I'm against assimilation. Yesterday I went to a Modupe Dayo celebration(cultural appropiation aside here) and we all enjoyed being able to take pictures in our stoles and to talk to the other graduates and we had an especially stirring speech by a now medical researcher, who had a 2.5 GPA at the end of the year, and I felt really encouraged as I had been down on my self about my grades(above a 3.0 but not setting the world on fire) and generally everyone cried, the African students yelled out the countries their friends were from, and we had a great drum and dance team entertain us. Now, if we were all happy shiny rainbow people who didn't cause separation or whatever(although an Indian girl who was one of the students honored in the celebration was like, what, it's for blacks?) we wouldn't have been able to have the ceremony with the libation or with us singing Lift Every Voice and Sing- to assimilate means that you can't have your own culture, you have to become white. And to tell the truth- I just want to be treated well like a white person. I don't want to give up my own culture, especially for nothing in return.

I notice that when people of color try to appease white people, it never really works. They still aren't treated the same, and whites still don't change their minds. So it seems a waste of time to take away a source of strength for oneself. Not to mention, we can fix our own problems with group unity, but if appeasing whites is the goal, we can't say, help black youth, because you know, we're not being shiny happy rainbow people.