If I Were A Poor Black Kid....

            I just read the article “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” by Gene Marks (http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2011/12/12/if-i-was-a-poor-black-kid/) and I agree with some of what he said, but also disagree. Marks’s outlook on a poor black kid’s opportunities is very positive, but my question is if that is truly how it is? Marks did make the comment that most kids from inner city schools don’t know how to use the internet as a resource to help with their grades because of insufficient parenting or teachers. However, Marks failed to acknowledge the fact that in order to get to some of the places that offer computer services, a ‘young black kid’ might have to walk a long distance or take the bus alone. And as a nine year old kid trying to get to the library to read a book not provided at the school, or use the internet for help with math, walking to a library by her or himself in the inner city isn’t the safest situation. So, while I agree with Marks that opportunities are present, those opportunities aren’t as easily attainable as Marks leads us to believe. Another thing that greatly bothered me about Marks’s article is that how is being a poor black kid in the inner city any different than being a poor white kid in the inner city with equal disadvantages? It’s not.

            After becoming slightly agitated with Mr. Gene Marks, I read an article in response to his “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” spiel by Jenée Desmond-Harris (http://www.theroot.com/buzz/if-i-were-poor-black-kid-pushback). He was also befuddled by Marks’s need to affiliate a poor kid in the inner city with dark skin, and backed up my opinion that it’s not as easy as Marks wants to believe it is. He said how Marks “presented some now-infamous ideas for how he would personally rise to success if he suddenly found himself young, African American and poverty-stricken.” The response is generally sarcastic towards Marks and his ingorance to the reality of inner city schooling. Desmond-Harris made the point a kid who could barely access a computer would have no idea how to “’become an expert at Google Scholar’ and regularly peruse the CIA World Factbook….[and] get himself into a top school, and [then] ‘succeed.’” Altogether, while he made some good suggestions for a poor kid in the inner city who is familiar with using the inernet, Mark’s article was completely ignorant and did not consider the reality in the inner city.

Wrongful Convictions

         In 1994, a woman was found raped and murdered in Chicago. The police did not find any suspects for four months when they came looking for Terrill Swift. The police had Swift sign a piece of paper that they told him stated he was innocent of the crime, but was actually a false confession. After spending his life in jail since 1995, Swift was let out in January 2011. New evidence was presented with new technology that allowed the police to connect DNA from blood on the crime scene to a serial rapist and murderer. After around just one month of being let out of jail, Terrill Swift came to my school.

         The first thing that struck me about Swift was the way he talked and presented himself. I anticipated being faced with someone who looked like they had only been out of jail for a month; not very good clothes, not aware of social queues, nervous and maybe even emotional. But Terrill swift was none of those things; he was well presented, he spoke of his life with a steady voice, never hesitating to share what was going through his head when everything was going on. It surprised me that he laughed at the appropriate times and while he didn’t take his story lightly, he shared it without editing it which is sometimes the hardest thing to do.

         I found it very interesting when someone asked the question of what was the most difficult thing to adjust to when he got out of jail and he answered with communication. While he had mentioned the struggle at first of finding a job, he did not name it as his biggest difficulty. I saw what a great person he truly is that something like communication, which we take advantage of every day, was so important to him. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea of walking out of jail into a world completely different from the one I remembered. While he was in jail, the cell phone industry boomed, digital cameras went to a whole new level, TVs in HD emerged, the entire world of technology became something Swift never could’ve imagined it to be, and he missed all of it. That was the part that bothered me most about what happened to him; everything he missed. He missed the college experience, the ability to get a job without having to explain himself, to start a family. While he was able to go to college in jail and he can start a family now, his wrongful conviction robbed him of his time to live life.