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:
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.]


