Break away from education by the oppressor

If you are an African American, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are. If you live long enough, one day you will get a certificate, a plaque or a trophy. That is because there is no ethnic group in the world that hands out more trophies than black people.

My problem with that is many African-American award recipients are so-called highly educated people. The people with doctoral degrees get more awards than the high school dropouts.

The blacks who work for whites get more trophies than the blacks who own businesses or work for other blacks. The African Americans who are recognized by white media networks, newspapers and white scholars get more trophies than the black people who are loved and admired by the African-American masses.

We love dumb people.

Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the founder of Black History Month, Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

Woodson said in his classic book The Mis-Education of The Negro that every person of African descent should read multiple times that “if you are educated by people, Black or white, that are victims of white supremacy, you will hate yourself.”

The primary question that concerned Woodson was whether “educated” African Americans are actually equipped to face the ordeals that black people have to deal with or are they unconsciously contributing to their own undoing and demise by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor and the exploiter.

Educated African Americans will never embrace people in our communities who advocate for the masses of black Americans. The black man who teaches an awareness that is different from what the white man teaches will scare the “educated” Negro to death.

Before the so-called Negro scholars begin to hate and criticize me, take a look at our colleges and universities. Now 400 years after slavery days, race is still studied primarily as a problem or it is dismissed as of little consequence.

Some in our communities think the best black schools are the schools which are most like white schools. Instead of wanting professors and curricula that bring out the best in black students, it is not uncommon to find many schools, especially state colleges and universities with predominantly black students, want the same things that white schools want to have.

In 2013, just like in 1813, the inferiority of the black man is drilled into every African American student in almost all of his studies.

Don’t act like you haven’t heard, “Columbia University journalism students are better than Clark-Atlanta University journalism students,” or “Georgia Tech engineers are more highly trained than FAMU engineers.”

I know you don’t like for me to write like this but our schools and colleges must teach our youth how to address, deal with and correct  the problems in our community.

So, when I say we love dumb people, I don’t mean our educational leaders are not educated. I’m saying they are not educated in the best ways to generate progress and success in black communities. I’m saying that our schools are not necessarily the institutions for the free flow of ideas, strategies and methodologies that have to do with us. Our schools teach subjects and teach in ways that are acceptable to white people.

I will match my “education,” my experience and my love for making black people more aware with any journalism professor at any school, black or white, in the world. But you will never get a black school to allow me to teach a class or address a group of students because of fear that I may teach something the faculty doesn’t want me to teach.

I may teach students to be just as proud of people who work for black businesses as you are of people who work for white businesses. I may teach you to be just as proud of people who work in black media as you are of those who work for white media companies. I may teach you to be just as proud of black people who read and respect the writings of Carter G. Woodson as you are of the people who read Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.

Oftentimes I write in phrases that are ignored until you read or hear them months later in white media.

For example, I was attacked for saying President Barack Obama, in some respects, is like former President George W. Bush. Now that more people are being tapped and more freedoms are being denied in the name of “security,” the New York Times and others are saying the same things.

Even “dumb” people can learn something from black visionaries considered and labeled by our enemies as ignorant rabble rousers. We love dumb people but we really should love everybody and everybody’s views.