amount to what a white man's failures are. This is an awful quote and it bothers me in many ways-- especially because I've seen this to be false before my eyes. In high school I was part of a program at Columbia University called SPREP. This program accepted students from underprivileged economic and racial backgrounds. My program was mainly filled with students who were African American. My program made students who were accepted go to college leveled science courses every Saturday morning at 8 AM. Students traveled from as far as Long Island for this program, waking up as early as 5. Many of my friends in high school would wake up around two in the afternoon on Saturdays and by that time I had taken a Into to Neuroscience class and an SAT prep class. This shows quiet the opposite of "The floor of the white man's failures is the ceiling of the white man's expectations." These students worked ten times harder than any white student in my high school ever did.