Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / BBT #12 Snippet | Black Men Are Leaving — and the System Built It That Way
Transcript
- Thomas: We have a serious problem ⁓ in the community, in the world really, because this is a travesty for everybody. Not a tragedy, but travesty that is happening. And that is ⁓ black ⁓ are leaving college campuses. corporate pipelines and sibling institutions at rates that should be a national emergency. Right? Let's talk about this, because it's not that people are choosing to drop out. I'm sure some people are probably hearing that. Good. that's their choice. Fits them, right? Fits the ⁓ kick-dog holler. That's not the question here. It's systematic, systemic. However you want to break it down. I know people love saying systemic. Malcolm: Yep. Thomas: Systematic, it's not just how the system operates and it's not just the system. It's both, it's systematic and systemic, right? So the questions, like we need to understand, we need to ask what if they're right to leave, right? People just hear, ⁓ black man aren't going to school, blah, blah, blah. It's bad rep, but I don't know, man. think personally, I don't know a whole lot. I'ma be honest, I don't know. Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Thomas: too extreme a lot about that. just know that like from my experience and what I've seen is it is a lot more women in schools than men in general. I don't know what it is outside the black numbers or black community numbers. I really don't even know those like just off the top of my head. mean, I got some stats right here, but I'm talking to you guys, Keeping it real. women have also like historically been over-educated and underpaid. So it's like... Malcolm: You Thomas: One is overly present in school, not overly, but like heavily present. And the other one is underrepresented in school. and corporations and all these pipelines, that doesn't mean they're not getting to it, just they're not getting into it that way. I don't know, man, what you think? Malcolm: I think, um, he made a lot of good points, man. think it's, um, like, I really don't even think the numbers do it justice, bro, because I think it's just one of those things that, like, I'm not sure if we talked about this before, but it's like, I know, I'm even trying to sound like a, like a dude that's like just so narrow-minded that he only understands, like, you know, situations from a man's perspective, but I think a lot of the times this gets overlooked. because of the fact that there's just like this. almost like kind of like ancestral view on like men and what their worth is and how it's directly. I was actually talking to this a couple of my friends actually, my boys, ⁓ Jalen, ⁓ Cap, Aaron, Peyton, we was all having a discussion about this book we was reading. And that's kind of like, it was a, it's like the book's actually called, it's called the, believe it's called The Will to Change by, let me see, what's it by? Yeah, it's called The Will to Change by Bell Hooks. a book about men, masculinity, how patriarchal culture harms men by teaching them to repress emotions and stuff like that. yeah, think a lot of this is like, this kind of just like this, this patriarchal view that kind of ties men and their worth directly to what they're able to provide. and how they kind of show up, whether that's through wealth, physique, finance, all this stuff kind of ties into the fact where it's like we see these numbers about men dropping out of college leaving these pipelines and these spaces. Nobody ends up caring because it's just like, okay, you're a man. You're not supposed to pout and cry and you know when stuff doesn't go your way like you just have to figure it out and you know dust your knees off, dust your shirt off and get back to work. There is no period of like soaking or you know feeling like it's... It's the word against me, but I mean, like the numbers, like I say, they speak for themselves though. Like, men are, like, it's less black men than ever going to college, being a corporate spaces. And we saw that even when we went to college, bro. Like, we kept going in our class, we were like, oh, hold on, that's not a lot of us, bro. We were mechanical engineers, which is, I like to think that's a, I would imagine that's like a male dominated field. But on college campuses, it doesn't feel like that. You would not think that. And I'm like, it, Thomas: Shaken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't think that in class. Especially, yeah. Malcolm: And it's like more, all more power, like, you know what I'm I am like bigger than that. I do think that like women, especially black women should like, I feel like they should be able to climb that totem pole as easily as we are and get that same type of like equality and treatment and access because it's like, I've seen so many studies out there where women and men and even more exacerbated on, you know, black men and women, but it's like they can hold the same title, same position, same background, same education. And black women will still get paid like kind of like less dollars on the hour for the exact same level of work. That's a crime in itself. Thomas: Mm-hmm.