Comedian urges Hispanic students to stay in school - washingtonpost.com: Los Angeles comedian Ernie G has a message for first-generation college-bound students in Washington.
'No matter how much education you get and how much success you achieve, if you grew up in the barrio, if you grew up in the 'hood, you will always have a little ghetto in you.'
The message is not meant to discourage. It's meant to show that college and ghetto can coexist.
The self-described Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Russian, French, Catholic Jew (G stands for Gritzewsky) is the spokesman for the Washington-based Hispanic College Fund. He's also a comedian who is moving from the nightclub circuit to the high school circuit so he can encourage the country's fastest-growing group of high school students to stay in school and go to college.
One in five Hispanic teens drops out of high school, according to U.S. Education Department statistics. That's about twice the rate for black students and more than three times the rate among white students. Only 12 percent of Hispanics ages 25 to 29 have a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 31 percent of the general population, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center.
