The "acting white" thing in the African-American community always pissed me off something fierce.
Timbuktu is slang for something really far away in the English language. What's interesting is that it is slang for something really far away in a surprising number of languages. Why? Because at one time, people traveled from all over the Muslim world (which extended from Spain to China) for a chance to be educated at the
University of Timbuktu. In its heyday it was the most prestigious institution of higher learning in the Muslim world.
It was probably the first institution of higher learning that we in the modern world would call a university. It's not just the world's first university, it's the oldest continuously operated university. It's fallen on hard times (they're teaching on dirt floors), but it's still operating. The Boko Haram attacks certainly didn't help.
Whenever American TV bothers to cover anything in Africa, they always seem interested in northeast Africa (Egypt, and some of the ancient civilizations that bordered Egypt). I have to imagine that many African-American kids wonder if Africans from the places their ancestors came from did anything significant.
They built the first fucking university, dammit. That's what they fucking did.
That's why it's so horribly ironic to see so many African-Americans give credence to that "education is a white thing" nonsense. Education -- particularly higher education -- very much is part of their heritage, so this attitude is horrifyingly ironic given that people who say those things say it because they're ignorant of their own history.
Yeah, I know. It's debatable what you would call the "first university." Timbuktu certainly lacked some features of modern universities, but it certainly is among the schools worth considering for that title.
The whole thing just pisses me off. It makes me want to cry when kids say "Education is a white thing."
Fuck.
