Shout out to my boy, Dr. Eric Durham

Farajii Muhammad and I host a new segment on The Larry Young Morning Show every Friday at 9:30AM called “We Got Next!” This morning we had Dr. Eric Durham on as our guest to talk about the issue of paying students for good grades – and no we’re not talking about grandpa breaking Jr. off for an “A” – we’re talking about corporations and government getting in the act to incentivize good grades with cold, hard, cash.

This concept has been a buzz as of late after Harvard Professor, Roland Fryer, championed the practice on CNN’s Black in America series.

I checked out Dr. Durham (who is a “Hip Hop Scholar” by the way) blog and found an interesting post about Barack Obama and the political process. I had a slightly different angle than he on the topic he raised. Here’s my comment:

Dr. Durham! Great piece, man. I am definitely feeling you on the issue of sharpening and intensifying the political message, however, my concern is that it (i.e. the political banter) will just pan out to have been words after the election dust settles.

At the risk of sounding fatalistic, I am experiencing a growing sense that both mainstream political parties are two sides of the same coin and if not the same coin then at least two nearly identical ones.

You mentioned that you voted for Nader in a past presidential election, so I presume that you are well aware of the dissonance between what the mainstream corporate politicians say and what they ultimately end up doing. The Power Structure has long proven that it can tolerate “hopeful” words of revolution devoid of any intent to act upon them.

It is that reality that has prompted me to not just vote for who has the best chance of winning or not just vote for the lesser of two evils (or the evil of two lessers depending on who you ask). I’d rather vote my principles and if that means voting for a third party candidate then so be it. Don’t the American people lose out in every national election because they don’t vote their values – rather they vote the values imposed upon them by the fourth branch of the government – mainstream media.

The argument of the “average person” as you so eloquently laid out, better aligns with the values of non-corporatized political parties and if all of us vote our true values then we shouldn’t be surprised if our aspirations lead us to a political platform and a candidate that is not sponsored by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, or Walmart.

Check out his post.

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