Brutally honest and witty, 'A Whole New Irving' gives young Black men room to express themselves

No

 

"Millennials have a bad rap. We’ve been called lazy, entitled and so forth – but in reality, I think most of us are exhausted. We’re trying to wade our way through life using rules that rusted over a generation ago"

Then why use those rules in the first place?

I'm not one to use labels like Gen Xr's or Millennials just for personal reasons I find them kinda corny. Struggle doesn't know age or generations.

If we know (especially for Black people) that degrees don't guarantee a job or a job in the field of study or being paid your worth in the fields compared to less qualified whites, why put your self in 10s of thousands of dollars in debt then complain when you already knew what the rules were?

But....I completely understand that many if not most of life lessons need to be personally learned.

 

I know Gen Xers and Baby Boomers give Millennials alot of shit. Full honesty, I do too sometimes but I do feel sorry for them especially for millennial men and especially millennial black men. They are truly a lost generation. They've been fucked over by the decisions and mistakes of the previous two generations. In broad terms Baby boomers, especially black baby boomers partied and got high from 1960s and 90s and left my generation to clean up the mess. Many gen X people just picked up the stupid behaviors of their parents. Party and get high. The way the American economy is set up you now young people are saddled with at least tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they come out of school it's difficult for many of them to get jobs even of they do get jobs they can't afford to leave home, buy cars etc. Many older people can't afford to retire or are voluntarily decided to work way last retirement age which shrinks opportunity for young people. Opportunities for young men are even worse because many male dominated jobs are going away or have gone away due to globalization or automation. The jobs that are left they gotta compete with women or immigrants employers know they can pay those groups less and exploit them more. Black men are the last to be highered if they're even highered at all. If white America had the unemployment rate that young black men have there would be an armed revolt. If I was coming up in this day and age I'd be really pissed.

 

^^ Besides the degree, the main thing in getting hired in anything mostly is the connections. Who you know, not what you know. Even if you have the skill sets you need to get your foot in the door, which is best done by having someone already inside who knows you or knows of you, open the door for you.

 

But if you slept through college and barely passed, and your connections from college were guys who did the same thing, would you be getting those referrals and have been able to build up those connections and have that hard work to show off for it's own merit? Referencing the storyline here assuming that if he barely got through then the same could be said for his cohorts.

And in not just referencing the original post storyline, but in general, marginalized communities are going to have the least access to those already inside the room to 'open that door'. If not for those connections, how would your work be? Do you ever work for mostly white people? How often? If you did not have those connections you have, could you have gone out and made them(as the guy in the story will have to), and could you do so(I am being very general here) in not only the 'black community' but in the larger(white dominated) community as well?

And I do think millennials have it harder-the economy has structurally changed and the middle class is shrinking faster than before. There are fewer opportunities-more people fighting for fewer positions IMO.

Also I just read today about how millions of IT jobs are going to be lost because untold millions of overseas workers are learning coding and other IT stuff. Once they are able companies will outsource much of their IT work and save big$$$$ and will only keep the highest trained and qualified workers that the will have to keep. No decent paying sector of the economy is really safe from this now. Also advanced technology and robotics will replace workers as well. IT might end up being the new 'manufacturing' or 'retail' of the economy.

*I quickly got promoted in my(now former-probably blessing in disguise)job because the head of a department saw me and I worked with him before years ago and even though we did not like each other, he knew I was a good worker. I am holding out hope for something for the city of Columbus since both of my brothers work for it and so does my SIL-again I hope those connections can help my ass out.

 

Excellent points. I touched on this before but from my observation a lot millennials, males in particular have been coddled. I blame "helicopter parents" for not teaching their kids the importance of self reliance and the influence of feminism. I see many younger people who can't do basic shit like make a bed, cut grass, change a tire, or tie a tie. Many seem to not want to get their hands dirty or do any physical labor. As far as not having any skills, part of that is the fault of the American education system which no longer teaches skills and trades but only emphasizes book learning and going to college. The school system was like that when I was in school. Many shop classes were being discontinued. Gym classes, art, and music is no longer taught as well in Alot of schools. Many good paying jobs require skills. The path to leaning skills has been severed from formal education. This mainly hurts alot of young black males form poor and working-class backgrounds. Many working-class white males still have access informal networks to learn trades. Young men with no skills are forced to get low paying service sector jobs where they gotta compete with women and recent immigrants. Many these young men end up in the underground economy which often times is criminal in nature which of course leads to contact law enforcement and the prison industrial complex.

 

THIS!!!!

There is so much I could say but not enough time! Things have really changed. I have an extensive CV and did research, internships, earned scholarships, had leadership roles, paid work, volunteered, etc in college but that did not matter when I applied for over 100 jobs within 6 months (some leading up to graduation and some post-grad). Millennials have it tougher! The economy has changed but while taking a 3rd stab at going into the medical field this year, I hope that I will be able to have more ideas about how to be more entrepreneurial as well... while still trying to figure out this whole dating thing. lol.

 

THIS!!!

As a 28 y.o. male, I know good and well how much there is an emphasis on teaching kids to pass exams instead of them actually learning the material. I know how much there is of a lack of emphasis on essential life skills in school. We spend so much time on the pythagorean theorem but we don't know how to balance a checkbook or other essential life skills (and other skills for jobs). I have a brother ten years younger than me and I hope that things go much better for those in his cohort than they did for me when it comes to finding work. Sometimes I feel like telling him to get a trade like HVAC or barbering. Quite a few people who go to trade/vocational schools can make anywhere from $40k-$90k (gross pay) depending on what they do and how much overtime they put in.

 

well, this wasn't too bad at all! that Irving guy is hilarious and a good actor(plus, he is easy on the eyes). I wouldn't be surprised if this was picked up by some network in the near future. Now, on the topic of Black gay web series creating a storyline as interesting as this one without flashing their genitals on the screen.

 

Here's my TL; DR take on this whole outsourcing overseas of our IT jobs: it's not going to happen. It's an incredibly difficult undertaking for American companies and the return on investment isn't just there.

My observations in my relatively short career building software projects is that companies didn't realize how cultural and geographical issues were going to affect all this "cheap" outsourcing to overseas code farms. Communication is hard, especially when you have to learn the customs of a foreign culture(My Indian professor in college said that most of the time IT consultants in Asia default to saying "yes" for any project even if they know they wont complete it with the time and budget constraints). Maintenance is a nightmare since code quality is usually subpar. There are plenty of unemployed STEM graduates, enough to fill the majority of jobs. One of the main problems is that companies are now really cheap and don't want to spend money training them for these jobs. it's all about maximizing profit for the fat cats in Wall Street.

In brief, The IT industry isn't facing technical skill shortage, it is facing human issues.

COLLEGE IS NOT TRADE SCHOOL. College is supposed to expand your horizons, open your mind, be a place for you to learn how to learn, network, research, be in a place that inspires you and all of that kumbaya stuff.

If you want to learn a specific trade (something like web development or Computer Networking ), there are better and cheaper ways to get there including the plethora of free or affordable internet resources, bootcamps, MOOCS you name it.

I think the issue is that most kids are not in college for neither expansion of mind nor learning a trade, they're just there for a very expensive 4 year luxury vacation. Actually, most kids have no idea why they are in college.

Back to outsourcing: It is true that you can get a $3,000,000 software project done in India by some IT consulting shop for a quarter of the price. It would be nice it they could just package it in a nice thing that you can run and be done with it. The only problem is: that's not how software (or really any engineering)projects work.
Usually the outsourcing happens at the "Implementation" and "Testing" part of things. but because this is a cycle, some consulting shops introduce bugs and errors so that they can keep projects going for longer. So something that was supposed to be built in 6 months...here we are, 10 years later and $20 millions in the hole because you wanted to outsource and "save money".

Domestic outsourcing isn't spared either. Case in point: the initial rollout of healthcare.gov...a scandal, I tell you!

I believe companies have realized that outsourcing isn't what it's cracked up to be. So, I've seen most of them now either (1) pay visas for foreigners to come fill jobs or (2) open engineering/IT offices overseas. Neither of which are exactly easy pizzy, especially given our current political climate.

 

my opinion is that the skills you are supposed to come out of college with are the transferable ones: critical and analytical thinking, interpersonal communication, writing, etc which can be applied to any jobs. Of course there are some notable exceptions like Nursing , but the general idea was that you could graduate with a Bachelor's in Applied Mathematics or even Psychology and become a software engineer with on-the-job training. I've seen this happen a lot.

If I wanted to just be inspiried and expand my horizons, I would have just spend $10k traveling rather than $60k on school.
Well, yea of course that's another way to do it

You have to keep in mind that the price of college spiraled out of control, mostly in the last 15-20 years and universities have been around since 809 AD. Oldest university

It's true that the definition of "college" (or university) has evolved, but I still have some glimmer of hope that they are still places where Google gets invented, cancer gets cured, and folks like Ta-nehisi Coates find their calling.

 

I agree with both @Nick Delmacy and with @Infinite_loop -ideally college should be a combo of learning how to critically think, and learning a specific career as well. All colleges are not the same and should not be the same so the ratio will also vary.

Now what we really don't need are the schools where they are actually going in reverse on both lanes. College should not be a 'retreat' from the real world in the form of safe spaces, political correctness run amok, inumerable problems with micro-aggressions, etc. along with courses and degree programs in "The Intersectionality of Misogyny, Gender Roles, and Incan Basket Weaving Expressed through Interpretive Dance."

You better be prepared for all kinds of micro-aggressions in the real world. And accompanying this is a new stifling of free speech-ideas cannot be debated and even fully negated if all ideas cannot be discussed. This newish fringe element of the far left(and this is coming from someone who has always been pretty far left)is very disturbing and is not going to help the students or the institutions involved. The only people who should really be involved in this are those who have the luxury of being able to do so-and most students do not have that luxury(read luxury as $$$$$$).

* @Infinite_loop I may have overstated myself given that I had just read about it and you are correct it will be slower and more specific than I stated but I think certain things like machine learning technologies, etc. will have a big impact. My main point is that NO field of study or sector of the economy is immune to being severely displaced at this point-the pace of change is sort of accelerating at an ever accelerating rate. It makes the mind reel.


*and I will acknowledge and as you all very well know, it is always going to be harder for blacks in nearly every way, and unfortunately this seems it will continue for the foreseeable future given what we are dealing with in the US right now.

 

Well, for once, I'm gonna be the least loquacious dude in this thread. Suffice to say that I see where @Infinite_loop is coming from, but he's a young brother that knew what he wanted and how to get it before he got to college. Millenials are no different than any other college generation in that respect. Ever since WWII, we've had idiots who waste money trying to "find themselves in college." It was less worse with Boomers because there initially wasn't as much student loan money and aid to sustain an aimless college path, so people got hit by reality earlier. Once we started subsidizing more college, it became easier for people to avoid real life by just hanging in college. If you haven't learned critical thinking skills by the time you go to a four-year university, you are wasting everyone's time and money, especially your own.

So, I'm mostly with Nick on this. Companies want to know if you can actually INNOVATE and CONTRIBUTE to what they are doing. Paper (diploma) just gets you considered or looked at. Unless you're in a career where licensing is required (doctor, lawyer, professional engineer), a college degree, as Nick points out, is no substitute for building a personal network and reputation.

There was always this historic trend in the black community between the Booker T. Washington/A&M/Black Business school (HBCUs) and that black bourgeoisie WEB DuBois mentality of "knowledge for knowledge's sake." I've mentioned many times before, I am squarely in the Washington/Marcus Garvey/Marva Collins camp when it comes to black education, not the Obama/DuBois camp of trying to integrate with bullshit Ivy League degrees.

We're reaping the seeds of abandoning the Booker T. Washington / Mary McCleod Bethune school of black training and adopting that white liberal SJW, "I need a safe space", Bernie Sanders-everything-should-be-free, college-is-my-extended-high-school mentality.

I hope to teach international business and entrepreneurship at an HBCU or African university one day, because abandoning the Washington/Bethune ideals and adopting egghead DuBois ideas have totally fucked up black people. One ironically "good" thing about Trump and so many white folk showing their true color is that HBCUs are making an enrollment comeback:
Students flock to historically black colleges where they feel welcome

I have to balance that by also saying, you should strive to get into the best university for what you are trying to accomplish in life. HBCUs are fine, especially for black students who may have struggles with academics. If you want to be an astrophysicist, however, and Cornell or MIT is the best place in the country for that discipline, then those universities should be your academic achievement goal not the HBCU.

 

I still, very much so, firmly stand by my point.

Commoditizing college is the main reason behind skyrocketing tuitions and student loan debt. We now have public education institutions, paid for by our own tax dollars, investing in hedge funds and paying football coaches salaries three to ten times those of the best business/medical school professors.

 

...I hate to break it to you fam but 99.99% of them niggas don’t even look at other Black dudes.

 

OMG... This...

Oh they do activism...anything related to feminism, trans, Pride celebrations and HIV (non) activism.

 

Wow stereotype much, Nick and Ock? “Kyle Barker”, DMV? Lol

Id hate to see CA become the black gay equivalent of some thug nigga saying, “Only fags/white people read books...”

If anything it’s sad that most of my intellectual convo with other black gay men, even here at CA, are usually the ones UNDER 40, and a lot of gay black men OVER 40 are stuck in some Peter Pan syndrome shit. To be honest, IRL I’d probably have more in common with @ColumbusGuy and @jpo because most Americans, any race and including black folk over 40, don’t have shit going on between their ears.

I applaud the hell out of all the young bros like @NikR @African King @Infinite_loop @Artistic Arsonist who further their education. This is the 21st Century and we need people who are prepared to deal with America’s secular stagnation (that’s another one of those faggy college book concepts popularized by Obama’s boy Lawrence Summers). I don’t look down on folks without a college degree, but in 2018 and beyond your prospects are gonna be pretty dim when Amazon et al can replace mofos EVEN WITH college degrees with AI.

I instantly took a liking to @DreG as a young black dude who could converse about the music of Frank Zappa or the art of Bastiat. “Black shit” is more than video games, comic books, web series, etc. I look down niggas over 40 who can’t intelligently discuss the Harlem Renaissance, the Dow Jones industrial average, or think the beginning and end of black politics is Barack Obama and doesn’t know shit about Barbara Jordan, Richard Hatcher, Coleman Young, Shirley Chisholm or Percy Sutton (and since we got young bruthas here in the sciences, I’ll throw in the names of Georgia Dunston, Ronald McNair and Michael B. Anderson).

Monday morning diva mic drop.

I’m outtie....

 

Its like this is your first day on the site

 

No but it’s morning and I haven’t had coffee or punched a Trump supporter yet. I’ll check back in later...

 

LMAO

 

You went OWF!

I have met black gay men like the ones you mention here and it is unfortunate. All black gay men who have gone to college are not a monolith though.

 

Who is this guy?! You might need to link us up for a night of shooting pool or somethin'! lol but SERIOUSLY.

 

You feel like these dudes only go after White menz??? @Champagne_Papi

 

I’ve had my coffee, we cool ...