Filmmaker Spike Lee says young blacks ignore education
Thursday February 06, 2003FRESNO, Calif. (AP) Filmmaker Spike Lee says American culture has young blacks believing they have only three routes to success: playing professional sports, making rap music or selling drugs.
``It no longer seems to me that we are preoccupied with education and intelligence. It's not cool,'' Lee said. ``Even sicker, we equate smart and intelligent with being white. Intelligence is white and uncool.''
Speaking at Fresno City College on Wednesday during Black History month, Lee also said he's not sure how thinking among young blacks changed. Lee, 46, said if young blacks smoke and drink, they think they're cool. They're also ``ghetto.''
``There is nothing wrong being in the ghetto,'' said Lee, a native of Atlanta who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. ``But you have to try to get out of the ghetto. There is a mentality of these young cats, and it's genocide.''
Lee also told about 2,000 audience members to beware the media's subliminal messages, including those put out by rap artists and some black film and music producers. Lee criticized ``Barbershop,'' a comedy released last year, in which a character belittles civil rights activists Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
``Just because you're African-American don't mean anything you do is all right because you're African-American,'' he said.
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