People Like Marva Collins Is The Only Kind of Black Leaders I Acknowledge and Respect, Period.

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Ed

While you got high-profiled radio talk show community activists like Al Sharpton popping off at at the mouth about education, you always have real people in the community who are dedicating their life to get things done that these other cats want to talk about.

Many of you are familiar with Marva Collins as she took her own home, her own pension and started one of the first charter schools for inner city youths. They even had a made-for-TV movie featuring her and they show it in TV One from time to time. Marva Collins message in the video below is simple – you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you watch the 60 minutes special below, you will see the same problems with the Chicago educational system that you see going on today.

Part 1

Part 2

The kids you see in this video are my age and I grew up with most of them and went to high school with a few of them. However, in 1979, I was still at the LeClaire Courts housing projects and we moved to the West Side a few years later. I was tripping because most of these people are my age and I grew up with as a teenager. The show 60 minutes did a follow up and these kids are grown up and doing good today by their own merits. I should know, some of them are my friends.

Notice how Marva Collins already got her pension and could have left the West Side, but she still wanted to do for the kids in the community. Compare Marva Collins to these other sorry Black educators who really only in the teaching game to have summers off and sit around until they are able to get a teacher retirement pension. Compare Marva Collins actually converting her own West Side home to a school in the middle of the community, compare her to Al Sharpton who want to talk about education just to fill up airtime on his radio show and navigate as many talk shows as he can.

It takes individuals like Marva Collins to step up and actually give a damn about the kids and the community to make things better for brothas and sistas, not these self-important showboating jerks who got radio shows, appear on CNN/Fox blabbing or these sideline cats who call in a radio show everyday with a comment. The more we focus on real people like Marva Collins and the less on these other cats who are highly profiled in pundit media, the more sharper our objectives and focus will be to uplift our community out of it current state.

Marva Collins started a movement where many teachers quit their job and many corporate people quit their job to start up “charter schools” to attempt to do a better job educating our youth. If you look at public school todays, you will see a dropout rate of 60% among Black/Hispanic youth and a violent, gang-infested culture that marginalize the best talented kids into a life of fear and resentment towards their community and willing to leave once they get the chance. But this same school system, no matter how messed up they are, will never look at Marva Collins as a template to success because those public educators care more about retirement pensions than they care about their students doing well. Most of these sorry public school teachers got this attitude that their students will “be alright” and find their own way when they grow up and that’s real talk.

You cannot battle a negative trend that is systematic and rooted in the Tragedy of the Commons by participating in the system itself. It is going to take talented people to take matters in their own hands and focus on guiding the youth in the right direction to make things better for our community as a whole. This means you are not going to solve your long-term personal financial situation working a job waiting on a two-week paycheck and wait for your employer to toss you out when you start approaching 38. This means you are not going to go far in your entrepreneurial hustle if you are looking to get put on by the status quo instead of thinking outside the box how you will outdo them. You got to remove yourself from the Tragedy of the Commons and learn to take ownership of your future and do for self and be real with what you care about.

This is what I know coming from the West Side of Chicago, seeing people in our community like Marva Collins is willing to spend her last dime helping out the youth. I grew up being mentored by plenty of real people from the West Side of Chicago who don’t even make $10,000/year do more things for the positive upliftment of the Black youth in the hood than some of these high-profiled Black social activist leaders who run their mouth and think their presence showing up after an racial incident has some omnipresence to it. And these same high profiled social activist cats want to charge a speaker fee or appearance fee.

This is why I only have respect for those who are willing to put in true sacrifice to do for self and their community and not these sideline talkers who want to try to impress with some kind of status, recognition or other nonsense that don’t matter to the game. And you should know by now, this is why these same fake-ass brothas and sistas don’t want to acknowledge someone West Side like Ed Dunn and will try their best to undermine me once they think I’m making moves bigger than what they want me to make. This is why I tell you cats to know the difference between those that are talking about it and those that are really doing it. You are not going to find out who is doing it by listening to those that talk about it, remember that.