wayne's world

I have been writing and wishing that the election of our new president would at least be a form of vicarious stimulation for many a folk to see and appreciate the value of intellect, of knowledge and more importantly of being informed and of the value of reading. Especially as it relate to young African American men and out youth of all races and creed. This is my greatest wish, superseded only by jones getting the economy right and back to par.

Especially since I am reminded that since forever, even the historic Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education, that the education gap between blacks and whites in this country has remained the same and in many cases increased. The case itself was based on understanding the premise of the Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, based on state laws requiring such segregation. Marshall argued on my mom’s birthday of December 9, 1952 that such denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, in particular as based on "separate but equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 .

To summarize the case, Black children were denied admission to public schools attended by white children according to their race albeit white and black schools were almost the same with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications, and teacher salaries. In conclusion the court decided that racial segregation in public education had a “detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority.”

Although this case ended segregation based on race, the achievement gap remains. It doesn’t matter if we speak of reading levels or standardized test, very little has changed. With respect to the LSAT for example, using cut-off score of 145, over 60 percent of black applicants will likely be denied admittance to law schools compared to 20 percent of white applicants. Even with respect to the SAT, the average SAT scores of black students in the early 2000s was 857 compared to 1060 for their white confederates.

I know that historically standardized test scores are not an indication of intellect and that they have been historically biased toward non majority students, but they are a barometer or the academic divide irrespective of economic status. When it comes to reading, math and science the gap is consistent across all grade levels. This may be one reason why drop out rates for African Americans are higher and why since the aforementioned Supreme Court Case in 1954, high school dropout rates of blacks has only decreased by about 3% while there has been no significant change noted for whites.

Now the reason I am saying this is because I just read an interview in GQ given by Lil Wayne. Now I know Wayne aint no role model, but the truth is that parents can’t pick and decide who their kids look up too. Although I accept him as a skillful lyricist, I was troubled when I read in his interview “no one can believe what’s written down.” He continued to say “if there was a book that said, there was this bum with a mansion with twenty bitches in it, you’ll try to use it and put it toward real life. That’s why I don’t write nothing down. That’s why I don’t believe the Bible, nothing that’s written, because nothing that’s written is to be believed.” When specifically asked "so you don’t believe in books? His retort was “there is one I read and get information from. The damn dictionary.”

Now I won’t pass judgment on Lil Wayne, but I must say, that I believe and was taught that education was the great equalizer, that if you wanted to hide something from someone of my color to put it in a book. True, I know kids aint reading GQ, but not to call Wayne and idiot, I think to assert that you can’t believe anything that is written is not productive, a representation of not assuming the collective responsibility that all of us, even rappers have to the general community from which they come. We all cannot be as fortunate to have our bodies tattooed like a national geographic map, or the gold from mines in South Africa in our mouths, or diamonds from Sierra Leone on our necks. But that’s Wayne’s World, not mine.