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"I have a large number of Black students in the classes I teach at a local community college; and it is clear that, for whatever reason, the majority of them are not even prepared for that level of instruction."

Last night I was flipping channels and turned to my local public access station. The show I saw as apparently produced by a young black man, and it was very depressing.

It was filmed at some sort of club that looked as if it had been set up in an old storefront - it had a very makeshift appearance - and the show depicted a large group of 21-35 year-old black people hanging out, getting drunk, smoking pot, and talking trash laced with obscenities. It was basically a hip-hop kind of place, with the usual slovenly attire and mugging for the camera.

The whole scene was marked by a tone of insolence and dead-end vanity, the smugness of people who have nothing to be smug about and who are going nowhere.

My belief is the smugness is based on the knowledge that they’ve been exempted from all standards of responsibility and accountability in an effort to atone for something that ended over 150 years ago.