Why Black People Suffer

African people in America suffer almost every social ill there is to suffer. Most of the analysis on our suffering deals with the consequences of our sickness, but never gets to the reasons why we suffer. I will give a few reasons why African-American people suffer. The first problem that we have is that as a group we have embraced a hatred for intellectualism. Most African-American people frown on thinking as an exercise for personal improvement. We have become the only ethnic group that does not support its intellectuals. If you ask the average African-American to name 5 intellectuals, they will struggle, or name some popular people that are smart. Every smart person is not an intellectual. Intellectuals think about situations as well as concepts completely in order to provide understandings of these things to their group. This brings me to the second reason why African-American people suffer. We do not measure each other on a proper scale. We asses each other’s value based on the amount of physical things that we amass. We do not factor in any intangible characteristics of a person. We do not even factor in the quality of what a person produces. The third problem of the African-American is that we do not view time properly. We reject any proposition that does not provide instant gratification. African people have been on earth for millenniums. African people have been traveling to this territory now called the United States for centuries. Yet the modern African-American cannot seem to think beyond the date of the next pay check.