Black History Month Heroes: LeVar Burton of "Reading Rainbow"

If Derek Zoolander were to open a "Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too" in real-life America - instead of at the end of the hilarious comedy about male-models Zoolander - chances are it would be filled with Black people.

You see, the government of the United States of America is controlled by BRA (Black Run America) and any organization that receives Federal government money can't have to many white faces or else it will raise flags in the compliance office of those who provide the funding:

Amity Regional School District officials say it just doesn’t make sense: Why is the district being punished for having too many white autistic kids?

Amity Superintendent of Schools John Brady said he is frustrated and shocked. His dilemma began last year when the district — which serves Bethany, Orange and Woodbridge — received a letter from the state Department of Education. The state told Amity it has too many white students who are diagnosed as autistic when compared to other racial subgroups. Amity last year had 38 white autistic students, one Asian and one black.

During Black History Month, the United States Department of Education works overtime to ensure that school districts across the nation are supplying sufficient allocation of resources to educating students about Black accomplishments.

The celebration of these wondrous achievements is a month-long orgee of over-the-top (tongue not-in-cheek) dalliance with hilarious individuals of questionable merit merely remembered because they are Black.

However, public school children do get to see one individual on a regular basis who provides them with a positive image of a Black person. Better yet, LeVar Burton works diligently to instill in young children the love of learning through his fine program Reading Rainbow:

Reading Rainbow is an American children's television series aired by PBS from June 6, 1983 until November 10, 2006 that encourages reading among children...

Reading Rainbow was hosted by actor and executive producer LeVar Burton, who is also known for his roles in Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was originally co-created and produced by Lancit Media Entertainment from 1982 until 2000, and was produced by On-Screen Entertainment from 2000 through 2006 for executive producers WNED-TV (a PBS member station in Buffalo, New York) and Great Plains National.

A whole generation was implored to "take a look, it's in a book," on Reading Rainbow and with the help of LeVar Burton, students found reading literature a fun, cool and imaginative way to exercise one's mind.

Yet, one group of children seems incapable of picking up books and finding anything intelligible in them due to their incapacity to understand the gibberish confined to the pages in between: Black kids.

Crusading White Pedagogues work extra hard with children in the inner cities and exert a tenacious full-court press against illiteracy, yet Black people's drive and determination to overcome this tutelage is contagious and spreads quickly throughout the Black community:

Not all that long ago, Detroit was one of the richest places in the country, the citadel of the auto age, the "arsenal of democracy," the nexus of technology and innovation. Today it struggles for its life: not one national chain operates a grocery store in the entire 138-sq.-mi. city limits of Detroit. The estimated functional illiteracy rate in the city limits hovers near 50%. The unsolved-murder rate is about 70%, and unemployment is around an astonishing 29%.

Some stunning statistics on adult literacy can be found here, which illustrate the inability for some people to understand the importance of LeVar Burton's tireless work in eradicating illiteracy. A sobering look at literacy rates by race - found here - provides a most depressing picture of Reading Rainbow's inability to connect with a surprising number of Black people:

In many cases, states made sizable gains. In Mississippi, the percentage of adults with low skills dropped 9 percentage points, from 25% to 16%. In every one of its 82 counties, low-skill rates dropped — in a few cases by 20 percentage points or more.

By contrast, in several large states — California, New York, Florida and Nevada, for instance — the number of adults with low skills rose.

David Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, an adult-literacy organization, says Mississippi "invested more in education … and they have done innovative programming. We need much more of that."

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says efforts in adult literacy are inefficient and "scattered" across government agencies.

"We're not using research-based practices, broadly applied," she says.

Harvey cites undiagnosed learning disabilities, immigration and high school dropouts as reasons for the poor literacy numbers.

Of course, the cities in the United States that have the highest rates of literacy in the nation - Minneapolis and Seattle - also have something else in common, as they have a preponderance of white people (some people believe it has to do with a city being green, but the greener the city the whiter the city).

Worse, Reading Rainbow's efforts to improve the reading ability of Black children failed miserably in preparing Black students for the Advanced Placement (AP) exam.

The racial gap in illiteracy rates has dropped considerably in the past forty years but appears to have leveled off in the past twenty. However, the economic costs of having an illiterate population are enormous, as evidenced by Washington D.C.'s astronomically high rate:

A study produced by The State Education Agency has found that 36% of Washington D.C. residents are functionally illiterate. People who are functionally illiterate have some ability to read and write, but not enough to be able to fully function in everyday life. They have difficulty with crucial tasks such as filling out job applications, reading maps, understanding bus schedules, reading newspaper articles, etc.

The high rates of functional illiteracy are especially troubling in D.C. because 47% of the jobs there require college or advanced degrees (as compared with only 26% of the jobs nationally).

The District of Columbus Chamber of Commerce said that the city loses $107 million in taxes every year because of the shortage of qualified job applicants.

The State Education Agency is a quasi-governmental agency created by the U.S. Department of Education. The D.C. illiteracy study was commissioned by former D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams in 2003.

Reading Rainbow is a wonderful program and LeVar Burton is to be congratulated on his attempts to foster a culture of learning in young people with the installation of an educational foundation based on an appreciation of reading and literature (interesting, reading and literacy increases one's chance of a life of high wages).

Remembering SBPDL's dictum that without sports, Black people have no positive images to build upon, we relate the story of James Brooks. A football player at Auburn University, Brooks was shockingly illiterate, but he was able to read opposing defenses and run through them with ease:

The official statement given via Jack Brennan, public relations director for the Cincinnati Bengals, is: "James Brooks was able to function and perform in his football role while with the Bengals. No one was aware there was a problem."

The "problem" he refers to was the revelation that occurred during a hearing in Judge Steve Martin's Hamilton County, Ohio, courtroom last month regarding delinquent child support payments in excess of $110,000. James Brooks could not read the court documents; this after graduating from Warner Robins High School in Georgia in 1977 and after spending at least four years at Auburn University in Alabama.

When asked by the judge how he graduated from Auburn, Brooks said, "I didn't have to go to class."

If not knowing how to read was the secret James Brooks kept, "performing in his football role," as Jack Brennan of the Cincinnati Bengals said, was something James Brooks, as a player, always made sure you remembered...

Whatever the reason for his recent troubles, it is clear that Brooks' inability to read or communicate clearly did not hinder his success in high school or college athletics. In 1977, Brooks left Warner Robins High school a graduate and a hero to begin a four-year college football career on a sports scholarship at Auburn University.

Within two years, the NCAA released a seven-page press release announcing its decision to put Auburn University on probation for two years due to a long list of violations within its football program that began in 1974 and culminated in 1977, James Brooks' freshman year. The most damaging charge was that, "a representative of the university's athletic interests offered a large cash payment in exchange for the young man's signature on a conference letter of intent." Although the NCAA 1979 press release didn't name names, Wally Renfro, director of public relations at the NCAA says that Auburn University had submitted erroneous certifications of eligibility for the players on the football team.

"Much has changed since 1979," he says. "It's exactly stories like these that led membership to develop a reform package, with Proposition 48 being one of the major pieces of eligibility legislation. Now, [because of Proposition 48] if you don't achieve a minimal grade-point average in core courses and minimal score results on a standardized test, you can't play sports at the college level. Our goal has been to prevent things like [what happened at Auburn] from happening again."

In a related development in Philadelphia, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower ruling last month that would have ended the NCAA's use of eligibility requirements for athletic participation and scholarship availability for freshmen. The federal district judge had concluded that the rules had a disparate effect on African Americans. But the appeals panel decided that since the NCAA was not the recipient of federal funding in this particular case, the organization was not subject to discipline under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Though the NCAA is currently reviewing those standards, the appellate court ruling allows the standards to remain intact.

The two-year probation cost Auburn. It prohibited the football team from participating in any post-season competition or from appearing on national television during the 1979 and 1980 years. It also, quite possibly cost Brooks the Heisman trophy. By the time he left Auburn in 1980 he was the team's all-time leading rusher with 3,523 yards.

Fictional Black History Month welcomes LeVar Burton to Stuff Black People Don't Like and its celebration of Black History Month. Reading is the hallmark of a solid education and creates the opportunity for a life enriched with culture.

Burton's attempts at this have largely failed in one community. His own.

D'mite, a Black rapper, obviously understood Burton's failure with Reading Rainbow catching on in the Black community and this is his own lyrical attempt at persuading Black children to read, entitled, Read a Book!:

YEAHHHHH~! Wassup y'all, ha ha ha
This your boy D'Mite
You see I usually do songs with like
hooks and concepts and shit right?
BUT FUCK THAT MAN, I'm tryin to go platinum
So I'm 'bout to go rock this shit
Check this out y'all, uhh

[D'Mite - in the style of Lil Jon]
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh'fuckin book!
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh'fuckin book!
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh'fuckin book!
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh'fuckin book!

R-E-A-D, A, B-O-OAHH-KAYYYYYYYY~!
R-E-A-D, A, B-O-OAHH-KAYYYYYYYY~!
R-E-A-D, A, B-O-OAHH-KAYYYYYYYY~!
R-E-A-D, A, B-O-OAHH-KAYYYYYYYY~!

Not a sports page (what) not a magazine (who)
But a book nigga, a fuckin book nigga (YEAHHH~!)
Not a sports page (what) not a magazine (who)
But a book nigga, a fuckin book nigga (YEAHHH~!)
Not a sports page, not a magazine
But a book nigga, check this out

Raise yo' kids, raise yo' kids, raise yo' God damn kids
Raise yo' kids, raise yo' kids, raise yo' God damn kids
Raise yo' kids, raise yo' kids, raise yo' God damn kids
Raise yo' kids, raise yo' kids, raise yo' God damn kids

Your body needs water - so DRINK THAT SHIT
Your body needs water - so DRINK THAT SHIT
Your body needs water - so DRINK THAT SHIT
Your body needs water - so DRINK THAT SHIT

Buy some land, buy some land (what) FUCK SPINNIN RIMS
Buy some land, buy some land (what) FUCK SPINNIN RIMS
Buy some land, buy some land (what) FUCK SPINNIN RIMS
Buy some land, buy some land (what) FUCK SPINNIN RIMS

Brush yo' teeth, brush yo' teeth, brush yo' God damn teeth
Brush yo' teeth, brush yo' teeth, brush yo' God damn teeth
Brush yo' teeth, brush yo' teeth, brush yo' God damn teeth
Brush yo' teeth, brush yo' teeth, brush yo' God damn teeth

Wear deodorant nigga, wear deodorant nigga
Wear deodorant nigga, wear deodorant nigga
Wear deodorant nigga, wear deodorant nigga
Wear deodorant nigga, wear deodorant nigga (WHAT~!~!~!!)

It's called Speed Stick (bitch) it's not expensive (bitch)
It's called Speed Stick (bitch) it's not expensive (bitch)
It's called Speed Stick (bitch) it's not expensive (bitch)
It's called Speed Stick (bitch) it's not expensive (bitch)

Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh'fuckin book!
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh'fuckin book!
Read a {*EXPLOSION*}

Sorry LeVar, but against Read a Book, Reading Rainbow is the equivalent of Acting White in the eyes of Black children everywhere.