Noah TA has an insightful post about internalized racism. Often I see blacks holding ourselves up to impossible standards and criticizing black people too much. And that just tears our community apart. Can you really work with someone who believes you can't succeed in school if you show any inkling that you might be a black person? Can you gain the confidence to move forward if you can't be proud of our past struggles and our present achievements? To me, doing the best you can under difficult conditions is worthy of praise. I see the black community different than most do. I see my grandma volunteering hard in the schools, I see my mom trying to improve the educational system one class at a time, I see the black business community trying to grow an economic base, and I see many black students working hard in school and graduating. We have problems, but instead of hiding in denial or using scapegoats that we have made up out of whole cloth like some people I could mention, we work to solve them. Once you have a positive vision of yourself, you can move forward.