Eric Thomas went from being a homeless, fatherless high school dropout who survived the streets of Detroit by fighting on a daily basis to earning his Ph.D. in educational administration from Michigan State and becoming a sought-after motivational speaker who commands between $50,000 and $100,000 when he shares his story with corporations.
Eric Thomas (Image source: etinspires.com)
You might assume that by this stage Thomas breezes through most challenges — but then he stepped onstage in front of a not-very-fired-up group of students at Vashon High School in St. Louis last month.
Image source: YouTube
See, 70 percent of the school district’s pupils read below their grade levels, KTVI-TV reported, and Thomas was there — for free — to try to spark some change in their lives.
But when some students in the auditorium kept talking while Thomas was trying to speak, the been-to-hell-and-back guy known as the “Hip-Hop Preacher” wasn’t having any of it — and the event took a dramatic turn.
Image source: YouTube
“I’m here because I love you, but I’ll be darned if I come here for free and you disrespect me,” Thomas growled, staring down his audience and punctuating his words with finger jabs. “I ain’t 20 years old. I ain’t 19 years old. I’m a grown man. I’m here because I love you … I’m not here to take nothing from you. I’m here to give you something.”
More from Thomas:
And you’re gonna have the nerve to laugh and joke when teachers trying to teach you? You got the nerve to act the fool when somebody cares about you? You’re talking when I’m talking? Do you know if I go to a Jewish school, them kids are quiet. If I go to a white school, them kids quiet. If I go to a Latino school, they quiet. The only kids that disrespect me is black kids. That’s it, my own are the only ones that disrespect me. I work in any other school and they’re like, “There go ET, we taking notes.” I come home — you talking. You capping jokes. You think something funny. Look how we’re living. There ain’t nothing funny. Ain’t nothing funny y’all.
Thomas added that he’s embarrassed when educators ask him why there are problems in urban schools because he knows students in them are barely trying.
“You didn’t give your best,” Thomas told the students. “They think you dumb — you ain’t dumb! You can’t take our people from Africa and put us in a diaspora and spread us all over the world. And we survived slavery — and we can’t pass a test? … And you’re gonna tell me we can’t learn how to write? Have you lost your mind? We are survivors. That’s all we do is survive.”
Image source: YouTube
Then Thomas challenged the students in the crowd “to go in there and get that doggone piece of paper and that pencil and do your best. … I challenge you to go to class and act like you got some sense. Ain’t nobody gotta put you on medicine. You know how to sit down and shut up. You do it when you’re watching videos.”
The portion of Thomas’ talk when he confronts students talking out of turn comes just after the 3:30 mark in the clip “Nothing Funny”:
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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