Funnily enough, the dude that made me think about the situation more deeply was Frederick Douglass. In fact, upon looking into it more, one of his famous quotes was, "I would unite with anyone to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
I had a friend in high school from Nigeria. Let's just say he didn't fit in well at my school. He played basketball but couldn't jump, he was too "ethnic" for most blacks at my school, and so on. Super nice guy. We played on some terrible basketball teams together. But he wore ankle weights for like a year straight until he could dunk. It was crazy.
We're still friends, and he runs a charity that literally drives around feeding homeless people at night. Doing something like that takes some real cajones. He even posts videos so people can see what the people and situations are actually like in some areas.
By comparison, there was this one dude on the track and cross-country teams that was black and "proper" (like preppie type dresser), fairly smart and all, but always rubbed me the wrong way. Almost never talked to him.
Turns out, he practiced track because he was a long-time drug runner. Had oodles of guns, was in multiple gangs, you name it. Even had an AK-47 LOL. This was a private school I went to, btw. Shitty, but private. Like $3000 a year when I started there LOL. It's like $18000 now, and I ain't that old.
Unfortunately for me, out of sheer boredom, I mainly hung out with the "shenanigans" crowd. It was hard for me to fault people that generally just want to have fun. Not always the best or smartest people though. But it gets REAL easy to sense people who have generally good intentions from those that don't.
Funnily enough, the dude that made me think about the situation more deeply was Frederick Douglass. In fact, upon looking into it more, one of his famous quotes was, "I would unite with anyone to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
I had a friend in high school from Nigeria. Let's just say he didn't fit in well at my school. He played basketball but couldn't jump, he was too "ethnic" for most blacks at my school, and so on. Super nice guy. We played on some terrible basketball teams together. But he wore ankle weights for like a year straight until he could dunk. It was crazy.
We're still friends, and he runs a charity that literally drives around feeding homeless people at night. Doing something like that takes some real cajones. He even posts videos so people can see what the people and situations are actually like in some areas.
By comparison, there was this one dude on the track and cross-country teams that was black and "proper" (like preppie type dresser), fairly smart and all, but always rubbed me the wrong way. Almost never talked to him.
Turns out, he practiced track because he was a long-time drug runner. Had oodles of guns, was in multiple gangs, you name it. Even had an AK-47 LOL. This was a private school I went to, btw. Shitty, but private. Like $3000 a year when I started there LOL. It's like $18000 now, and I ain't that old.
Unfortunately for me, out of sheer boredom, I mainly hung out with the "shenanigans" crowd. It was hard for me to fault people that generally just want to have fun. Not always the best or smartest people though. But it gets REAL easy to sense people who have generally good intentions from those that don't.