Dr Boyce on XM Satellite: Liz Trotta, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama

I have alot of respect for Keith Murphy, host of The Urban Journal on XM Satellite Power 169. Keith has been there with me since the very beginning, when no one wanted to hear anything I had to say. He has the perfect radio voice, the kind of deep voice that I wish I had. It seems that women like that kind of thing. Instead, I was stuck with a voice that might work for a cartoon character.

At any rate, the topic of discussion was Liz Trotta, the woman on Fox News who publicly wished death on Senator Barack Osama....I mean Obama. Yeah, she got his name wrong too, and it just so happened that she confused it with the most notorious terrorist in the world. We also talked a bit about Hillary Clinton, the 2008 Presidential election, and my experience at Syracuse University. Some people don't like this, but I am honest in all my interviews. It takes too much effort to lie, mislead or spin things in a certain way. So, everything you hear from me is real. So, when Keith asked me about how Syracuse University has responded to my work, I've been quite honest about it. The truth is that I have been almost completely ignored and disregarded by central campus. I send emails to them, they rarely email me back. I request to be involved in their inner city initiatives with black students, but I am considered "too radical" to be involved with black kids. This is sad because these kids come from the inner city and they need me to motivate them toward educational achievement. The kids, like many kids in inner city schools, are not responding to the individuals being sent by the university because they have nothing in common with them. Myself, on the other hand, not only grew up around these kids, but I specialize in motivating black kids to want to go to college. So, you can imagine my disappointment when the woman responsible for sending faculty to talk to the kids was told that because I am radical, she should keep away from me. I actually saw these words written in an email, I was a little bit shocked.



What is sad is that I am honestly not that radical. I was made fun of as a kid for "talking white" and "acting white" (whatever that means). I love my students, 99% of whom are white. But as Malcolm X discusses so eloquently, whenever a black man stands firmly and strongly for something, America wants to paint him as radical. Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Bernard Goldberg and others can be as indignant and angry as they want to be. But if I were to be equally angry, I would be labeled as an "angry black man." Such labels are unfortunate, for they undermine the rights of African Americans to honestly share their frustrations with our country. Jeremiah Wright, for example, is a patriot who put his life on the line for our country (unlike many of the right wing pundits who criticize him), yet he has been painted as radical and unpatriotic. This should make any American upset.

If I didn't have such a strong sense of self, this double standard would confuse me. I would never have been able to imagine how a black person can be kind, honest and supportive of other human beings, yet be labeled as radical and dangerous. I am neither a liberal, nor a conservative. I am certainly not a radical person, but rather, I rely on common sense and a basic commitment to human decency.

Some fallaciously assume that uplifting black people means oppressing white people. They think that black love equals white hate. I love and uplift, I do not hate and oppress. I reject these confused notions and have no fear of such irrational labeling. Such labels are used to mute the voices of oppressed people around the world, and I refuse to be oppressed. Anyone who doesn't get it is encouraged to go take a black history class to help them understand exactly why their anger toward me is similar to the mob mentality that has plagued our country for 400 years. I don't get angry at people who respond in this way, because the response is nothing more than a reflection of the fact that our country does not properly teach racial history. In other words, some of our minds have been poisoned and miseducated, including my own. The desire to learn the truth and educate yourself must come from inside and must be a lifelong process. It is a journey I embrace every day of my life.

At any rate, please click the image below to watch the interview. Keith Murphy is a damn good interviewer, so I expect you will enjoy it.