Compelled to Excel
Posted on May 18th, 2006 by Tariq Nelson
Vivian Louie, a Chinese-American wrote a book called “Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity among Chinese Americans” that tries to
Filed under: Children's Issues, Practical Solutions, Race
I think that, if you look at the history of great people, it is full of hard-workers who had to struggle and there is a benefit and blessing in struggling. The young people of today, rich or poor, want instant gratification and do not want to struggle, and thus mediocrity is all they can ever hope for in whatever form that takes. Young Asian-Americans who struggle, South Asian Muslims included, tend to succeed; but I think a key component for the African-American Muslim to this whole strategy is population-clustering.
Umar,
Good point in that many young people are less hard working.
Population clustering is already being done with African-American Muslims in Philly, New York and New Jersey to some extent. The problem is that beyond the clustering and establishment of a masjid, nothing is done. The masjid is often seen as the end and not the means to more.
You will find that, unlike other Muslim ethnicities, very few of them own the businesses in the neighborhood and rarely is an Islamic school or any other Islamic infrastructure established. This is often a problem for families with children. Many would like to stay near a certain masjid and help improve the situation in the inner city, but with family, one often has to move to an area (often in the suburbs) where they will have access to Islamic Schools, youth programs, etc. Here in the DC area, that means moving to Virginia or Maryland.
As salaamu alaikum,
You might want to check out this story about excellence being nothing more than just hard work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html?ex=1148097600&en=f8b1bddcec05ddcc&ei=5070
Abu Abdir Rahman
wa alaykum as-salaam
I looked at the article, and there is no doubt the place of hard work in excellence, but Allah has given some people more abilities and gifts in certain areas than others.
He mentioned Michael Jordan who anyone who followed basketball knows was a notorious hard worker, but had he not been given size (he is 6' 6" tall) we may have never heard of him.
Likewise, anyone who has taught children for any length of time knows that they are given varying mental talents.
Yes hard work is definitely part of the equation, but we certainly can't discount what Allah has given
Tariq wrote:
Why not look into why bad habits from before Islam are given good “Islamic” labels. Laziness and Under-achievement become “Asceticism” and “Sacrifice”
They also go from hanging out on the street corner in jahiliyyah to hanging out in the masjid in Islam, with little difference
I was thinking about this recently. The self segregation with African Americans perpetuates the massive low expectations in our community. My husband is self employed and some African Americans Muslims comment they can't believe he is still in business and profitable. Its like they've seen failure so much that they think that is all we are capable of.
Whats helped us is that we have a very diverse group of friends so we see what the possibitlie are as far as business success and acheivement. Also I read lots of business books and listen to business shows on talk radio. I have been exposed to so much that I never knew growing up. Basically the jist is that you have to be patient, willing to sacrifice and work hard now in order to achieve success in the future. Basically what Islam teaches. Insha Allah these are things I can impart to my children so that they know that there is nothing they are not capable of acheiving by the will of Allah of course and alot of hard work.
Um Abdillah:
I guess you could say they are "Compelled to Fail". Other Muslim cultures do a large degree of segregation as well, but don't have that kind of cultural baggage to pull them down. I'm not sure it is entirely intentional in the case of African-American Muslims.
African-American Muslims look for an affordable place for a masjid, which is often in "the hood", and they will congregate around that place and stop there rarely taken initiative to revitalize the neighborhood and open businesses etc.
A group of Pakistanis, for example (even poor ones) can open a masjid, congregate around it, and soon you will see a school and business all around that neighborhood owned by them. Ditto other cultures who will uplift a similarly downtrodden neighborhood, but rarely will you see this with African American Muslims.
And finally, having diverse friends often allows for a lot of "cultural borrowing" to happen where one can get other ideas and perspectives on everything from solving problems, child rearing to cuisine.
I looked at that link to the Cosby speech, why does he have to make that comment about the men. I mean Morehouse is right across the street and I happen to know that the men tend to be very successful and constitute the a large percentage of Black doctors, businessmen etc. If we keep having this low expectations of Black men, its going to just perpetuate low achievement.
But the fact that the overwhelming majority of Black college graduates are women is going to have serious ramifications. I’d be curious to see how you view creating an AA Islamic community given this type of educational desparity. What is this going to mean for AA Muslim women? The way I’ve seen it handled and the marriage sustained was that the women had to put their careers on hold or significantly downsize and married men who earned less than they could. I dont know how many Muslim men can handle a woman making more than them. The big issue is the rearing of children which is best done by the mother, so are many AA Muslim families never going to have a chance at economic success given these numbers. Is it just he qadr of Allah?
Its pretty complicated….
I dont know about that Bro. Tariq. Most AA Muslims want to improve the areas around the Masjid but I think the knowledge and resources were not there in most cases. I know in Philly, UMM started many projects and began to clean up the neighborhood in South Philly. But they had the resource of Kenny Gamble (Luqman Abdul-Haqq). Atlanta Masjid has always had a couple of businesses around the masjid.
Honestly I dont think Immigrant communites are doing all that much better given the money many communities have. There is still not much done to bring the youth to masjid and they are bogged down with alot of back home politics.
Yea, Bill Cosby was hard on the men. I know that he doesn't discount the fact that 40,000 AA men graduate from college each year, but the fact is that AA women are still way ahead of the men in that area.
And the thing is that this is carrying over to the Muslims, because we are seeing that the AA Muslim women are beginning to be more educated and having the same problems finding suitable husbands. In my mind, they (Muslim and non-Muslim) need to start "exploring their options" with men of other ethnicities and not settle.
As for AA Muslims, yes they TALK about doing that, but it just doesn't happen for the most part. I'm not saying that it NEVER happens. Yes, there are some noteworthy examples in Atlanta and other places, but I still have yet to see a thriving AA Muslim neighborhood on par with a Devon street in Chicago, for example, where you see rows of businesses and other stuff.
I'm not saying that the immigrant communities do not have problems. This is why all the Muslims really need to come together eventually instead of importing more people from "back home" and moving more toward "balkanization".
The ideal, in my mind, is that we need to all come together somehow and learn from each other through "cultural borrowing" where we can learn from each others' experiences, integrate them into our culture, and eventually melt into one American Muslim identity that would be a hybrid of many other Muslim cultures.
But that can't be done, in my opinion, as long as we ignore problems and ignore exactly what makes us different. If we begin to understand the reason for differences, then we can start to solve the problems of separation and actually go about the business of coming together.
As long as we sweep it under the rug, it won't happen.
And certainly Allah knows best
I’m love this great website. Many thanks guy
Why not let people retain much of their own culture but embrace the best of each culture?No reactionary separatism nor reactionary assimilation either.