How do you spell "American Idol"?

Well, Fantasia Barrino, the latest, and perhaps best, American Idol has announced that she's a functional illiterate. Bravo, gurl! It takes a lot of guts to do that. However, maybe, just maybe, the wiser thing to do would be to keep that under your hat for oh, say, a year and learn to read at an acceptable level. Even though you are now an indentured servant to the American Idol machine, you should have the resources available to you to do that. THEN come out and say "Hey, up until a year ago, I was illiterate. I learned to read and write, and so can you. Don't be ashamed." Alas, in a culture of confession (without repentance, mind you) such as ours, the more fitting thing to do is simply put your business out there and hope people feel bad for you. Gregory Kane on blackamericaweb.com has a scathing piece about this. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/kane1013

Sadly, the commentaries attached to this article are overwhelmingly critical, not of Fantasia or even the school system as much as of Mr. Kane. Why? He said what we all think. And when Black folk do that, aren't they usually praised? Kanye West, a hip hop artist and producer that I admire, went off script during a hurricane relief telethon to announce that "George Bush doesn't care about Black people." Nobody Black said shit. Except, "Well, he speakin' da troof." Maybe, maybe not, but I'm not sure that he chose the proper forum. Mr. Kane levels blame at Fantasia, her mom (who supposedly is illiterate), and the school system for not doing their jobs. Black folk are outraged. It reminds me of one of my favorite authors/speakers/activists/evangelists, Tony Campolo, who usually begins his speeches to churches by saying, "Last night 30,000 children died of starvation and hunger related diseases. And none of you here give a shit. In fact, you're more outraged that I said 'shit' than you are at 30,000 kids dying needlessly." Black folk are more outraged at Greg Kane's criticism of Fantasia than we are about illiteracy rates in our own community.

I say all of this in the wake of the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March, an event I participated in in 1995, mostly because it seemed like the cultural and historical thing to do. Yesterday, Minister Louis Farrakhan led a commemoration on the mall, the attendance for which paled in comparison to the original event (especially given that it was on a weekend and not during the work week as the original had been), but garnered far more support than I anticipated. The rhetoric was the same, from the bits and pieces I could stomach on C-Span; the government sucks, racism is to blame for much of our problems, we need to unite (which, by the way, will NEVER happen), blah blah yadda yadda blah. At no point must we be critical of ourselves, and certainly not in public where White folk can hear it!! Until we as a people realize that A) we're never going to unite because we're too pluralistic as a race and 2) we must not only be critical of each other but help each other "learn to fish", so to speak, we will be forever mired in racial angst and animosity, crabs in a barrel pulling down anyone with the temerity to want to rise above our situation or, God forbid, suggest that it's partly our fault we're in the barrel in the first place. Fantasia, congratulations on letting everyone know you can't read or write. Now go learn and check back with us in a year.