Ernestine Johnson is glorious in her spoken word performance of ‘The Average Black Girl’ on the Arsenio Hall Show.
Ernestine recounts when boyfriend’s mother told her she was acceptable because she’s not ‘The Average Black Girl’ … and she’s told she’s not ‘The Average Black Girl’ because “When I speak, I pronounce every syllable.” But Ms. Johnson interprets this label in a very different way.
A Yale Daily News reporter provides the essential background for this video decrying the starkly racist policies of UCLA, one of the United States’ largest colleges.
Last week, Sy Stokes and 11 other black male students from UCLA uploaded a YouTube video of a spoken word poem called “The Black Bruins.” The poem attacks the university for its lack of racial diversity, specifically its incredibly small percentage of black male students. Overall, only 3.3 percent of the male population of UCLA is black. Of the 2,418 entering male freshmen, only 48 were black.
Young people around the world are speaking up about education and careers. We need to listen to them because – this is their age. The age of information. And they know, much more than we give them credit for.
No dejaré que el resultado de un examen decida mi destino (subtitulado en Español)
Right now, there is a kid finishing parents evening in a heated discussion with his mother,
Saying why does he have subject subjects he will never ever use in his life…
And she will look at him blank eyed, stifle a sigh, think for a second,
And then lie.
She will say something along the lines of,
“You to get a good job you need a good degree and these subjects help you get a degree.
We never had this opportunity when I was younger”
And he will reply, “but you were young a long time ago weren’t you mum?”
