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Teachers, parents shape lives, Lee says

Filmmaker stresses the value of an education

By Bridget Brown
The Daily Cougar

The record heat steamed off the sidewalks of New York City during the summer of 1977. The urban jungle was broke and rocked with blackouts, riots and the birth of disco.

A serial killer named David Berkowitz ? the Son of Sam ? was quickly making New Yorkers forget that their Yankees were on the way to winning the World Series. A college student from Morehouse, Shelton Jackson Lee, needed a major, so he picked up his first video camera and documented it all.

Manuel Rearte/The Daily Cougar

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Filmmaker Spike Lee speaks at the Cullen Performance Hall on Monday as part of UH's Black History Month events. Lee stressed the importance of education and finding the right career during college.

"Growing up in Brooklyn, I didn't know I wanted to be a filmmaker. I wanted to be second base for the Mets," Lee ? now better known as Spike, the filmmaker ? said during a lecture at Cullen Performance Hall on Monday. 

Lee, visiting as part of Black History Month activities, touched on the subject of the media's "dumbing down" of America's black youth.

"We looked up to the guys that could play ball, the guys that had a way with the ladies and the guys that had intelligence," he told the capacity audience. "Now, if you say a sentence in proper English, you're accused of being white. If you're smoking a blunt on the corner, drinking a 40 and holding your nuts, then you are black."

Lee called the observation that young black males equate intelligence with being white and ignorance with being black "genocide."

"Why would we have risked life and limb to learn how to read and write, and now we're failing on purpose?" Lee asked, referring to the fact that slaves were often whipped and castrated for teaching others how to read. "Education is the key to all these things we have."

Lee urged college students to choose careers they truly love, regardless of money. Too many people have the "I want it now disease" and aren't willing to perfect their craft, he said.

"I say my prayers every night that I get to do what I love," he said. "Please use these four years ? or more ? to find what it is that you love."

Lee said that great teachers are needed to help young people take the first step to ending racism, and that parents have the greatest chance of encouraging their children to pursue their dreams.

"My mother and grandmother were both teachers, and I think that being taught by great teachers can change your life," he said.
 

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