Come Back, Chuck D

"I don't claim to be a preacher
Not paid to be a teacher
But I'm grown
I try to be a leader to the bone
Never could follow a man
Wit' a bottle
He's a baby wit' a beard
Not a feared role model
And they ask me where I got it
I get it from my pops
Wit' a man in the house
All the bullshit stops.~"Rebirth", Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black (1991)

In my eighth grade Language Arts class this afternoon my students and I were looking at a few selections of poetry which were created as the result of one groups dissatisfaction with the status quo. The obvious touchstone illustration for most students had seen or heard about was the music and poetry of the 1960s. Granted most of them were born in 1992, so there connection with it is surrealistic, based only on movies, television and consists primarily pf stereotypes of hippies as perpetuated by the media. The example does at least create a bridge of sorts to the past, a bridge I know that my Humanities teaching partner will likely attempt to further solidify for the with some select protest song lyrics.

I, however, am a product of the late 1980s/early 1990s (I graduated from high school in 1987, undergraduate school in 1991), and as a throw away comment I asked students if they had heard of Public Enemy. While most had not heard of the band, once I began rattling off the names of the members of the group, they all immediately recognized Flava Flav from his cartoonish VH1 persona. I remember a different Flava, though, one who, along with Chuck D and Terminator X chronicled the plight of black America, and even more powerfully, extolled the virtues of education and knowing your history.

We (white, black and purple people) could really use Chuck D now…

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!