“The Educated Indolent”
By Tonantzin Maynez Castro
There exists a vast difference, yet uncanny similarity between the illiterate and the functionally illiterate. An illiterate is one who cannot read. The term “Functionally Illiterate” is a politically correct term for lazy-ass Americans who have the ability to read, but choose not to. Michael Moore elaborates in his book “Stupid White Men,” (referring to the United States) “So if you live in a country where forty-four million can’t read - and perhaps close to another two hundred million can read but usually don’t – well, friends, you and I are living in one very scary place. A nation that not only churns out illiterate students BUT GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO REMAIN IGNORANT AND STUPID is a nation that should not be running the world – at least not until a majority of its citizens can locate Kosovo (or any other country it has bombed) on the map.” This is the sad, but true fact of this first-world nation we live in.
The term “Functionally Illiterate” basically puts the illiterate on the same intellectual level as the functionally illiterate. The only thing that really separates the functionally illiterate from the illiterate is that the functionally illiterate consciously decide to regress to a state of ignorance by choosing not to read. Perhaps a more precise definition for this sect of society would be the “Educated Indolent.”
It is the year 2002, from Africa to Afghanistan, there are people fighting and shedding blood for the privilege of an education. On my edge of the earth though, there exists a generation of television-educated sheep. Blessed with the opportunity of a free public education in the United States, a crop of functional illiterates sits still in front of their wide-screen televisions; remote control in hand, believing the spoon-fed myths of the illuminati.
In the book “Stupid White Men,” Michael Moore presents some disappointing statistics about African Americans in the United States; “Only 4 percent of the African-American population have a graduate degree (compared with 9 percent of whites and 15 percent of Asian Americans).” He also states, “About 20 percent of young black men between the ages of sixteen and twenty four are neither in school nor working – compared with only 9 percent of young white men. Despite the economic boom of the nineties, this percentage has not fallen substantially over the last ten years.” It seems the revolution of the sixties has come full-circle. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. laid down their lives to set Black Americans free in the civil rights movement. Sadly, if either of these heroes were to resurrect today, they would surely be ashamed of the dismal condition of their people. As well, in the Autmn of 1969, Angela Y. Davis, a professor of Philosophy at UCLA, and leader of the Black Panther party, declared herself a communist. Due to the fact that she was a Black woman asserting her first amendment rights and urged young college students to do the same, Ronald Regan and Max Rafferty demanded her termination from the university. Against UCLA’s recommendation, in June of 1970, the regents dismissed Angela Davis themselves. On October 13, 1970, she was arrested, and charged by the U.S. government with three capitol offenses, to silence her resonant and empowering voice. In her book “If They Come In The Morning” she states,“ My life is at steak in this case – not simply in the life of a lone individual, but a life which has been given over to the struggles of my people, a life which belongs to Black people who are tired of poverty and racism, of the unjust imprisonment of tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters.” Each of these heroes knew that education was the key to the advancement of African-Americans, as well as every other disadvantaged group in the United States.
The article, “They Don’t Read,” states; “ Their ignorance is the primary weapon of containment.” This article spoke specifically of Blacks in the United States. The reality is that here, at the dawn of the new millennium, African-Americans are keeping themselves illiterate, functionally illiterate, and ignorant. Keeping people of color from acquiring knowledge was at the top of the agenda for the forefathers of the United States. It wasn’t but a few generations ago that it was illegal for African Americans to read or write. Over the course of American history, Blacks won the right to an education, and the civil rights movement of the sixties then integrated the public school system. As a result, excuses for illiteracy, and functional illiteracy are running short these days. As Emerson states in his ‘Self-Reliance’ essay, “Infancy conforms to nobody, all conform to it…” Therefore we, as a people are conforming to a state of illiteracy, ignorance, and mental slavery by not exercising our right to the intellectual and spiritual freedom of our people, which can simply be accomplished through education.
The travesty lies in the fact that European and European-Americans are no longer the greatest threat to Blacks; but fellow African-Americans. In Michael Moore’s book he asks, “Why all the focus on rap lyrics? Why doesn’t the media print rap lyrics like these and tell the truth? …’People use yo’ brain to gain’ – Ice Cube
‘A poor single mother on welfare…tell me how ya did it’ – Tupac Shakur…” Though these strong Black men may have thrown a line of empowering lyrics into a song or two, it is their lives that tell the greater story. Furthermore, Michael Moore’s pity-party for rap music is dancing its final “ buglaloo.” The White and/or Jewish record company directors use unassuming young Black men as instruments to project deadly stereotypes upon the American public, at the expense of the African-American community.
These young black artists are perpetuating terminal perceptions of the Black community. For example, Ice Cube “used his brain” to make a movie called “Friday.” In this movie, he is a young black man in his early twenties, lives at home with his family in the “hood” of Los Angeles. He, on this particular Friday is out of work because he was caught stealing from his place of employment. The day evolves with him and his friend, another young black man, a habitual pot smoker, “Smokey” getting high on Marijuana throughout the day.
Tupac Shakur made references to his mother being a member of the ‘Black Panthers’ organization. On any one of Tupac’s albums however, he constantly, and consistently refers to women as “hoes”, and his fellow black men as “niggas.” I don’t think Angela Davis dedicated her soul to the movement, to be misrepresented by a perpetrator like Tupac Shakur. Sadly enough, Tupac was murdered in Las Vegas, a rumored victim of the feud between East coast and West coast rappers. To add insult to injury, he was shot and killed by the hand of a fellow black man.
As Emerson states in his “Self-Reliance” essay, “Perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind - although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much fact as the sun.” The reality in the examples of Tupac Shakur and Ice Cube is that each of these men projected deadly images of Blacks to the world. Weather it be either young man replacing the enslaving device of an iron wrist shackle with a Marajuana joint; he is perpetually enslaved. Where the slave-master’s branding-iron once seared his ancestors’ skin, the taut chocolate flesh of Tupak Shakur’s muscular chest read, “THUG LIFE.” And weather either young man lipped an empowering lyric between barking the words “Niggas,” “Hoes,” “Chicken- Heads,” or “Bitches,” it is them who must take responsibility for their hand in the conspiracy of the world’s genuinely dismal perception of African-Americans today, for it is as real “as the Sun.” Therefore, how must we advance ourselves (through this smokescreen of unlikely perpetrators) when even their own men are on parade as thugs, and refer to their women, who in the motherland would have likely been esteemed African Queens, as “Hoes” and “Chicken-Heads?”
In a letter a wealthy plantation owner, Willie Lynch wrote on how to control the slaves on his plantation, he described how to methodically induce dissention and distrust among the slaves, eventually causing them to love, honor, and trust only the (white) plantation owner. He wraps his letter up by declaring, “My plan is guaranteed, and the good thing about this plan is that if used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful (of one another).” The painful truth of Willie Lynch’s plan is that it rings 100% true, hundreds of years later.
The power elite, otherwise known as the illuminati make up only 3% of the population, and yet control all the media, politics, and the economy of the United States. The reality is that not only are Blacks perpetually distrustful of one another, but the power elite of the United States has every ethnic group within it’s borders in constant fear of Black men. As revolutionary activist James Baldwin stated in an open letter to Angela Y. Davis, “The American triumph – in which the American Tragedy has always been implicit – was to make Black people despise themselves. When I was little I despised myself; I did not know any better. And this meant albeit unconsciously, or against my will, or in great pain, that I also despised my father. And my mother. And my brothers. And my sisters. Black people were killing each other every Saturday night out on Lenox Avenue, when I was growing up; and no one explained to them, or to me, that it was intended that they should; that they were penned where they were, like animals, in order that they should consider themselves no better than animals. Everything supported this sense of reality, nothing denied it; and so one was ready when it came time to go to work, to be treated as a slave. So one was ready when human terrors came, to bow before a white God and beg Jesus for salvation – this same white God was unable to raise a finger to do so little as to help you pay your rent, unable to be awakened in time to help you save your child!” Therefore, not only is our president George W. Bush a puppet of the illuminati, but also are Ice Cube, Tupac, and every other person of color fueling the fires of dissention within the Black community, economically disadvantaged, and non-whites.
Sadly, as this country was built on the backs of slaves, the grim reality is that this country‘s economy continues to thrive today on the backs of slaves. Our government clandestinely capitalizes on slave labor for the production of clothes, cars, fruits, and vegetables. Poor immigrants from Asian and South-American countries are the slaves of the new millennium. America’s dirty little secret is the sweatshop laborers, and migrant workers living in deplorable conditions, and working for only a few dollars a day.
There is one vast difference though, between these two disadvantaged groups. Asians understand that education is the key to advancement, and are generally disciplined to apply this principal in their lives. South Americans however, are generally content with blue-collar work, and are much slower to take to education than Asians. I theorize that the socio-economic chasm between Asians & South American immigrants will grow wider with time. This will be a direct effect of each group’s divergent educational patterns.
Though the powers that be have mandated a social death sentence for the people of color in the United States, it is up to us; the sleeping giant, to put down the remote control, rise up from the comfort of our sofa, and be counted. In November of 1970, in a letter to Angela Y. Davis during her incarceration, James Baldwin stated; “The enormous revolution in Black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America. Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.” He adds, “”If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own – which it is – and render impassable our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” Therefore, if we as people of color are aware of the political conspiracy of the illuminati against us, we must make ourselves active channels of civil rights justice. If we continue to allow our ass to conform to the couch cushion, and our mind to conform to any one degree of ignorance, or indolence, it is us who now tighten the knuse on the lynch-rope the white elite has placed around each of our necks. The great artist/poet/author, Gil Scott-Heron stirs the spirit with his “black fist raised in song” as he chants; “The revolution will not be televised, it will not go better with ‘Coke,’ it will not ‘fight germs that may cause bad breath,’ It will put you in the driver’s seat. The revolution will not be televised - The revolution will be no re-runs, brutha’…The revolution will be live!” It is high time we take heed of the master plan, which our conquering forefathers implemented, and resist the enslavement of our minds and spirits. The only way to ultimately progress is to beat “Whitey” at his own game. By this, I mean we must take the American school system by storm, and educate our children with ourstory, rather than his-story! In the words of the great American poet, Jim Morrison; “They’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers; gonna win yeah, we’re takin’ over, c’mon!”
Works Cited
Anonymous “They Don’t Read”
Davis, Angela Y. (and other political prisoners) “If They Come In The Morning”
The Third Press, Joseph Okpaku Publishing Co., Inc. 1971
Doors, The “Strange Days”
Elektra/Asylum Records 1975, Elektra/Asylum Records 1985
Emerson, R.W. “RWE Selected Essay – Self-Reliance”
NY: Bantam 1990
Lynch, Willie “The Willie Lynch Letter”
Moore, Michael “Stupid White Men”
Harper Collins 2001
Scott-Heron, Gil “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox”
BMG Music 1970, BMG France 2001