It's Your Time to be Free Speech.

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Thank you and salutations on this February eve. I'm grateful for this opportunity to speak to you today. The hosts Hofstra College Republicans have been identified and acknowledged. Hello friends, comrades, Republicans, wayward Democrats, and anyone else who decided to come I am glad that you are here. ?

I've decided to address a problem near and dear to my heart, which is the crisis of

black education in America. ?This is Black History Month. ?This is supposed to be our

time for us to learn more about black history. Because I remember a story that

Chris Rock used to say. I remember a teacher asking her student who was the

person who wrote that “I Have a Dream Speech” The student answered with pride, “Martin Luther King jr”. Then the teacher replies, that's great but who was the woman who said: “ Ain’t I ?A Woman” ?who made the speech “Ain’t I a woman” ?and this is a woman, not a man. and in the student thought for a while and he said with pride Martina Luther King Jr!

So this is a problem that must be solved because the African-American male is hardly better off than his father or his grandfather. The Democrats haven't done anything to solve this problem. Currently there are ?4.5 million African-Americans in this country between the ages of 15 and 29 but only a small percent of us graduated from college.

I know Occupy Wall Street says that is bad to be the one percent but I stand before

you today with Pride and say I am that one percent. ?One of the reasons why

we have this problem is because of the lack of education in the black community and in the white community. Quite simply the reason why we as black people have not

come much farther than our forefathers is because of a comparative lack of

education on both sides that hinder our advancement.

?People quite simply do not know our history. ?Because my history is your history. ?I consider myself to be an American. They know about Egypt but they don't know

about the Darfur crisis in Sudan that my church is working so hard to eradicate.

They don't know the reason that we have advanced so much is through education it wasn't through social programs. ?At the end of slavery ninety-five percent of us could not read. ?We were not allowed to read, we were killed if we read. ?But now it's more like ten percent and this ?eighty-five percent difference is because we worked hard and we became educated to do great things.

I as a black man am the most distrusted segment in America hands and down and the most misunderstood. Because it is a balancing act but this balancing act I always lose

Because W.E.Bb Dubois, I'm reading his book right now he said it is a peculiar sensation this double-consciousness the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others of measuring months old dude by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity

Let us focus on those words contempt and pity. If I try to play down my blackness they look upon me with pity and say, why don't you act more black. If I try to play up my

blackness they look upon me of contempt and say, you shouldn't do that you should

assimilate into the white community. So it is a lose-lose situation because I remember during my boarding school one time my friends were telling me I wasn't there but they were a teacher was passing by and he saw them and he said “Gentlemen unthug yourselves.”

???????????I was shocked until I realized we're fighting an enemy that’s greater than ourselves, ?this enemy is ignorance. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that came to ?stop our assent from the caves to the cosmos. If we lose that war, people look on with the greatest puzzlement that black people who haveovercome so much to be free would fall at the hands of a sinister enemy known as ignorance.

I've had to overcome many obstacles to become the man I am today. ?I was not born this way but I worked this way through education. Many people don't realize this but I couldn't talk until I was three and I had to wait until it's almost six to read. I was in that special ed program called TOTS from when I was 2 to when I was five. It stands for These Are Our Treasures. Whenever ?I pass by it, I look on it with pride. It made me the man I am today.

My parents would not give up on me, they encouraged me to read, they pushed me to read. They told me that look, you can overcome to become great things. ?Because remember I didn't watch TV as a young child on the weekdays. ?The only TV I ?watched was regular news and I read plenty of books. ?I read my share of books, I’ve read your share of books because I remember on more than one occasion a library has told me that I've read all the books in that library. ?I had to do that while juggling my studies because I knew that if I didn't stop I would only go downward.

?I've had to overcome a lot from middle school in high school and that's one of the reasons why I am a conservative today. Because my dad earned a hundred thousand a year and he sent us to a private school. But he still had to pay expenses like 18,000 he had to pay eighteen thousand a year for our apartment. And the government probably took out a quarter so that's like 25,000 and then when you add that together he only had 57,000 left to play with so he's decided to take us to private schools because he knew how bad the public schools in New York were.

My dad said I will not send my children to that public schools in the Bronx because I know that if I send them there they'll only go down until they're six feet under. ?That school was like 10,000 and he had to multiply it by three that's 30,000 so there wasn't much leftover to play with. I remember a lot of times I couldn't receive the presents that other kids had because my parents said, “Look either you get ?that present or your education” ?and I'm forever grateful that he chose that education.

?I'm a Republican because if they raised higher taxes on me I couldn't go to that

private school. I would have had to go to a Bronx public school but only forty, 45 percent of ?

black males graduate from public school. In the boarding school I went to

ninety-eight percent graduated from that public school. So think of the difference

ninety-eight percent and forty percent that's the difference of nearly double. ?I know people in my grade who were in gangs and who have baby mothers.

?I consider the ones with the baby mothers are the lucky ones baby because they're still alive but the ones in the gangs are another story. ?I remember one of my classmates, we were in the same eighth grade. But I went to boarding school and he spiraled out of control until one day I learned that he was shot in the South Bronx and died. That's why I'm a Republican, and I’ll be so for the rest of my life. ?I will never support higher taxes, because I know that if I will, ?if my parents would have had to pay higher taxes I would have ended up like him.

?So what is the solution to this problem? ?Malcolm X said education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for today. You may say I do enough for the black masses, I ?read, ?I study, ?I give out money. You are doing enough for them but are you doing enough for yourself? So what can you do to help? W.E.B. Dubois said education is a whole system of human training within and without the school walls that molds and develops men. We must educate ourselves because then we'll be free, then we can ascend upward into a heavenly realm of education and opportunity.

In the immortal words of James Weldon Johnson, the man who composed the negro national anthem with hands sent by God We have come over a way that with tears has been watered We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won.

My intellectual forefathers such as Douglass, Dubois, and King were not mistaken and our martyred fallen who gave their lives in the righteous battle against slavery were not slain in vain. ?So what can you do for yourself and do with me to ensure this victory? I'm offering you a One Book Challenge. ?See this book and see this book, ?I will do it with you. I hope you accept it with me because I accept no excuses.

I have to read for 40 to 50 hours a week. ?If I can find time, then you can find the time. You can cut stuff out like you can cut out drinking for 30 minutes a day to read about black history. If you smoke either legal or illegal substances, you can find 30 minutes a day to read about black history. Because I'm concerned that in this country we only read about black history when we have to, when we're taught to, we never take the initiative to learn for ourselves. But don't get me wrong. You don't have to pick books this big, I’m a special case. ?You just have to pick a book based on a topic you're interested in about black history and read it. Because then you will be free, thank you very much.