The Beginning

A few days ago, I walked into a conversation about race and higher education. My co-worker said that everyone attaining a higher education is put on a “track.” This “track,” he said, was unfavorable to Latinos and African Americans. Those groups are more likely to attain degrees which will get them lower paying jobs than their counterparts. Of course, I interjected with my experiences with higher education. I tried to tell him that Latinos and African Americans are not put on an unfavorable “track,” rather, they put themselves on their own track.

I insisted that it had more to do with the “stereotype threat,” and less to do with, what I called, a conspiracy theory about higher education. I argued that certain people go for what they think they can attain, and not always what they want. For some people, not just historically disadvantaged minorities, this means setting goals you think you can achieve.

As I thought more about this, I started to wonder if, and how, the ideas of “tracking” and the “stereotype threat” may have impacted me. If they’ve had any impact on my siblings. As a result, I decided to make this documentary about my brothers and me. The film follows us through our lives now, as we reflect on our childhood aspirations. We answer questions about what we wanted, and how we achieved it (or tried to). We talk about the role we perceive our race has played in lives. We also consider our current goals, and how we plan to reach them.

Picasa will allow us to share photos from our past and present. Youtube will provide footage that didn’t make the cut, as well as a way to continue to document our current endeavors. This blog will serve as a way for us to describe our experiences. Also, we welcome submissions for our blog on topics of race and the effect it has on people's everday lives. Answers.com allows you to ask us any questions you may have, as well as giving us the chance to ask some of our own.

Origins

The Black Track follows three brothers in their journey through life.

The second blog post on Blogger describes the inspiration for a documentary and its content.

The purpose of this project is to have an open and honest conversation about race, and its impact, or lack thereof, on individuals. Inspiration for this project came from three sources: The converstaion mentioned above, a story from NPR about sibblings perceiving family life in different ways, and my brother, Jr, wanting better relationships with his family.

The purpose of each service used is mentioned above. I purposely chose not to moderate comments, and I would hope to not have to moderate guests blogposts, though I would read them before posting. I understand that there is the possibility that unwanted material may show up, but I believe that if a conversation is going to be had, any less than desirable content should be included, with the exception of spam.

Currently, there is no dummy youtube content.