"Not Everyone's A Damn Elitist"

I've had it with the suggestion that everyone's an elitist. Not everyone's a damn elitist or at least not everyone tries to be.

It's my supposition that individuals can with their thoughts, words, and actions create an elite class. Individuals can allow people to feel that they are greater than and those same individuals can begin to feel that they are less than, when they suggest to people that how they live, how they act, or how they are, has enabled these "elite" people to change, or better yet to recreate "the rules of the game". Of course they become all powerful and all knowing when folks agree to play by these new rules, which are in essence "their" new rules. Don't get it twisted, yes it's true, enablers can if they so desire, make an elite class by elevating people into this unimaginable realm of greed, excess, and superiority. Thus is born a class of people, a class which has all of the power, all of the money, and in some cases all of the respect, that we think is due the all-powerful and the all-worthy.

The other day someone said turning to the college educated for input would make a project come off as even more elite. Hold up, is everyone whose college educated an elitist? Is everyone out of touch? Are all college educated people uppity? Are all college educated folks overly confident? Are all college educated folks unable to connect with a broad spectrum of folks?

Hold up chick, in the words of T.I. "You don't know me." Nor do you know my story or that of million of others who've been able to obtain a college education.

Then seeing concern on some of the faces of the people who I'd say likely 99-100% of which were college educated said, "I'm not suggesting, we dumb it down." Then what are you suggesting by having a conscious decision to lessen the extent to which college educated folks are contributing?

"Not everyone's going to college," she later added.

No not everyone's going to college. But we shouldn't limit their options before they even have an opportunity to evaluate for themselves the direction of their own lives.

I resent the shortsightedness that comes from an assumption that by going to college campuses, and that by soliciting the input of college educated individuals, it will automatically lead to hyper-intellectualized, non-representative explorations of our and by our, yes I mean black, experience.

I'm just a little ticked about with this chick's obvious failure to look at the ability of the college educated to via their own experiences, their own realities, the paths which led them to "college", "the middle class" or "upper middle class" lives, contextualize our experience.

Being college educated, being middle class, or the appearances of being either, does not mean you're trying to be or see yourself as being elite.

As a recent college grad, but better yet as a person, I'm unprepared to let you tell my story without me.

Don't assume my skin color, my educational attainment, or my appearance says anything more than it does.