Here’s what is in mine:

India Arie feat. Akon – I Am Not My Hair (remix)
John Legend feat. Lauryn Hill – Cloud Nine (remix)
Kindred – Struggle No More
Kirk Franklin – Looking For You
R. Kelly – Happy People
R. Kelly – I Wish
Jay-Z – Dear Summer
Bow Wow – Fresh Azimiz
Talib Kweli & Common – Ghetto Show
Luther Vandross – Think About You
Ron Isley – Just Came Here To Chill

Yesterday, I began my first full day of teaching a summer graduate course on research design. During the middle of the class, I began to talk to the students about writing solid research questions. As an exercise, I had the students break into groups and evaluate potential research questions that I wrote on the board and then report back to me.

When the class reconvened, I asked the students to evaluate the first question that I wrote on the board, which said “Why do African immigrants do well in math?” Of course, in terms of research design, this is a problematic question for many reasons. For this reason, I was interested in the various ways the students would respond.

One student, a middle aged White woman, raised her hand and said, “This question is bad because it assumes things that are not true.” She explained that she found it unlikely that African students would be good at math. Although I was certain that she hadn’t looked at any data on African achievement and was instead relying on her own assumptions, I didn’t trip. Instead, I said “Let’s assume, for the sake of argument that all Africans were in fact good at math. Would this be a sound question?” She replied:

“No. Even if we could believe that African immigrants are good at math, there could be a lot of reasons why. They could’ve gotten good at math back in Africa from, I don’t know, CLIMBING TREES!”

There are few moments in my life when I’m rendered speechless. This was one of them.

After a long and awkward pause, I instinctively scanned the room for sympathetic Black eyes. I found three. I then focused on one Black woman in the class, who was mouthing “No, she did not just say that shit in class” to herself. I also noticed three or four embarrassed White faces in the room. The remainder of the class, including the first woman, looked at me baffled, as if they couldn’t understand what was going on. I tried to speak but all I could manage was something that sounded like, “Uhh. Okay. Wow. Ummm. Hmm. Wow. Ok.”

I was immediately reminded of a Dave Chappelle routine where he said, “Sometimes White people say shit that’s so racist you can’t even say nothin’. You just be like ‘Damn that was racist’”. That was exactly how I felt. I literally didn’t own the appropriate words to respond to her comments.

In order to buy time and collect my thoughts, I moved on to another student who echoed the spirit of her claim, but did not refer to her tree climbing example. I couldn’t, however, focus on what the student was saying because I was still thinking about the first woman’s comment. How could someone say something like that and think that it’s okay? I turned to the board and began to write meaningless notes to hide the fact that I was laughing, which I sometimes do in the face of such absurdity.

A few moments later, I regrouped and returned to the class discussion. I revisited the woman’s comments by saying, “Let’s return to your point. I’m going to use a different example that’s more appropriate. Let’s say there are many factors that could lead to math success, such as community involvement, which really is a feature of many African cultures…”

Immediately after class, I began to regret the way I handled the situation. I’m still not sure what the “right” thing to do is, but I certainly wish that I had said and done more to create a “teachable moment” for her and the rest of the class.

I’m really curious to know what y’all would do if you had been in that situation.

HELP!

It’s that time of year again.

Like the start of baseball season and the proliferation of “Down Low” propaganda, Bill Cosby’s rants against the Black poor are becoming a perennial feature of the impending summer. On the most recent stops along his 18-city “Call Out” tour, Cosby has reignited controversy by publicly attacking Black men.

While I don’t question his love for Black people, his recent actions have appeared more venomous than valuable, more condescending than caring, and more hateful than helpful.

During a recent speech at Spelman College’s commencement ceremony, Cosby further demonized Black men by labeling them as people who “send their sperm” but run from being fathers. On a recent CNN interview, Cosby criticized Black men who would rather “sell drugs than flip burgers.”

While at the University of the District of Columbia, Cosby completely lost it. According to the Washington Post, Cosby fielded a question from a disabled man who promptly criticized the “watered-down” nature of the dialogue and invoked the name Michael Eric Dyson, whose book “Is Bill Cosby Right” provided a principled and thorough response to Cosby’s public statements. Cosby responded by leaving the stage and hovering over the man’s wheelchair, retorting “You don’t deserve an audience with me. I’m not afraid of any Mr. Dyson.”

Perhaps he should be.

Unlike many Black leaders who praised Cosby’s comments, Dyson has rightly pointed out that Cosby’s claims were both mean spirited and lacking in nuance. Unfortunately, Cosby has been unwilling to engage in a public forum with Dyson or any other leaders who offer legitimate rejoinders to Cosby’s critically impoverished analysis of the Black poor.

What makes Cosby’s comments so problematic is that they are lightly dipped in truth. Of course, there are people who won’t work, father multiple children, and devalue education. (A visit to my family reunion, for example, will provide access to these and other social problems.) To be certain, Black people should not merely play the “blame game,” but work hard to improve and ultimately overcome their circumstances.

The problem, however, is that Cosby’s incessant citations of Black failings, in addition to being overstated, do not acknowledge the structural issues that undermine his gospel of individual responsibility. In fact, they largely serve to reinforce a public indifference and outright animus toward the Black poor that make it more difficult to enact self-help projects.

Hopefully, more Black leadership will have the courage to stand up and challenge Cosby.

Unfortunately, I was unable to emerge from my book writing bunker in time to carefully watch and respond to Bush’s speech on Monday. Here are my day-late thoughts. In general, Bush’s plan to secure the border with 6,000 National Guardsmen and Guardswomen seems ineffective, ill-timed, and outright mendacious. Moreover, it left more questions in my mind than answers.

• How will 6,000 troops effectively secure the entire border given his own estimates of how many people illegally enter the country? Conservative estimates would seem to suggest five times that number in order to effectively police the border. This was probably done to appease Vicente Fox, who was promised by Bush that he would not militarize the border. In this case the presence of the troops is no more than a symbolic gesture to conservative voters who want to further criminalize Mexican immigrants. Such a move, however, obscures the more fundamental issue of job scarcity and economic underdevelopment in Mexico.

• Given the impending hurricane seasons and likely national disasters, aren’t there better uses of the National Guard? Does he think that the Katrina disaster, in which there was a disturbing paucity of available troops, was a random occurrence?

• Bush left many unaswered questions with regard to handling the estimated 11 million immmigrants who are currently in the states. While he advocated citizenship for “some of them”, it was unclear how he would make decisions about who would be awarded it, who wouldn’t, and what would happen to illegal residents as they wait.

• Lastly, I’m curious to know if most Americans will see the current immigrant conversation as a diversion from the $70 billion tax cut that was recently passed that will result in a $20 cut for the middle class and a $42,000 cut for people making more than $1 million per year.