[***Make sure you continue voting in both the Janet Jackson and Halle Berry brackest in the October Madness 2006 tournament here and over at The Royal Youngs. ***]

Over the past few months, newspapers and magazines have been informing the world that enrollment at HBCU’s has been declining rapidly since the 70s and 80s. Some question the usefulness of these Black bastions of higher education, if not altogether claiming that the education is second rate.

I poo-poo on both of those assertions.

For the unitiated, HBCU stands for “historically black college and/or university”. You may know it as a Black school or college. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of just over 100 currently enrolling students today. The most well-known HBCU’s would be Morehouse College, Spelman College, Howard University and a bevy of others mostly down South to include Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Southern University, etc. As an added bonus, allow me to provide you the definition I wrote back in 2004 and a snippet of a post I’d written about HBCU’s:

HBCU(acronym). noun. def.-college generally located in southern region of United States (though can be found in Southwest, Northeast, and Carribean if you think about…they all black down thurr) without: air conditioned dorms, up to date computer systems, computer labs, computers, large pockets of white people, large pockets of black teachers, proper security, helpful administration, quick service, good service, graduating students, students, etc.

And:

“…really, I loved my school and advertise for them all the time…all the BS they put me through made me a better person and caused me to grow up. Without a doubt, it was the best 4 years of my life and I recommend the HBCU experience to anybody, especially specific schools to which I hold a little bit of bias towards. The relationships I built will last forever. But there definitely are some things that need addressing. Pronto…”

Everybody that’s gone to an HBCU has experienced some major issue that could have caused cardiac arrest from the revokation of scholarships (over and over), the lack of housing, or just other random non-sense, mostly administration based. And for those reasons some people think that some HBCU’s need to close.

I’m of a different train of thought. You see, I not only think HBCU’s are necessary, but I’d wager that the education received at an HBCU (in its entirety) is better than the education received at any major or Ivy league institution.

Yeah, I said it.

Fuck Harvard. Morehouse trumps all. And for the record, I attended a major-state, nationally reknowned university for graduate school, so I’m very well versed in both circles.

But Panama, how could you possibly think that the education you receive at Texas Southern University is better than UT-Austin? That makes no sense at all.

I’m gonna learn ya. And you know, this goes for white people too. I’m not saying that white people should overrun our beloved HBCU’s, but I think the education they’d get would trump the education at these other schools as well. Let’s get educated, shall we? Yes, let’s.

1) In short, I know more Black people than you do if you went to a white school.

This cannot be stressed enough. I have a vast network of ninjas at my disposal at all times…and further, ninjas that can read. A lot of people I know that went to white schools graduate and move to some new city where they have to meet all the professional Black people unless they move back home. It’s usually easier if you’re in a fraternity or sorority, but what if you aren’t? Who wants to join the Urban League strictly to meet new people of color? Not I says the sexxy one. Lucky for me, I don’t have too. I know them all and can find them anywhere like Creative Source.

Speaking of networking, a lot of people make a big deal about the registration woes every semester. Well, I tend to see it like this…

2) Registration is the best networking event of a year at an HBCU.

So let me get this right. If you go to a white school, you don’t even have to show up until the day of school and you’re more than likely registered? When I was at Morehouse, we stood in line for hours. And you know what happens when you stand in line for hours? You meet beaucoup people. If you can’t network there, you can’t network anywhere. There’s no reason NOT to meet people since you’re going to spend all day with them anyway. Friendships are forged, life stories are told. It’s like the a social mixer for reading ninjas. Hell, folks pay $20 to get into a club to meet folks. Imagine paying $10,000 a year JUST to stand in line to go to class. And if you went to the right HBCU, you could be standing in line to the heir to a multi-million dollar industry or the son of a world famous entertainer…or just a ninja who has the hook up on pre-release CD’s or knows who to call when your car gets booted.

No registration, no free CD’s!

3) You learn about real responsibility.

Hmm…how do I explain this one. I lost my scholarship three times while I was at Morehouse. Sophomore, Junior, and Senior year. I was placed on academic probation once. Mind you, none of this was actually my fault. I never received a grade lower than a B the whole time I was there***. But the administration simply lost my shit. As in, lost my scholarship papers and lost some of my grades. So what does a young Black male who’s about to lose his potential livelihood do? He whips out the scholarship papers that he carries with him EVERYWHERE and shows them to the Dean, who promptly pressed a button on the computer and problem solved.

I learned to keep EVERY piece of paper I received with official letterhead on it. I still have a note from a professor that says “hi” on it just in case she tries to say she never said “hi” to me. If that isn’t responsibility, I don’t know what is. Though it has caused problems for me later. For instance, I keep every one of my bills, causing an overabundance of paper taking up space in my home. But if they try to say I didn’t pay a bill in 1999, I got their asses!

***Okay, that’s not entirely true. I got a D+ one semester in my Differential Equations class, but in my defense, I had the second highest grade in the class. The teacher damn near flunked everybody AND I wasn’t even a Math major, I was just taking it because I’m a nerd. To counter that D+, I ALSO managed to get two A+’s and an A in my other classes that semester. Try explaining that shit to your parents in a way that makes any sense.

4) You might not think so, but I got a real taste of diversity training.

People think that being at an HBCU is a lot like being at a white school in terms of just being around a whole bunch of people of the same race. If ever there was a bad assumption. The class divide lives on at HBCU’s. On my dorm hall alone were at least 3 children of millionaires. In fact, I didn’t even know I was poor until I got to college. But here’s the thing, being Black means I already know how to deal with white people in some regard. I mean, if we want to eat, live, and work in America, you have to be able to deal with white people. So that was in the books. I learned how to deal with folks who had money or were well-connected in society, etc.

I’m inclined to believe that white people don’t really get that at these schools. Mostly because they don’t have to. I went to school with some of the most naive, ignorant white people this side of the Mississippi who’s fascination with us ninjas amazed me. It’s easy at a white school to not really deal with any of the Black or minority students, mostly since it seems like everybody cliques up…which is how you get assholes throwing “gangster” parties which turn into parties where folks just mock Black culture. And it usually doesn’t matter since white people run the world anyway.

But slow down. Did you read the lastest story on the American population in TIME? I hate to say it white folks, but the Mexican’s are coming. We (Black and Brown) might not get along that well right now, but at least we have a common foe: white people. You better get used to speaking to Tyrone and Pablo now, because pretty soon we’ll be all over.

5) Homecoming

Yeah, I know every college has homecoming. But nuh uh Jack, not like a Black school. Our shit is like our fraternities and sororitites, they last a lifetime. Homecoming at my big white school kind of sucked ass. Hell, I didn’t even realize it was homecoming until the actual gamedays. At an HBCU??? It’s a weeklong event, and even longer if you count the time it takes to detox and recuperate. I just got back from my homecoming and I’m still not caught up on sleep.

And once again, being as I know more Black people than you, I get to spend a week around a bunch of reading ninjas who will be doing something with their lives at some point…and very rarely does anybody get shot.

Just think about that shit for a minute.

Plus, when was the last time a rapper shouted out a major white school? Howard gets shouted out all the time. That automatically makes it better, even rappers pay attention to HBCU’s. And show up at homecoming.

7) There are some dorms without air conditioning…that are in the Deep South.

If that isn’t a focus on healthy living (you lose weight when you sweat it all out), I don’t know what is.

HBCU’s are usually in or near big enough cities.

The world is your oyster and the city is your backyard. This way you don’t HAVE to just drink yourself to death for entertainment purposes. Nope, you can actually learn some shit and then go party since you won’t be too drunk to read all day. Being in a big city fosters real life education as well. You will more than likely be robbed at least once because you will go out sporting your college paraphanalia…and you deserve to be robbed. It’s a means of humbling people.

And what the world needs now is more humility. Word life.

9) The women are just plain finer at HBCU’s than at other schools.

No, that doesn’t really make for a better education but it does make for a better quality of life…which (aha!) does make for a better education. If you feel better, you’re more inclined to be happier and it’s easier to enjoy subject matter when you’re happy. That is science and cannot be disputed. Word to George Bush. You know that in my classes where women were present, most of us dudes were on our P’s and Q’s. And don’t let it be a fine woman. Good gracious would we be focused. It’s just not a good look to come across stupid in front of a fine woman because even if she’s a cokehead, she’s still fine and you’d probably like to see her naked.

In essence, finer women cause men to step up their game which bodes well later on in life for women so they don’t have to deal with so many loser dudes spitting lines like, “what’s your sign?”

That right there is life education.

And I’ve seen some “fine” women at predominantly white schools. It’s just not the same thing. I almost feel that if you are a Black man with a Black girlfriend, and you went to an HBCU and she didn’t, you cannot bring her to homecoming without having a talk with her first that goes like this:

Dude: Baby, I’m so glad you’re coming with me this year, but I need to let you know that you’re going to see some drop-dead gorgeous women, some of which I know and some of which I wanted to know. I’ll need you to know that if some random woman, or women, come and jump on me that I did not have sexual relations with that woman…I wanted too, but I didn’t.

Chick: Whatever, they can’t be that fine.

Dude: Shiiiiit, you must be smoking. There are some women so fine that Sanaa Lathan would look average. In fact…wait, you do realize that I love you and only want to be with you because if my eyes wander its just because I like their sweaters…

Eh…it might go something like that. Just know, your girl is not ready. Hell, I’m not ready every year and I went to school with fine women.

10) I just know more Black people than you do.

And that just makes me better than you. Which means my education was better than yours. I’m Black, it’s kind of important to know lots of Black people, unless of course you’re Black and afraid of other ninjas in which case you should just go die now. Thanks.