Thursday 10 May 2018

The Miseducation of the College Dropout

There is a point during the interview with rapper T.I. on The Breakfast Club, where his frustration completely overtakes him, "We talked for like FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS MAN!!" This is the pinnacle of his intervention with Kanye West and you have to respect the man for getting up and taking action in the face of the outcry during the last week (has it been a week!?!). T.I. heard what was up and went to the source to find out why.

I wasn't going to talk about Kanye West.

Full disclosure, I once interviewed him on a radio show that I worked on and this was just as "Through the Wire" dropped. He struck me as funny, talented and even those wires could not contain him. Damn that was eons ago. So why am I writing this?

Well weirdly, this shitshow which seems to be unraveling day by day has made me so grateful for the fact that I read and am surrounded by readers of varying appetites.

It is easy to blame his wife (loads of articles about that family and their effect on men...I'm not going there... I'm sure you can search for them) It's easy to blame the trauma of grief from his mother's death and mental health. He's not my friend, so I can't make that assessment. However, there's an ickyness in laying blame to the women in Kanye's life. He's a grown ass man, accountable for his own actions.


I surmise that Kanye in the last week is a culmination of what happens when you don't read.

There are lyrics where he talks about not reading, not getting it. There's almost an ignorant pride about the delivery. 

Accepting that this is a man who does not read, but is musically intelligent is uncomfortable but makes alot of sense in his cobbled statements.There are those who might recoil at the thought; that there is more to life than what you find amidst the pages but allow me to give an example of what I am talking about. 

My daughter is amazing and intelligent and dyslexic. I knew that the odds were high that she would be dyslexic as my father and brother are and my husband and his immediate family are too. From her crib days, I was insistent that she was spoken to in clear words, not baby talk. I read to her from the womb and continued. When she was interviewed for nursery, teachers could not believe she was as young as she was. I have struggled against the preconceived notions of teachers, who did not believe that "someone so well spoken could be dyslexic" She is articulate and able to communicate herself beyond her years and I know that part of this is because she has always read. I firmly believe that reading changes you, it helps you to articulate and ask difficult questions. 

Kanye reminds me of a child who has first discovered the existence of slavery. I remember first learning about the enslavement of my ancestors. I was painfully young, so far away from my current self that it's like an image in the night that I yearn to reach with outstretched fingers. This memory is vivid because there's a part of me that could not get it.

I walked to school on my own by then, my friends were white, Asian, black, boys and girls. I just wanted to know where my next Kola Kube was coming from. But even then, I was an avid reader. I was taught about slavery and my 10year old mind could not compute. Eventually, one of my classmates, Keith said, "I wouldn't be a slave, I would buss dem up!" We all laughed, mainly out of relief, because Keith was saying what we felt. Children feel invincible, especially in a world of Transformers (The movie wouldn't be out for another year...what a heart breaker that was).

The look of defiance burned on Keith's face. He was a boy who met every challenge with a fist. His look reminds me of the incredulous look on Kanye's face when he proclaims it's gotta be a choice...400years!!

My teacher, Mr Dandridge, proceeded to explain carefully and delicately, so as not to scare us to death about that reality. That it was death to strike back, many did and paid the cost. He explained carefully about the ideal of chattel, that there was nowhere to run, nowhere you wouldn't be chased, nowhere the system would not get you, maim you and beat you. All the days of your life. You know you've done a good job as a teacher when the Rastafarian parents of one of the kids comes in to shake your hand.
Mr Dandridge could only say so much in Herne Hill in the 1980's. Books filled the gaps; the horrors that he didn't dare tell a bunch of kids.

Middle passage, hobbling, rape...those horrors would curdle in my brain until I realized that escape was a pipe dream. But it also allowed me to see that the road between enslavement and freedom was not just a story of 400years of getting on with it.
Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass. 

Resistance is not to be taken lightly and the price is high. To speak of slavery is also to speak of those people who resisted at every turn they could. Through education, through great risk and sometimes through violence. At a time when education of black people was a revolutionary act, Kanye's comments dismiss that legacy. He speaks of being a free thinker, a mind unchained. It's an admirable pursuit but he appears to have discounted some truly revolutionary thinkers, people who dared dream in the colour of freedom and put boot to arse to achieve it.

Dismantling of slavery, mental and physical is a multi pronged effort. You have to fight on all fronts, in courts, on fields and sometimes against your neighbours. It drains everything to achieve something you can barely see.

This is why we must remember. From those ashes rose greatness. I'm here in 2018 and of course I'm worried about the rise of the Right and Populism and Racism. My worries are still about fairness and equality but I remember that others have come before me with greater obstacles and achieved so much more. It gives me fuel to keep fighting because I know what is at stake. So I read, I learn and I fight.

Kanye is a gifted man musically, but isolation is not the best means for intelligence to thrive.

Maybe if Kanye had read a book or two, he would know that.

"Good dude, bad night, right place, wrong time
In the blink of a eye, his whole life changed.
" - Through the Wire, Kanye West

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