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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SeanDub" data-source="post: 2889749" data-attributes="member: 568046">Alright, I read the first 3 pages and didn't feel like reading the rest before getting my two cents in.I am a white male living in South Carolina and I attend a public school with around 2,500 students, about 65% of which are African-American. I am 18, have lived in Sumter since I was 4 and have gone through the public education system from elementary school through high school. This past year I was co-captain of the number 1 ranked basketball team in the state and I am the class of 2007 valedictorian.That being said, my girlfriend of 11 months is black. She too will graduate this year, and is number 8 in the class (550 people). So it's not like anything I'm about to say is off-base, uncultured, or non-authentic.We are both attending Clemson University in the fall, I'm studying bioengineering and she is pre-med (wants to be a neuroscientist).All around me are the black kids who come from the hood -  they are the rest of the basketball team. They glorify ***, drugs, and gangs. It's a reality down here, as it is in most places. However, very few of them will make it out of the hood to go onto college or high paying jobs for a couple of real reasons: they can't afford it, they dont want to, they haven't worked hard enough in school, or they have too many discipline problems to be considered anywhere for college or a job.Referring to the reasons for the discrepancies between white and black/minority representation in college and higher-paying jobs, I think it is because of limiting factors that can and cannot sometimes be helped.Limiting factors that can be helped:These kids and I have had the same academic choices to make. Do our homework? Study for tests? Learn how to read? Go to class? Respect our teachers? Challenge ourselves? Look out for ourselves? Get the most we can out of each class? Some kids make a conscious effort not to make the right decisions, and that has nothing to do with race, that's a mindset that stems from what goes on at home, what you watch on tv, and if you let other things make decisions for you. However, being thugs and living in the ghettos is glamorized by hip hop culture which is obviously dominated by African-Americans.Limiting factors that cannot be helped:Home situations - My parents helped me with my homework, provided me with a safe place to live and study, and gave me money so I wouldn't sacrifice my schoolwork to get a job. Some kids suffer because of the decisions their parents made, and what's worse is that it becomes a cycle that they cannot escape.There are a lot of other factors that exist that affect the path a child will take, and I think that these factors are related to race. But I do not think they are the fault of that race, it is instead an enormous issue of our day that has no simple solution.I don't think that it's at all intelligent to say "white people are stupid and evil." Everybody fights for what they get to some degree, but for some, no matter how hard they fight, they can't do anything to help themselves because they're surrounded by an environment that is not the least bit condusive to their success. I hope that this will be able to change somehow over time, but I don't think its the fault of the blacks who are struggling nor the whites who are succeeding, because there are plenty from each race in each category. Those are my thoughts, hope I don't offend anyone, because I really was not intending to do so. Now back to the NBA Playoffs. GO SUNS!!!</blockquote>

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