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Showing posts from March 13, 2011

Becoming the other: But, failing to return to cultural origin

I really wanted to succeed in the legal industry and thought that becoming a successful lawyer meant hat I had to be good in my professional role playing, every step of the the way. These are the words of a successful lawyer who has become a partner in a successful white law firm. In order to be successful in society one must be able to role play—act like the people who are already considered successful or the people who have the power. Hence, role playing can be a required path to becoming somebody or it can be a chosen path because you just want to be like someone else. The evidence of racial role playing was quite evident in my early childhood environment. Blacks did things that white people did because this is what a normal society would accept. At my high school in Houston in the 60's, most of the beauty queens were high yellow. Back then, In a black person's mind, high yellow was the equivalent of being as closest to white as possible. Trying to be like someone else