I am thinking about this song, chart-topping those years in the Delta. About blasting it in my classroom, kids singing along, part history lesson, part manifesto, part mantra: “nobody says you have to be gangstas– read more, learn more, change the globe…i know i can, be what i wanna be, if i work hard at it, i’ll be where i wanna be…” I told those kids that was the world: theirs for the taking if they learned their history and claimed their rights with the power of their own voices. I wonder if I lied to them. I wonder if symbolic and rhetorical equality was draped an inch deep over establishment neoliberalism that achieved only small gains, that inch of apparent equity enough to stir the deep neo-fascism and white nationalism that was always latent. I wonder where we go from here.
(posted from Facebook)
Recent Comments