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One needs to excel as a black person way beyond the minimum requirement expected of a whites with similar or lower qualifications and to constantly prove in the "predominantly white " society to hold on to ones job however lowly and overqualified a black person may be and even those born and raised in predominantly white controlled societies like Britain , Austalia, Canada and USA face these hurdles. A black person born and raised in these societies is even more disadvantaged because he assumes that being say born in the U-S-A or the UK and as a citizen he is at "par from the starting blocks' like a fellow citizen of similar abilities who is white and this lulls him in a sense of "comfort and self -delusion" about how the predominantly white society perceives him and what expectations they have of him re: acadamic achievement and how far one can go carreer wise .
As one grows up and is educated or works within na predominantly white society all the overt and subtle forms of racism as discrimination are exposed to the black or other person of color who is competing with whites for jobs. Any black person who pretends that he has not "experienced racism " or hurdles based on his race then is naive, in denial or is not observant enough to see what going on around him.Yes black people both from Africa and those born in predominantly white countrries can and do succeed but their journey is littered with many obstacles and closed doors just because of who they are by race:"black"
The african born and educated in africa and migrating as an adult has some advantages in that he has experienced racism upfront and looks at western society and white people through "rose colored " glasses until this is shattered when he comes face to face with the idiosyncracies of living in a predominantly white societies that just barely tolerate racial minorities even those born and bred in those countries and going back centuries. Having his on culture , family oriented disposition and having lived in a society which is less affluent the typical migrant from africa like the ones from Asia are motivated to succeed and persevere despite the enormous sacrifices they have to make to stay and even barely survive in the Western world.
Dear Swellango,
I do not disagree whit what you are saying. I would just like to add some of my own experiences to complete the picture. I am white and so is my husband. We both hold doctorates from renomated dutch universities. We are both fluent in English, including writing. We accepted jobs in the UK some six years ago, mainly to avoid being jobless in the Netherlands. We worked in the academic world. We both had to start at the bottom of the career ladder again. I was able to partly reclimb that ladder after five years of hard work and not so nice treatment by my UK peers. My husband, the even more accomplished scientist, wasn't. So we decided to return to the Netherlands. My husband now holds his first permanent job in his life (he is 44) and I run my own small bussines. We don't have a TV, car or fancy mobile phones as we simply cannot afford them. We don't miss them either!
I wish you all the best, fairytale78
Firstly, I strongly suggest not to use the word/term "Black" anymore. Not even an educated white man might call us BLACK.In some countries we do have to work harder than the locals to achieve the same as them. In Europe people look at figures and results, if your diploma is high and with good grades, than you have a higher chance to be hired. Even higher than the locals. The weakness of the African emigrants is the language, they speak the pigeon English and that is not accepted in Europe.
What an African should do before he/she comes to europe is to lear to speak American english better than an American. He or She should not have high hopes, i
Unfortunately people who come to europe and want to start a new life and dont have money to start their own business they have to start most of the time from the bottom of the economic society. This means that the jobs they can have/ find are hard working jojobs and they are not very nice to experience...Better to unite with others and start a business together or create a service which can be of use in the local society. The most important is that they can survive in their new environment and start taking chances and create them also without being too illegal orientated
What should white people call you?
