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Morgan Allison, performing at WoWPS 2020 in Dallas, TX.
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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:02
common conversation between black child
0:04
and black mother
0:05
black child mama can we get some
0:07
mcdonald’s black mother do you have
0:09
mcdonald’s money
0:11
mother keeps driving past mcdonald’s and
0:13
that child eats what that child has at
0:14
the house conversation i wish i had with
0:17
my father
0:18
him morgan i want you to go to college
0:20
you’re super smart
0:21
me daddy do you have college money
0:24
conversation goes nothing like this and
0:26
i go to college with the money we didn’t
0:28
have at the house
0:30
136 000 of debt later the only thing i
0:33
feel like i’ve learned
0:34
after seven years of higher education is
0:36
one by and large negroes don’t graduate
0:38
college debt free unless they own
0:40
scholarship too
0:41
you learn how to hustle different when
0:42
you got student loans three working a
0:44
job making decent money with no need of
0:45
a degree will put you in a deeper
0:46
depression and after a breakup
0:49
where i come from there ain’t no such
0:52
thing as a college fund the only thing
0:54
we know how to invest in is words so
0:55
when they told me you can be what you
0:57
wanted to be i believed them when i
0:58
should have been asking
0:59
who finna help me pay to chase these
1:01
dreams so now i’m out here chasing
1:02
dreams that unbeknownst to me were
1:04
deferred long before i matriculated
1:05
through my first year of college
1:07
before i knew what matriculated meant
1:08
before i had any idea that our
1:09
counterparts literally had parents
1:11
paying for their college tuition out of
1:12
their pockets like
1:13
who has an extra fifty thousand dollars
1:16
a year to waste on some books
1:17
or to pay a teacher to teach me how to
1:18
form an argument like i ain’t been
1:20
arguing my whole life
1:21
like i barely had fifty dollars to pay
1:22
for my college application are you
1:24
trying to tell me that college is for me
1:26
no college is for the elite colleges
1:28
people who know how to network before
1:29
they step foot on campus whose parents
1:31
have friends where they can internship
1:32
and network
1:33
internship over the summer at their law
1:35
firm who can smoke weed and pop pills
1:37
all semester and disappear into a rehab
1:38
like nothing happened but let me miss
1:40
too many classes and my guarantee b for
1:42
black will slowly fade into a sea
1:44
every system we are a part of is
1:46
constantly telling us we don’t have the
1:47
right to learn how to read
1:48
no right to an education no right to do
1:50
anything except use this body to make
1:52
somebody else some money so now we are
1:53
here still chained to fields to keep
1:55
scholarships because ain’t no way
1:57
imma get the same education what was
1:58
invested in me because my people
2:00
only know how to network only know how
2:02
to invest in words and chances are their
2:04
vocabulary was limited because being
2:06
borderline illiterate seems to run in
2:07
the family
2:08
so words like subsidizing acronyms like
2:10
fafsa were foreign to me so before you
2:12
step to us and say go to college and
2:13
chase your dreams they’re gonna look you
2:14
square in the face and say who got me
2:26
you
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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The post Morgan Allison – Hstl Dffrnt (Hustle Different) [Video] appeared first on The Good Men Project.