Used to work with a black dude from Nigeria who gave me a cuppla interesting perspectives on America, working and blacks.

He'd been here about 4yrs at the time, worked full time at night, was goin to college carryin almost a full load during the day and was a pretty sharp dude. Though 20 yrs my junior he'd been to many more places in the world than I had and I found him a friendly and interesting person to talk to.

He told me he loved America for many reasons and haddn completely decided if he'd ever return to his native Nigeria to live. What he told me was the attraction here was more than just the comparative quality of life, but the American people and their spirit that was his main attraction.

One night we were talkin about work and he said somethin that really floored me when he said "You Americans work hard, in fact you work harder than any other people I've ever seen!". In honesty I'd never given that idea any thought, after all, having grown up here it seemed to me we just do what we do. He said "You Americans work more hours to provide for your families, accept the idea of working overtime as a way to work even harder to get ahead and I really respect that about your culture".

Another night he related how little he felt in common with blacks here and that he had no black American friends, which really raised my curiosity, so I asked what he meant by that?

He said most all the blacks he'd met here, and most especially the younger ones, had no respect for themselves or each other, nor seemingly for anyone else either. He told me they were coarse, crude, lazy, seemed very spiteful of each other, but most especially white people and seemed to feel as if they were entitled to a living and most everything life here had to offer here, yet had no desire to work to achieve these things, that they felt as if they were somehow owed them, which he said he had no way of understanding as they didn seem to fit into the model of American society as he understood it.

He said when other blacks he met would call him "brother, bro or brother man" he found that offensive as they certainly weren't his brothers and that essentially the only thing they really shared was the color of their skin