About 15 years ago, back in 1993, I was on the Lecture Committee at Virginia Commonwealth University. No, we didn’t lecture people…I think it was just a poorly named group. We actually were a committee of students who gathered together to choose speakers to come to the university and talk to us. For a short while there, I was the chair and vice chair of the committee. We brought Malcolm X’s daughter, Atillah Shabazz, Alan Ginsberg, Nadine Strossen, Chuck D and more to the university to speak to the students. The fringe benefit was we also got to take these folks out to dinner and pick their brain. Of all the folks we picked, I’d say Chuck D was the most popular. And while I did get to take him out, because of his popularity, I didn’t get to say much….there must have been 10 people taking him out, instead of the 3 we had who wanted to escort Alan Ginsberg.
Anyhow, 15 year later, it seem Chuck D is still relevant….and now, even the University of Richmond wants to hear what he has to say, and invited him to their leadership forum. Something I can’t say I thought I’d ever see. Actually, his comment seem remarkably similar to what I heard about 15 years ago. Almost identical, I’d say. I guess we were pretty cutting edge back at VCU in 1993.

“It takes real minds and real people to do real things,” said the rapper/author/activist/political commentator/producer and advocate for the Internet.

“Americans are short on geography and history, especially black folks who don’t know who we are or where we come from,” he said during a visit to the University of Richmond’s Jepson Leadership Forum yesterday.

Knowledge — especially history — he said, is power. But using it may make one unpopular.

“We’re in a country that doesn’t give props for intelligence,” he said.

“Young, intelligent people stay quiet. In the last 15 years, the bully who used to get a dunce cap is getting a crown and is rewarded.”

Commercial radio and television are responsible for a lot of the dumbing down, he said. Corporations, he said, profit by keeping consumers ignorant. But he believes they can overcome it.

Education is the solution, he said. “Study black music, and you’ll get black history by default.

If you take a look at UR’s Jepson Leadership Forum’s past lineup, there are lots of great events that they’ve recently held. Next up:

Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Wednesday, April 2, 7 p.m.
Jepson Alumni Center

The first black woman to be appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law is the author of numerous articles on democratic theory, political representation, educational equity and issues of race and gender. A leading voice for political reform, she advocates rethinking race and class and changing the way we look at affirmative action. She is the author of Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy, co-author of Who’s Qualified? and co-author of The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. Book signing