For a brief second, I thought I’d been teleported into an alternate universe.
The guide on my DirecTV system showed I was tuned to the Black Entertainment Television network Saturday night, but clearly there was some mistake. Could this have been a serious, probing, intelligently made documentary about public education in Detroit I was watching?
Indeed it was. Entitled “Heart of the City: Dropped Out in Detroit,” the hour-long documentary painted a sobering picture of Detroit schools. It was quite a departure for a network with a reputation for showing a plethora of music videos with a bevy of scandalous, nearly butt-naked hoochies shaking their rumps.
That reputation was well deserved. A while back, BET was one of the few, if not the only, cable/satellite networks to show the infamous “Tip Drill” video on a regular basis. True, it was on a notorious show called “Uncut” that aired from 3 to 4 a.m. But that didn’t mean boys barely into their teens didn’t watch it. I remember my experience at a Baltimore middle school when nearly every boy in an eighth-grade class, beaming with delight, described seeing “Tip Drill” on “Uncut.”
BET gave the ax to “Uncut” a while back, perhaps in no small measure as a reaction to protests coeds at Spellman College made against hip-hop artist Nelly, who made the song and video “Tip Drill.” Could execs at BET be turning over a new leaf by airing documentaries like “Heart of the City”?
Let’s all hope so. Instead of the dumbed-down fare most networks offer, “Heart of the City” asked serious questions about the Detroit public school system, where less than 30 percent of high-school students graduate on time; where the graduation rate for black males is less than 20 percent; where test scores are among the lowest in the country; where teachers have to buy supplies from Office Depot; where students have to share textbooks; and where the system is so mismanaged that it is $300 million in debt.
Narrated by former University of Michigan and National Basketball Association star Chris Webber — who’s a native of Detroit — the documentary asked all the right questions but one: With the millions of federal tax dollars that must have been poured into Detroit public schools, why do teachers have to buy supplies and why do students have to share textbooks? What has been done with all that federal money? (Michigan residents must also be wondering what happened to the state tax money that went to the school system, too.)
The documentary provided part of the answer, referring to “years of financial mismanagement and corruption” that plagued the Detroit public school system. It takes quite a bit of mismanagement to run up $300 million in debt, and I’m sure many have taken note that the mismanagement occurred on the watch of Democratic elected officials who’ve been running Detroit into the ground for decades.
One of them, Rep. John Conyers, has on several occasions hinted that President George W. Bush is a racist. Another, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick — who was convicted on a perjury charge — got nailed when he lied about having an affair with one of his staff members. Both denied having the affair under oath, and got busted when steamy text messages between them came to light. How did Kilpatrick react?
By blaming whitey and claiming the racists were out to get him. He even compared himself to Dr. Ossian Sweet, the courageous black Detroit doctor who defended himself and his home against a rampaging white mob that was rioting in 1925. Guys like Conyers and Kilpatrick played the race-baiting, race-hustling fiddle while Detroit’s public schools, figuratively, burned.
No amount of money can help schools when demagogues lead a city. Money can’t change mind-sets or attitudes. Money can’t help students who buy into the message of some rap songs, as Douglas Brooks, the valedictorian at Detroit’s Henry Ford High School this year and a freshman at Howard University, said in the documentary.
“The rap song, it’s telling you to sell the drugs,” Brooks said. “It’s telling you to look cool. [That selling drugs] makes you popular.”
One of the things viewers learn from “Heart of the City” is that Henry Ford High School had 300 gang members at one time. No student can learn in such an environment.
And no amount of tax money will change it, either.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
