Derrick Reed is currently a junior attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, hailing from Philadelphia, PA. Majoring in both African-American Studies and Psychology, his primary interests center the history of black people within the African continent, and throughout its’ Diaspora. Interested in how the African and African-American cultural narrative have “blended, adapted, and in some cases dissolved“ while confronting Western ideologies- Derrick has developed a passion for culture and society. As an aspiring academic, Derrick wants to teach history and sociology at the high school and collegiate level. Derrick vehemently believes that fundamental change “can only occur through education- not legislation, petition, or protest.”
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ReplyDeleteI think its matter of being realistic.... The community cannot play a role until the community, as a whole, decides that education is important to them. Partially, an individual's education is often marked, or reflection by the rate in which the community rejects the individual. Consequently, the goal also involves disengaging youth from typical endeavors that the community may be interested in such as partying, "chillen", superficial thinking, etc. So as much as we would be interested in getting the community engaged, I feel as if the levels of disdain for the community serves as a marker that "we are doing our job" as liberators, educators, etc. However, first and foremost, the external community cannot be involved unless the educational community becomes unified. In a perfect society, the community plays as the educator! However, because the community is often marred by paternalistic behaviors, it is often the school's responsibility to reverse, or exacerbate, its curses.... If you ask any individual in the black community who has attained "success", he/she will tell you they got it through education- not his community... However, given the current state of affairs is some neighborhoods, they lack power and influence, so something does have to be done in order to give it to them....
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