Consider this quote from Bill Gates:
The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
I totally agree, except I would change "The world" to "I". These are great words for people doing nothing, and feeling sorry for themselves. Whether you agree with the above or not, I have noticed that people that suffer from low self-esteem have something in common with another type of person. That would be a person who suffers from too much self esteem.
I got to sit in on part of a Minority Access seminar a few weeks ago. This is an organization of mostly blacks who focus on getting minority children to have better access to higher education. One of the speakers, had spent most of her career traveling the world helping minorities with various goals. She was exceptional in her drive and pursuit of education and helping others. She was making some very good points about what needs young people have today.
One of the points she was making was that black kids tend to think they're 'all that', and waste their lives away in idleness and worthless pursuits. A problem facing the black community is this lack of desire in many young people to do anything productive. This is due to a feeling of entitlement to the things they want, but maybe not so much to the things they need.
So, white entrepreneurs are telling kids to do something worthwhile, if they want to feel good about themselves. At the same time, black teachers are telling kids to stop talking about themselves and how great they are, and go do something worthwhile.
Race really does not have a bearing on this issue. It just happens that the two poles of low self-esteem, and inflated self-esteem tend to gravitate to white kids, and black kids respectively. Larry Elder mentioned surveys that verify that black kids tend to score higher on self-esteem tests than white kids.
The point is this: Worthwhile action is what balances out self esteem. It's one solution to two different problems. This is what gives a human his value.
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3 comments:
Joellyn, I truly liked this piece. It is very insightful and made me think.
Yeah, I really like this post also. I think your concise conclusion is made more powerful by its brevity. And still more so by understanding which pursuits are the ones that are most worthwhile to you and me.
Interesting post. I always find it interesting to hear what both sides of the 'fence' have to say about community racial issues. I'm a black female, who was raised in a black community, then moved to a white community, and then married a white man. I'm not biased of one race's issues over the other, but I do know that part of the problem with poor education and black children lies with parental irresponsibility.
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