"We can't make an African American white."

“WE CAN’T MAKE AN AFRICAN AMERICAN WHITE.” © 2015
Michigan State Sen. Marty Knollenberg

Samuel K
The Black Silent Majority

When a dog barks, you’re not startled or surprised. That’s a dog’s nature.
It’s the same with a racist, and the comments expressed by racists. Enter Marty Knollenberg.
He essentially said funding education in predominantly black areas was a lost cause because, “We can’t make an African American white.” First, he implied that the pursuit of education and excelling at it was solely a “white thang.” Next, he implied that Blacks pursuing an education to better themselves wanted to be white as if Whites have a monopoly on wanting to improve themselves.

Malcolm X once put the vicious cycle affecting Blacks into perspective. He said:

“When you live in a poor neighborhood, you’re living in an area where you have to have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers.

“When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education. With a poor education, you can only work on a poor paying job, and that poor paying job enables you to live again, in a poor neighborhood.”

But despite where we live, we can still get a good education. We just have to work harder. With just an eight-grade education, Malcolm X really educated himself using a prison library. He started by studying the dictionary and moved on from there.

With the Internet, we can supplement our education when the schools aren’t all they could be. Can’t do fractions or algebra? Don’t know Excel, MS Word, or how to type? You can learn all of that, and more, on the Internet.


So, it’s not enough to repudiate a racist or racist comments. We have to keep our focus and pursue excellence in every area. We have as much potential as anybody else. And despite what Knollenberg said, if we want to emulate someone and their success strategies, it shouldn’t be Whites. It should be Indian Americans and Africans who come here. They have put a premium on education, and they are high achievers in every area. If they can do it, we can do it.