Maybe it's just me.....

"Maybe it's just me" - Chris Rock

Did you ever see the Chris Rock special Bring the Pain? One of the segments, he talks about people willing to place on everyone but themselves. He focuses on one celebrity in particular, mentioning how he blamed everyone for his troubles. After a while, Rock says this hilarious line "At some point, you have to look in the mirror and say maybe it's just me." You're wondering where I'm going with this and I have a story that fits this line.

One day at work, I was sitting and chatting with two co-workers. The background is that one is a black female, mid-40s, has 3 kids, and her oldest is a junior in high school. The other is a white female, early 50s, has 2 kids, and youngest daughter is the same age as me. Anyway, we were talking about the black female's oldest daughter and her post high school career. She mentioned her daughter was looking at colleges but her choices (Stanford, NYU) were pretty expensive. She didn't know how her and her husband were going to be able to afford school.

The white female chimes in about her daughter's experience, mentioning they went through the same thing. She made a point about the black kids in her daughter's class raking in like over a 100K in scholarship money. She continued saying that although they got the money, in reality they only needed about 70K of it. She threw in that since she and her husband made so much money, it priced their daughter out of getting scholarships. She said it was unfair that all the black kids got this money, don't need the entire amount while the white kids have to scrap for a few coins.

My first thought was to say "What the fuck are you talking about?" But you know being a corporate Negro, I gotta play the game, and channel my inner Puffy. I should also point out that the black female agreed with this lady's logic, which further had me going apeshit mentally. But I say all this to say, the white lady was blaming everyone instead of saying "maybe it's just me."

Calm, cool, and collected, I gathered myself to explain to both these ignoramuses what's really poppin in the (academic) streets. I told them what my mother made me do. She sat me down at 15, said straight up, I cannot afford to send you to a private college. So unless you are happy with attending a state school, I strongly advise you to start looking for scholarships. She dropped me off at the library one day and I found this thick ass book on scholarships. It had scholarships for everything. Left footed and right handed. CHECK. Black and Catholic. CHECK. Played soccer and maintained a 3.5 GPA. CHECK. Think Bojangles is the greatest chicken on earth. DOUBLE CHECK. Ok I made that last one up :-).

I spent my high school junior year applying to scholarships. Obviously I did not win every single one. But let's put it this way. My college tuition was 14K a year at the time. My scholarships totaled 18K. Do the Math and wonder where my money went. And the award for Greatest Hustla of all time goes to............

I simply asked the white female did her daughter research scholarships in high school. And of course, this dumb expression comes on her face, like I didn't know those existed back then. And like I said her daughter was the same age as me and had more access to better resources because she lived in a large city. So don't give me that bullshit that black kids are taking away money from these white kids. Because if I really want to pull cards, we can talk about a certain 400 years of strife that these white kids' descendants enjoyed ;-).

Today's Lesson

So what did we learn today kids? I like to use a good phrase from a very wise man. Winners win, Losers lose. Stop making excuses about what you can't do. And start making moves from what you can do.

Man I'm feeling myself on that above paragraph ;-). But like a rhinoceros, my speed is prosperous, and pure knowledge expands from my esophagus. Oh I did it again LOL