Surgeon says 'slave mentality’ leads to low achievement in young black males

Tom Pelton writes: "Black doctors have a special responsibility to speak out against the 'culture of violence' and anti-intellectualism in America that encourages failure in young black men, a prominent physician told a conference of medical students yesterday....

“'You all are on the pathway to becoming dominant people, and you can change the culture.... The culture of violence is the current health emergency. And it’s not just that, it’s the culture of nonachievement that says studying is "acting white,”' said Cornwell, an African-American. 'That’s a slave mentality to be a nonachiever because it’s "acting white." It’s not polite to say that, but changing the culture isn’t going to be polite.'

"Cornwell, a professor of surgery who operates daily on gunshot victims in East Baltimore, was a featured speaker at a conference called The Missed Education: Examining the Shortage of Minority Men in Medicine.”