Commentary: Blame for Fantasia’s Illiteracy Belongs to Her Schools and Her Mother
Date: Wednesday, October 12, 2005
By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com


Great moogly ooglies … you mean she can’t read or write either?!

You know the “she� I’m referring to: none other than Fantasia “Baby Mama� Barrino, who has been the subject of this column more than once.

So, here we go again.

Fantasia, as she’s known to her legion of devotees -- who are so adoring and fawning, they might be more correctly termed a cult than a fan base -- recently revealed that she can neither read nor write.

That’s not all. It gets even worse.

Fantasia admitted that before she became a contestant on the television show “American Idol� -- the 21st century attempt at boosting mediocre talents to stardom -- she had never worked a day in her life. She couldn’t, because she was illiterate.

So the woman who put out a song glorifying out-of-wedlock pregnancy and single motherhood has now 'fessed up that she was not only poor, but illiterate and jobless when she got pregnant and had a child. Members of the Cult of Fantasia will no doubt claim her reaching superstar status in the music world more than makes up for that.





The truth is that Fantasia rolled the dice with her child’s future and was lucky she made her point. If there were no “American Idol,� she’d still be illiterate and either jobless, on welfare or working in some low-wage, dead-end job for the unskilled, struggling to make ends meet and having her child face all the risks of living in poverty.

So Fantasia rolled the dice and made her point. What about all those women similarly situated who rolled the dice and crapped out? Those are the women Fantasia sings about in “Baby Mama,� the ones who, she says, “deserve a holiday.�

Why do women who are poor, illiterate, unskilled, jobless and irresponsible enough to have a child under those circumstances deserve a holiday or merit being celebrated in a song?

That’s my problem with Fantasia. But when it comes to her illiteracy, there are some other folks I have a problem with.

We can start with the people who run the school system in Fantasia’s hometown of High Point, N.C. I just happened to be near there, in Greensboro, last week. I asked a young man -- a native of the state, who attends North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University -- whether it’s the norm for schools to graduate illiterates.

“They just keep passing them from grade to grade,� the young man told me. They get passed whether their reading and math levels are up to par or not. The practice is called “social promotion.� It’s done for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the theory that retaining students for a grade -- we called it “flunking them� in my day -- lowers their self-esteem.

Fantasia is a grown woman who can’t even read to her daughter. How high do you think her self-esteem is now?

Just above High Point school officials on the list of culprits is Fantasia’s own mother. At least one news report said she is illiterate as well. Some have suggested that, because Fantasia’s mom can’t read or write, she bears no responsibility for her daughter’s illiteracy.

But Dr. Benjamin Carson’s mother was illiterate. She made it her business to see that both of her two sons could read and write.

You’ve never heard of Carson? Let me give a brief biography.

Carson is one of the top surgeons in the country. Notice I didn’t say “one of the top black surgeons.� Carson is one of the top surgeons regardless of race. He owes his position as the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore to a mother who insisted he learn to read and write even if she couldn’t.

Sonya Carson worked two or three low-wage jobs. She saved what money she could. She turned off the television and demanded that her sons read books instead. Sonya Carson had Ben Carson and his brother read two books a week. Then they had to submit book reports to her after they were done.

Ben Carson soared academically. The only time his grades slipped was when he listened to his black “peers� in high school who called him a nerd and an Uncle Tom for daring to get good grades.

Carson soon learned that “peers� stood for People Encouraging Errors, Rudeness and Stupidity.� His grades rose again once he stopped listening to his peers.

Ben’s mama and Fantasia’s mama were clearly cut from different cloths. If Fantasia’s looking for the person who’s the main reason for her illiteracy, she need look no further than her mother’s house back in High Point.

I think the point he was trying to make is that the self imposed situation of being a Baby Mama should not be glorfied has it is being done.

And who died and made him God? At least she has made something of herself.

.....so does that mean if you're illiterate and haven't got a job, this somehow means you can't have children??? Does this apply if you're male???

I know plenty of men who fit both categories and have children, so shall we castigate them too?

Somehow, I can't see that happening.....

And, yet again, the sperm donor seems to have go off lightly, because I see no-one slating him.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.