you would realize that people like you and Marcus are the reason idiots like Nikki are sucking up tax dollars to teach crap to students at a mediocre public college,

And on that note, I think it is time to shut off the comments here.

I think I have been more than tolerant of the two of you. I’ve tolerated language here that I do not generally tolerate. What I won’t tolerate is disrespect. And that comment was over the top.

(POEM REMOVED DUE TO POTENTIAL COPYRIGHT ISSUES)

Mr. Morgan,

Tupac Shakur’s quote was aimed at the father who abandoned his family and the society he grew up in. Tupac’s early life was a labyrinth of murder, poverty and loneliness. Almost all his childhood friends (street thugs and such) were killed before he turned twenty. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was a former Black Panther activist. Unfortunately, she fell like so many ghetto residents to the crack invasion during the 1970′s. Early on, Tupac Shakur could have died young and a statistic. Even with all the hate and sorrow, he was a legendary poet who wrote beautiful verses. He made money on some and saved souls with others.
Nikki Giovanni is an admirer of Tupac as a poet and as a strong, black man. That is why she has THUGLIFE tattooed on her body.

I’m sorry if I sound “disgusting”. Unfortunately, I am trying to defend an esteemed woman’s honor from a so-called Ivy Leaguer. I’ ve met Ms. Nikki Giovanni and she doesn’t deserve that disrespect. Some discussions cannot be sugar-coated and cordial, especially when they involve peoples’ reputations.

Did you get a refund on your wasted tuition yet?

I have a book of poetry coming out this fall. I also have a book coming out on MLK Jr’s. birthday next year.

Thank you for being a fan. *sarcasm*

I respect your opinion. *sarcasm*

I find it comical that you take the time post my work. This proves my claim that you are a catty, jealous idiot.

I thank you for the opportunity of making yourself look stupid.

Congratulations, idiot.

P.S.- Sometimes the worst critics make the best fans. In your case, I would have to respect you to that to happen.

Inspire humility
Inspire me to be humble

Inspire loyalty
Inspire me to be loyal

Inspire forgiveness
Inspire me to be forgiving
Inspire me.

Marcus, is the above your poem I found on the internet? Is there another Marcus James Brooks or is this you? I finally have something good to say about Nikki: her poetry is better than this.

Did Tupac become famous early in his life? Yes. Is it a good thing that he is now gone? That is a different question. If he had continued to live as he had those first 25 years, I would say the answer is yes.

You made great points. I’ve met Nikki Giovanni. She came to Des Moines and was wonderful! I wish I had met Tupac Shakur. Even though he came from little, his success inspired a generation of black men. Few people want to recognize that Tupac was a terrific poet, just like Nikki.
It is unfortunate that people just swallow up everything the media says. In Steve’s case, he suffers from “media-fed obesity”. If you read my comments, I verify that point.

Yes, Bill Cosby’s kid fell victim to crack, so did Tupac’s mother, and so did others he briefly supplied in his brief stint as a drug dealer. That is why we should not condone or support anything that supports that drug culture. That is why “Thug Life” tatoos and “poetry” that worships dead, violent, drug-dealing rap stars is unseemly or worse. Must you use loaded words and get personal with me, even as you say you are “destroying every one of” my points? I think you have to get so personal with me (and with another poster who was actually trying to help you out) because you really understand, on some level, that you are not defeating my points but you don’t want to agree with me even though you know what I am saying is true. I will not respond in kind to your angry words. You need to be honest with yourself first. Common sense, as you say, is in order. That’s all my posts have been about – that, and a justified outrage at false idols, which you seem to be blindly worshiping. But peace, brother,

Steve

“What happened with the Qa’id murder was typical ghetto violence. Two groups were beefing and someone got shot. I take it you’ve never stepped one foot in a ghetto without protection. I have. I have seen senseless violence. That is what it was, senseless violence.” Did you forget I told you I taught in Central Harlem in the late 1980s? I worked in a school surrounded by crackhouses and walked all through Harlem, back and forth from the subway, alone, in the mornings and often at nights, when I would be at the school for evening events. I had no protection, and I was never a victim of crime in Harlem. I also worked while a law student in a Westside neighborhood in Chicago and lived in that community the entire summer while helping the residents of that ghetto community with their legal problems. Again, no protection. If I had had the gun and acted like a punk, however, I could have gotten into trouble I suppose, like Tupac did.

“However, before that night in March 1996, [Tupac] wouldn’t have thrown his comfortable life over a ghetto beef.” Oh? Have you seen the video of that night Tupac was killed? I mean the video that shows Tupac and others cowardly beating up another man (whom many think was the likely killer of Tupac later that evening, and who was indeed ultimately killed himself). Tupac was Mr. Peaceful? I don’t think so. He was bringing it on right up until his death. And besides that he was so very irresponsible in so many other ways, and everyone, including Giovanni, loses so much credibility when he/she praises him. As Bill Cosby so aptly pointed out, Tupac bragged in his book that he was proud he could give his mom the money he made by selling cocaine. Great! What the hell? Here are some of Bill Cosby’s comments, with which I agree: “In the book, ‘To Momma With Love,’ or something like that, he is so happy that he’s able to take money from selling cocaine and give the money to his mother…How wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful. You’ve got to be kidding. How many lives have you ruined selling packets? How many mothers are not going to go to work because they want to snort? How many dead mothers because of crack, how many babies we got to make turn around because they are crack babies?” Cosby said the house Shakur bought his mother should be decorated with pictures of users who died due to drug use. “Hang up the pictures of the people’s lives you ruined,” said Bill Cosby. Amen to that.

Marcus, you think I am jealous of Ms. Giovanni. Actually, I am disappointed that she has taken away attention from more deserving artists and I think she is giving black poets a bad name. For example, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks is a wonderful poet. Nikki Giovanni is not in the same league with Gwendolyn Brooks but seems to be better known. NAACP Image Awards and honorary doctorates do not really impress me, nor does her poetry. I guess it is like the way I despise Al Sharpton for taking away attention from more deserving ministers and politicians in the black community. Maybe it is the fault of the media for making false heros of charlatans like these instead of focussing on the real heros, the real poets and the real leaders worthy of respect. I consider the children of the ghetto and the kids of all races, including my own bi-racial child, to be the concerns of all of us. I still feel horrible when I think about the bullshit that my former students in Harlem had to go through. Institutional racism that provided them with unequal opportunities and unequal education, and drug gang culture that lured them into the trap many have fallen into. Lets get rid of all the demons wherever they are.

Hello, I am Marcus Brooks. I have read your blog. I am very impressed with the conversation you have on this site. However, I challenge this “Steve” to an open debate, if he wishes to come to Des Moines and spew his drivel. I am a fan of Ms. Nikki Giovanni. I’ve had the utmost pleasure in reading her work and meeting her. I find Steve’s disparaging remarks about her achievements deplorable! I want to see this “intellectual” bring his sharp tongue to Iowa. It will be verbally muzzled by me personally!

Thank you.

*To note*- Afeni Shakur was a former Black Panther who the California police and the FBI knew very well. You shouldn’t expect a favorable endorsement of her from those two entities.

Finally, I think you are jealous of Nikki Giovanni. You have nothing to say but criticism, even though, the “bad university poet” had appeared on Oprah, been nominated for a grammy with her spoken word poetry, and won three NAACP Image awards. Her writing credentials are second to none. She is a revered professor at the prestigious Virginia Tech. She is also loved by millions of readers and avid fans literally across the globe. I believe every one of them would smirk, laugh or downright condemn your ridiculous comments about her. Everyone has a right to an opinion. But, the opinion should be creditable, to say the least.
I had some hope for you, Steve. But, you are proving just what this country needs to remove itself from. People, like you, who cannot see the forest because their head is stuck up their ass! Peace

Tupac paid the Qa’id’s family because there was one gun, and one shot fired, and that one shot was fired from the gun that slipped from Tupac’s belt. He was back home in Marin County showing off his new car when other kids heckled him, and he showed how tough he is by losing the gun and causing a child to be killed. His lawyer would not have let him pay if he had not been responsible. This was hardly the first time he was reckless with guns, with his mouth (from which he spit on people), and with the words that came out of that mouth in between his spitting on people. He was a child not of poverty as is pretended but a child of the middle class. His mother took him out of Harlem and moved to Baltimore where he attended the Baltimore School of the Arts (with Jada Pinkett Smith). He was a bourgeois kid preparing for a life in entertainment, with the sensibilities of a Black Panther family (many of his relatives were heavily involved in Black Panther crimes). Nikki Giovanni also had it relatively good, but pretends to be from poverty. She, like Tupac, expressed anger, and called for violence, but in inappropriate ways. Now, after she has been called a poet, she can reinvent herself as often as she likes. But she will still be a poet who deserves none of the awards she has received.

For one thing, Dr. Rosa Parks is the pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. She did her through rebellion, not turning the other cheek. She defied the times with her strength, class and dignity. She stood up for the black woman, who later stood side by side with the black man.(1955)

The Movement was created on the defiance of a single woman. Dr. King deserves his just due. However, he was no way “the everything”. He and the other religious leaders were handed undeserved credit for its inception.

ALI G -Booyakasha, chek i’ out. I is here wif my main man, Nikki G, my bro from Staines. How is you become poet? NIKKI G- We’re communicators, it’s in our blood. ALI G: Blood, West Side. Now sis, you, I mean, sorry you is my bro now, you is get some edumacation. You went to America, right? NIKKI G: I went to Fisk. ALI G: Tell me about how you is expelled for crack… NIKKI G: It wasn’t for smoking crack. I started at Fisk in 1960, was soon expelled, and later returned and graduated in 1968. I did enroll and quickly drop out of two graduate schools after that but I did complete that one degree, my bachelor’s degree. ALI G: Wha’eve. You is still my main man. Now you has Tupac Shukar tattoo, right? Can I see that? NIKKI G: Yes, I have said I would rather be with the street thugs than with the ones who complain about them. ALI G: Now is you believe Tupac’s criminal record make him a better rap artist? NIKKI G: Well, I don’t know about that, but… ALI G: I like that poem you wrote about nigger can you kill, can you stab a jew, can you draw blood, can you kill a honkie. Ain’t that a rap! NIKKI G: You’re talking about my poem “The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro.” I wrote that a long time ago. ALI G: But can’t you make a rap out of that? You is get the whole crowd to stand up at Virginia Tech with that one. NIKKI G: No, that was my new poem We Are Virginia Tech. ALI G: Wha’eve. That was my one an’ only main man, Nikki G, my big bro and big time poet, big shout out for Nikki G from VT.

KILLED: Qa’id Walker-Teal, six year old victim of gunfire between Tupac’s gang and rival thugs. Tupac and others in his group could have been charged with some homicidal crime, perhaps felony murder. Tupac, however, got off easy by paying off the family to the tune of $300-500K. A lot cheaper than the civil money judgment issued against OJ. That’s got to be partly because the victim was black in this case, and that low value for his life may well be because of the legacy of racism, caused by conservative racist whites. However, even if white racism explains the relatively low value put on this child’s life, and even though I don’t like conservatives, it would certainly be a stretch to say whites (conservative, liberal or otherwise) caused this boy to be killed. Did the white music moguls tell these black guys to shoot at each other and kill the child? Is white racism responsible for all problems faced by blacks?

RIP, Qa’id Walker-Teal. May his name be remembered when the last of Tupac’s ashes are spread in Soweto, South Africa soon by his mother on June 16, 2007, the tenth anniversary of Tupac’s death.

Peace,
Steve

That’s what I get for trying to be all newfangled. Back in my day, we had HMTL, and that was it! Had to write it in Notepad. Both ways!

Carry on

I taught in a public elementary school in Harlem in the late 80s when rap was just getting started.

or

Even when it was quietly or surreptitiously radical, it was in a helpful way, such as the Freedom Songs.

Steve, I wish I could say that your obliviousness was shocking, but it’s all too common. You may well have admirable motives, but until you can improve your understanding, you’re not helping anything by continuing to hold forth on a matter you clearly have no clue about.

I have actually heard at least two of the Tupac song you mentioned, and yes, I have read poems by Nikki Giovanni that are also not so terrible as the ones I am referring to (the one I most detest is the one with “nigger can you kill, can you kill a honkie,” etc.). Not all their work is necessarily bad, but you can’t escape the fact that Tupac was actually a criminal – he actually has a criminal record. He may have reformed somewhat, but he was still defiantly defensive of the “thug life” and I fault Nikki Giovanni for jumping on that bandwagon as well. Why is that good? Even Al Sharpton is going after rap singers now. And yes, I agree with you, the amoral music industry is certainly equally, if not more, to blame for the crap that is being produced. Going through the hardships, the racist outrages that blacks have had to endure in this country, and then coming out perfect in the end is not realistic. Indeed there’s plenty of evil to go around. But the point is, once there is success in sight (as Tupac and Giovanni had both achieved), there should be some sense of the high responsibility they have as role models. Down with violence, misogyny, racism, period. Claude Browne’s Manchild in the Promised Land chronicles of one who triumphed and succeeded under far worse conditions than either Tupac or Nikki, and then presented a much better, more helpful attitude and temperament. He, like Tupac, had a criminal past, as a youth, but he overcame that and was transformed. Isn’t it time to move beyond the anger and get to some more constructive work? Sure, there’s plenty to be angry about, but much of Tupac’s work (indeed that which he is most famous for) is destructive.

Peace,
Steve

I had read your earlier comment. It sounded like you were insulting, Ms. Giovanni. I’m sorry for commenting the way I did.

I have a bachelor’s in history (from an Ivy League college), but I have two (earned) graduate degrees after that as well.

And all that education doesn’t seem to have given you to even the basic tools for understanding what Tupac Shakur represents to an enormous and important segment of America.

You can read, it seems, but you can’t comprehend.

Tupac Shakur died as he lived, by the sword, as a thug elevated to stardom as a rap “artist.” I am sick of the cultural relativism which has put rap on a par with real music (like jazz, blues, classical). Rap and hiphop, though understandable as cultural developments, are, IMHO, a negative force, both in the black community (where I was a teacher in the late 80s in Harlem) and in society at large. As a musician myself, I find no redeeming value in this “music.” Apart from that, Tupac, whether or not he was really a poet, was a thug with a criminal record – about that, there is no dispute. I do know my history. Like Ms. Giovanni, I have a bachelor’s in history (from an Ivy League college), but I have two (earned) graduate degrees after that as well. I understand what happened during the 60s, when I was a child and my father was a leftwing professor active in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Like you, I despise corrupt police, the welfare system, institutional racism, subpar education and crime-ridden ghettos, the federal government, etc., for their role in creating an unfair society for blacks, other minorities, and the poor in general. I don’t think that is a reason to celebrate the unfortunate results – angry Tupac Shakurs. Nor should we apologize for them, or worship them, when they are spewing hate and anger which does nothing to solve the problems faced by victims of racism and oppression. Nikki Giovanni’s We Are Virginia Tech was a missed opportunity to commemorate the real heros (the professor who died trying to save his students, for example) and to mourn the dead without corrupting her poem with ill-considered references to other problems in the world, thereby belittling the massacred. I have no use for angry, violent, bad poetry, whether from Tupac Shakur, who integrated that with a winning beat and music to sell it commercially, or whether from a bad university poet or from her troubled student. Nor do I like what in Giovanni’s work can only be described as racist, unless we employ a double standard to evaluate her work because she is black. I say let’s have some intellectual honesty.

Ms. Giovanni wears a “Thug Life” tattoo because Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni, was a former Black Panther, and Tupac Shakur died a poet. He was a poet first. You can blame society, corrupt police, the welfare system, institutional racism, subpar education and crime-ridden ghettos for creating a generation of angry Tupac Shakurs.
Nikki Giovanni is an activist, poet and professor. Her civil rights history covers almost forty years, probably more than you’ve been alive. Do you know the political climate involved during the late sixities in America? The FBI was conducting illegal infiltrations and surveillance on law-biding citizens. National Guardsmen were patrolling ghettos like occupied territories. The Warren Commission expressed years later that white racism was the cause for America’s civil unrest. Blame the KKK, the police and the Federal government. When war is being declared inside your own country, calling children to arms is a natural reaction; ie. DeGaulle’s France(1968), Vietnam and Prague Spring. Read and learn your history before commenting in the future.

And this poem I give is worth much more
than any nickel bag
or ten cent toy
And you will understand all too soon
That you, my children of battle, are your heroes
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones
how to play

-Nikki Giovanni

I find the video/speech/”poem” offensive and disgusting, though not as much as Nikki G’s earlier violent, racist poetry and her constant, poor choice of idols, such as Tupac Shukar. Did you like Tupac Shukar’s worship of misogyny and violence? What about Nikki Giovanni’s celebration of Tupac? She has a Tupac tattoo and has said she, like he, would rather be with the street thugs than with the ones who criticize them (I guess that latter group would include me). I would rather be with those who do not commit crimes of violence, including sexual assault, and with those who are not charlatans who belittle victims of violence by comparing them to baby elephants.