Where we come from

Watch this video:

http://videos.komando.com/2009/08/29/

And then read the following:

My purpose in the following is to relate the foregoing video to our situation here at NCCU.  I rub a lot of folks the wrong way, and I honestly do not intend to, but I came up in something like  the Chandler family- success was expected.  There was never any pressure or pushing, it was just assumed each of us would find a way to kick the world in the butt.  Most of us did.  Now, I know that many of you also came from environments like that, so I am not at all bragging about my pedigree.  But the point is that most of our students do not come from the Chandler family.  WE are their Chandler family, and we  have to: 1) inform them that it is their solemn duty to kick the world dead square in the butt, and; 2) help them devise a methodology to do so.  Right now that way is mainframe, but we do not in the least have to limit ourselves to that.  But the fact of the matter is that mainframe is giving these students worldwide notoriety, and attention is a great motivator to succeed.  There are other areas we can have the same level of success, because it’s the approach that matters, not the specifics of the technology.

My Aunt went to medical school in 1953 in spite of threats to her mother- a teacher in Montgomery, Alabama- to try to dissuade her from such foolishness.  Two of her younger cousins also became physicians, and from them six of the following generation also became doctors.  These are black folk in Alabama, mind you, in the 50′s, 60s, and 70′s.  My great uncle- my grandmother’s brother- was insane enough to finish Columbia Law School in the 1920s, and it took the good white citizens of Alabama 15 years before they could figure out a way to disbar him.  No problem, his nephew, my uncle Solomon Seay, used a state law that said that the state of Alabama would pay the tuition of any Negro who wanted to go to professional school as long as they did not do so in Alabama.  Smart move, ya’ll (guess they figured there would be danged few Negroes to go to school).  My uncle, educated in law by the state of Alabama,  ultimately wrote the briefs for the Rosa Parks case, and whupped the US govt in the Tuskegee syphilis case.  In other words, he used the very system designed to enslave him to liberate himself and his people. I call that ironic.  His son, Quentin, is now a full partner in a 200 or so partner law firm and making tons of money (wish he’d give me some).

Here’s my point:  I can’t help the way I am.  It’s in my DNA.  I cannot be quiet, and I cannot no try to win   with my dying breath.  It’s how I was reared.  And I don’t know any other way to teach my students than to be prepared to   slaughter their opponents intellectually.  It’s the only way I can play the game.   If that is out of place at an HBCU, someone needs to let me know, because I’m just warming up…