Did anyone else read this article in 'The London Paper' this week? Is this true? Are black children not reading?
What are your views?

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The Columnist: A plea to the black kids: let’s read
by Lindsay Johns. Thursday, 06 March 2008

Let’s face it. It breaks my heart to admit it, but reading has a serious image problem among black kids. It’s not cool and it sure ain’t funky. Just ask yourself: how often do you see a young black guy on a bus reading a book? Exactly. And this is where we are blatantly going wrong.

Brothers and sisters need to bash the books with alacrity. The joys of reading should not be the sole preserve of any one race. As a self-styled “hip-hop intellectual”, I passionately believe we need to urgently rectify this problem – to prove to black kids one can be both erudite and “cool”– by reading. From Shakespeare to Big Daddy Kane via Beenie Man and Byron, they need to see it’s cool to be clever and well-read. It doesn’t compromise masculinity, cred or even one’s blackness to love reading.

We feed our bodies, water our plants and spend a small fortune on our hair, but we seldom take the trouble to nourish our minds. Books are the best brain food. They stretch your intellect and imagination, augment vocabulary, and deal in the currency of ideas. Books disseminate knowledge. Knowledge is not only power, but a threat to power. Readers are leaders, and leaders readers. Look at Toussaint L’Ouverture, Malcolm X or Barack Obama – great readers. Reading, to paraphrase Latin poet Horace, can both instruct and delight, and be the best intellectual and spiritual medicine.


As black people, it’s time we started confounding (as opposed to conforming to) the oldest and most damaging stereotype. Reading (and intellectual things) are for white people, music and sport (and other physical things) are for black people... WRONG!

Great literature imparts timeless truths about ourselves and the human condition essential to living, regardless of race. Books address our common humanity, irrespective of our melanin quotient. And reading is as much a part of our cultural heritage as it is anyone else’s. Reading great literature helps bring us out of ourselves. Nintendos, Game Boys, iPods and PSPs, to paraphrase MC Hammer, can’t touch that!

So come on, my brothers and sisters! Let’s start seeing the relevance of reading to our lives. In the words of Bounty Killer, that most lyrically didactic of Jamaican ragga DJs: “BOOK BOOK BOOK!”

Lindsay Johns presents on colourfulradio.com

Saw this article in the paper and thought it was ridiculous and full of lazy stereotypes. Quite why the writer thinks studying what people do on buses is any kind of reliable guide beats me. I don't have sons, but my nephews have all been to college or uni so all read. One writes poems and stories.

Illustrates the danger of generalising what we think we 'see' into some kind of objective reality.

Who the fcuk is this jerk off??? I mean:

"It’s not cool and it sure ain’t funky"
"......to paraphrase MC Hammer, can’t touch that!"

WTF?

I didn't know it was still 1990.....

Seriously, someone should tell this idiot to jump off a bridge to spare the world from his ****ing stupidity. This is the kind of bullshit I'd expect from Trevor or that other fool Tony Sewell.

I see all young people regularly reading on the buses and trains just like how I see all young people on their PSPs and Ipods. What exactly is this fool's ****ing point?

Supposedly, young Africans don't read, yet this arsewipe addresses them in a newspaper article??

Lindsay John, if you're reading this, go and play in rush hour traffic. Please.

yeah, the opening sentence let's you know it's a bulls hit article....I stopped reading after that.

The guy obviously hasn't played Puzzle Quest.

What a load of nonsense.

Yet again another black guy seeking media attention via putting down our race.
This is nothing new. The guy needs to be stoned for making such stupid generalisations.

Did it ever occur to this incompetent jackass that maybe people just don't feel comfortable reading on buses or trains.

I myself am an avid book reader. However when I was young I only use to read whenever I was indoors/in my bedroom, I just really liked the peace and quiet.

However I I grew older I started to read in different environments, i.e by the dinner table, tube etc.

Its all about finding the environment which suits you best.

Though I do read on the tube (depending on how far I am going) I do prefer the solitude of my home, because the quiteness allows me to picture the scene of the book I am reading.

As I am reading I am literally picturing the background scene, the characters etc.. its like I am directing the very book I am reading in my head.

I'm glad this was posted as I never had a chance. I too found it insulting...my parents always made sure there were books in my house my mother was a big reader my father (R.I.P) but they always made sure I read and this is done is most of my family. This man is an attention seeking whore pandering to a YT audience, I cannot stand people who put down their own at the sake or recognition, Blackwa's need to be introduced pronto Did any one complain or text bore?

i read this article and for the 1st time ever I texted the paper... and of course I txt BORE.

at blackwa!

Does this ******* have an email address? Someone needs to e-mail him about this crap. Being upset because he doesn't see black children reading on the bus. What the hell? How many whites does he know or have seen that read on the bus?

Working class white people read on "public transport" all the time where I am, no really they do.


/Sarcasm.

Past being annoyed at the guys approach on the issue I would say that if he had come at it from a different angle he would have a point.

Kids leave school feeling as though theres nothing out there for them, they learn to rebel against the system (mindlessly) through their mis education at school, if you talk to them or know how they feel about it you can translate their attitude toward it all as a general mistrust of what they have been taught and rightfully so.

Most of them leave and say the same thing, ''f*ck school'' (or something thereof) ask them why and they'll try and explain, probably talk about the teachers and how they feel as though they've been mistreated but past that its their mistrust of the education system they know something isn't right but can't put a finger on it so they rebel against it completely, they start to see those that do read as sell outs of some kind, something that isn't ''cool'' because they assume its the same garbage they were taught, something they can't see themselves within as its all colonial junk, outright lies... past that they later realize that (out side of the school doctrine) there is something out there for them but for many its then too late so they resent those that managed to escape with their blackselves intact and perpetuate the problem.

The revolution has been left headless over the past few years through gross media censorship and so on, youths are still rebelling they just can't see what it is they're fighting so they're swinging at anything that seems suspicious.

Funny cause I was going to make a thread about the education system in this country, was going to ask if it has officially failed us in this country, seems to be only good at bringing up kids with such a lack of self respect/purpose that rather than leave with all the hopeful aspirations you'd expect in a a young one they want to be convicts and ''goons'' (new slang term, lord save us).

Personally make a point of reading on a bus, well I used to, haven't been so much recently, prefer to sit and relax with a book than have mobile stereo phones as backing music to what ever it is I'm reading.

Education system failure.

I think that this, like most other things, people focus on quantity more so than quality. I think that it is more important what youth are reading these days than for them to just read, read, read!

Alot of young girls read those soft **** love-sex novels like "Confessions of a Video Vixen", Zane novels, or other quasi-erotica. I will also see young boys reading anything that has something to do with false hopes of music artists and athletes. Then, those of our youth are said to be reading "well", are absorbing mostly literature that has very little to do with them, which in effect assimilates them into the dominant culture of that literature.

I know several so called "advanced" children considered so because they read all the Harry Potter books, and other literature rooted in Western thought. I guarantee that most of those children will grow up to be the leading enemies and traitors of our people due to their deculturization that we often put our children through for the sake of reading.