Cho`s Professor Nikki Giovanni:  Teaching Hate At Virginia Tech


Ever since

South Korean immigrant
Cho Seung-hui gunned down

32 people at Virginia Tech
, there has been much
comment that the university should have realized just
from his two

hate-filled
and inept plays that the senior English
major was a

dangerous creep
who needed to be taken away.

For a playwrighting class, Cho
penned

Mr. Brownstone
and

Richard McBeef
(which, despite the Macbethian
title, is a Hamlet-knock off about a young hero`s
lethal conflict with the new stepfather who murdered his
real father).

Richard McBeef includes such
sterling

dialogue
as:

"I hate
him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill
Dick."

Many have asked: "How could the

English Department
not recognize the horrific
implications of these works?"

No one who wonders that, however,
is familiar with the poetic oeuvre of one of
Cho`s own teachers, Virginia Tech`s Distinguished
Professor of English and

Black Studies
, Nikki Giovanni (for her website,
click

here
).

Among the most celebrated figures
of the

Black Arts Movement
of the 1960s and recipient of

21 honorary degrees
, Giovanni has published poems
strikingly similar to Cho`s plays in both vileness and
incompetence. For example:



The True Import of Present Dialog, Black vs. Negro
,
by Nikki Giovanni

Ni**er
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a ni**er kill
Can a ni**er kill a honkie
Can a ni**er kill the Man
Can you kill ni**er
Huh? Ni**er can you
kill
Do you know how to draw blood
Can you poison
Can you stab-a-Jew
Can you kill huh? Ni**er
Can you kill
Can you run a

protestant
down with your
`68

El Dorado

(that`s all they`re good for anyway)
Can you kill
Can you piss on a blond head
Can you

cut it off

Can you kill
A ni**er can die
We ain`t got to prove we can die
We got to prove we can kill
[More]

Ironically, the author of these lines was asked to
deliver the

closing remarks
at Virginia Tech`s convocation
memorializing

the 32 slaughtered by Cho.
For some reason, Giovanni
didn`t read The True Import.

The above poem is not an isolated example.

Cho`s old professor
has had, for example, a Molotov
cocktail

obsession
:


Also a company called Revolution has just issued
A special kit for little boys
Called

Burn Baby

I`m told it has full instructions on how to siphon gas
And fill a bottle

And, then there`s

this
:

and it occurred to me
maybe i shouldn`t write
at all
but clean my gun
and check my kerosene supply

She switched themes from
kill-the-honkies to

confessional self-obsession
as the market for
up-against-the-wall poetry dried up at the end of the
1960s, and now laughs off questions about her Cho-like
early work.

Still, in 1997 the poetess had

"Thug Life"
tattooed on her arm to honor slain

gangsta rapper
Tupac Shakur, who was

gunned down
in a long-running fatal feud with other
rappers.

Wikipedia
explains, with deadpan irony:

"She
has

stated
that she would `rather be with the thugs than
the people who are complaining about them.` She also
tours nationwide and frequently speaks out against

hate-motivated violence."

Giovanni also writes prose:

RACISM 101;

Giovanni,
Nikki;
$20.00; This book indicts higher education
for the inequities it perpetuates, contemplates the
legacy of the 60`s, provides a survival guide for black
students on predominately white campuses, and denounces

Spike Lee
while offering her own ideas for a film
about Malcolm X. [From a list of "Books
On The African American LGB Experience
"
]

She also has composed

bon mots
, such as:

"A
white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black
face

goes with a white mind
. Very seldom a white face
will have

a black mind."

And then there`s her

insight
, "The honkie`s whole sex thing is tied up
to land."

As an anonymous commenter
rhetorically asked on my

blog
:

"I
wonder

how many times
Cho heard the phrase `white
privilege` while he was

in college
?"

(Click

here
to see how often the term appears in the
Virginia Tech website.)

Giovanni is one of those
sub-doggerel "poets" who has such Important
Things to say that she can`t be bothered to take the

time to say them well.
As she herself admitted to

Brian Lamb
on C-SPAN`s

Booknotes
, "I`m not a

very good rhymer
."
When she

tries
, it comes out like

Cole Porter
gone gaga:

if
it`s gum we can chew it
I hope it`s love so we can do it

Perhaps her

best-known
poem is

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why
),
a slab
of Afrocentrist drivel from 1973:

I
was born in the Congo.
I
walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the

sphinx
.
I

designed a pyramid
so tough that a star that only
glows every one hundred years falls into the center
giving divine perfect light.
I am
bad.

Indeed.

Of course, Professor Giovanni, an
elderly lady of 63, is not personally a danger to other
people, no matter how

bloodthirsty
some of her poems are.  

(What impact she has had over the
years on earnest, impressionable young people might be a
different question, however.)

Instead, she is a minimally
talented self-promoter who has exploited various

ideological fads
over the decades, such as black
radicalism,

feminism
, and

Afrocentrism
, to secure herself a comfy sinecure at
Virginia Tech and to spend her spare time traveling
around to hear herself be praised. Her own website
lovingly lists 124   "Awards
and Honors
"
she has garnered.

Giovanni`s fee for a personal
appearance runs from

$5,000 to $10,000
. That`s pocket lint compared to
the

$40,000+
demanded by Maya Angelou (who is

ensconced
down the road from public Virginia Tech at
posh private Wake Forest), but it`s a living.

Giovanni [email her]
is a small town version of

New York City
charlatan

Al Sharpton
, You might think that the ringmaster of
the 1987

Tawana Brawley hoax
whose

racist rhetoric
helped incite the

Crown Heights pogrom
of

1991
and the

Freddie`s Fashion Mart
mass murder of

1995
might, like

Don Imus
, have talked himself out of a job by now.

And, yet, Sharpton not only
endures, but prospers—elbowing his way back into the
spotlights as the

moral arbiter
at the center of the recent Imus
brouhaha.

Being a race hustler apparently
means never having to say you`re sorry.

[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and

movie critic
for


The American Conservative
.
His website

www.iSteve.blogspot.com
features his daily
blog.]