Tolu Olorunda

Our great intellectual grandfather, Du Bois, had a point. For what does it profit a Black child to be instructed by a teacher who knows nothing about his/her cultural configuration? Worse than lack of knowledge, I believe, is the resistance to any opportunity whereby a learning process can take place. For many White teachers, who…

-Mumia Abu Jamal, “Huey: A Memory,” 2009. An activist once declared that “the educational system was structured to carry out a political agenda,” and, judging by recent history, it sure seems so. The statistics are unapproachable. Grimier, is the reality that encloses them. No one with a functioning conscience can deny it: Black children have…

On a rainy evening, November 27, 2016, Saphronia and her nephew – now an adopted son – sit by the fireside, as they sink deep into a pool of conversation. Saphronia has played a vital role in Sammy’s life, since the passing of his mother, Simone, to breast cancer, 15 years ago, at 26 years…

“Powers keep on lying/ While your people keep on dying/” — Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground,” Innervisions (1973). “No one called the late J. Edgar Hoover a terrorist, though that is precisely what he was: and if anyone wishes, now, in this context, to speak of ‘civilized’ values or ‘democracy’ or ‘morality,’ you will pardon this…

“Both men ate with their gloves on.” -Hemingway, Ernest. Men Without Women. New York: Scribner, 1927 (1955 ed.), pp. 81. “Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there…

-Daniels, Lenore PhD. “First It was a Cell Behind Prison Walls – Now It’s a Seat Behind the Walls of a Military Academy: Arne Duncan Doesn’t Care About Black and Brown Children! Why Should He?” Black Commentator (Issue 316). When Malcolm X remarked, four decades ago, that “education is the passport to the future,” it’s…

“We can’t be on the stock exchange we are the stock exchanged.” – Giovanni, Nikki. The Selected poems of Nikki Giovanni. New York: William Morrow, 1996, pp. 80. With less than 60 days into the young presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, certain factions of the right have begun beating the drum of fear, xenophobia, racism…

“Knowledge is Power. May that force be with you.” -Giovanni, Nikki. Racism 101, New York: Quill, 1994, pp. 93 “… How many souls Hip-Hop has affected/ How many dead folks this art resurrected/ How many nations this culture connected/” -Common, The Sixth Sense, Like Water for Chocolate (2000) “… Explode, my thoughts were drunken from…

“The Europeans laughed and the African joined in. They had assassinated my people as well as my new country… In that second I was wounded. My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge.” -Angelou, Maya. All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. New York: Random House, Inc., 1986, pp. 51-52. June…