Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun Sentinel

September 22, 2012
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun Sentinel

RE: “Sanctimonious drivel” and why it’s the only way out – Some comments on your Jeremiad on why Black males will never make it to the 1%.

Mr. Lyons,

Am I the only one to ask “What about Black females”? Your column makes you sound like you will be a postulant in the soon to be formed Taliban School of Smacking the Snot out of Uppity Chicks.

[I must add, because it is owed to the moral ledger, that your unrecognized Black females blow up the goals/quotas of Affirmative Action when it comes to abortion. Since Roe v Wade in 1973, 35% of the approximately 60,000,000 abortions have been performed on Black women. 22,000,000 Black babies have aborted by 6% of the population. How many potential Senior Editorial Writers have gone down the abattoir’s drain? If that’s not genocide, what is?]

You say that only “28% of Black students are academically prepared when they enter kindergarten”.

Did Wal-Mart cause that? Did Romney and the ghost of Richard Nixon cause that? Did Halliburton and the notorious Koch Brothers cause that? How about Reagan?
The Bushes – pere et fils – must have, right?

If I were to suggest that the absence of a male in the house may have an influence on it would I be branded with R, the Scarlet Letter of Racism?

Would it be politically incorrect of me to say that whatever strategies and tactics that have been tried since the War on Poverty began, a war that was begun with absolutely no exit strategy in sight, have been about as useful as teats on a bull?

Here are some questions.

Can you tell me why bad teachers are paid as much as good teachers? Can you tell me why bad teachers are paid at all? Can you tell me what curriculum coordinators do? Can you tell me what diversity coordinators do?

Tenure is offensive to Logic and inimical to the common weal.

Heart surgeons, point guards, airplane pilots, car salesmen, pop stars, chefs, - Can you see where I am going here? – have one thing in common. They all lack job security. The good ones are lionized. The bad ones get their asses kicked.

Why shouldn’t the French teacher be held to the same high, unforgiving standard as the football coach?

You say that a “multicultural curricula” – I would prefer the singular - “is one way to attract and hold a Black male student’s attention”. I point out that the exclusion of ½ of the student body is…is…stupidly sexist. What is the multicultural way to teach Geometry? Is there a hip-hop, rap, reggae, pants sagging, street cred, Bloods v Crips version of the table of valences that will soon make its appearance?

Speaking of “multiculturalism”, isn’t it time to make room for the first great multicultural poet? Barack Obama got a Nobel Prize for showing up. Rudyard Kipling wrote about the soul of man for decades. His work transcends race. “The sins we do two by two we pay for one by one” is an apt comment on the recent sexual escapades of the Broward Board of Education. Why not make it into a teachable moment?

”it’s not easy introducing innovation into a bureaucracy
that boasts of a class schedule still steeped in
America’s pre-industrial era…”

What the Hell in the name of an educated man, a man of any color, does that mean?

Do you mean Edmund Burke? Do you mean Samuel Johnson? Do you mean John Locke? Shakespeare? Dante? The year 1683? The year 1571? The year 732? Do you mean Plutarch? Do you mean Aeschylus? Homer?

“Young boys don’t like romance novels”

A story from more than 30 centuries ago. 20 years of war and love. It took the first ten to get her back. It took the second ten to get him back. I suggest you become familiar with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Guys dig it.

I don’t know if you have children. If you do I hope they are in public school. I know the President has children. They are in private school.

That is disgraceful.

Even with the ill-defined, mostly porous walls of conduct of modern American Liberalism that is a slap in the face to all the other occupants of public housing in Washington, DC. The District of Columbia has the highest per student expenditure in the universe. Why does the President spend $100,000 to send his daughters to private school? Why doesn’t he send his daughters to the really fine public schools in Washington?

Get back to me on that.


The Broward County Board of Education has announced that it will be a supporter, indeed an eager participant, in Gay Pride Month.

How does that help Black males get into college? Is there a category in the hated FCAT tests that includes Gay Pride? Musical comedy, fashion design, interior decorating, sensitivity seminars --- all have their uses in a post racial society. How do they help an underprepared Black male in his quest to construct an English declarative sentence? How does it help him balance a check book? Is a better understanding of the “down low” way of life a path that underprepared Black male students should be made aware of? Shouldn’t underprepared Black female students be made aware of the joys of Sapphic poetry? Haven’t they been ignored too long?

On the other hand it may be a bridge too far to ask for a system to help some underprepared Black males get through dissecting frogs or mastering logarithms if it can’t get the buses to run on time.




Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET