Last week The Journal printed two Letters to the Editor [8/31/06] which I reply to. I imagine there were Jews and Germans who agreed with the popular Nazism of Hitler as they began to move across Europe changing the world. Likewise, the proponents of the Hip Hop culture of today see themselves as some type of liberators. However, I am amazed that they can't analyze what they are seeing. They can glorify thugs like Tupac whose fame in a short life was primarily a criminal life made up of teaching young Black males to curse their elders, demonize their women, and attempt to give respectability to a word that curses all of the progress of Black forefathers whose lives and hopes died in trees and at private and public lynching, while being called the N word. If it is a Black poet they want to glorify, think Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Paul Laurence Dunbar and hundreds of others who spoke of Black life when times were really hard, without belittling Black folks or their hopes.

The Hip Hop movement has been an economic success for a relative few. But so was the drug trafficking movement in Black neighborhoods across America, and so has pimping and prostitution been an economic success, but in each instance the damage and destruction they have left behind has been devastating to the Black communities they occupy. But then the Hip Hop movement glorifies all that is negative in the Black community, including pimping and drugs.

So successful has the movement been that you can't see a movie with a Black actor in it without having to expose yourself and your children to the N word and vicarious profanity and vulgarity, which Black Americans have become identified with all over the world.

The letters to the editor relating to my criticism of the radio talk show host included a criticism of my glorifying my children. Let me be clear. I am very proud of my three sons and lift them up to tell them that they make me proud and to tell all who read my story of that pride. I was raised by uneducated parents who demonstrated that, by drilling in me and my siblings that we could be whatever we wanted to be, and we grew up to believe that and act on it. And we all achieved. That was the model for my children and today, they are role models. Hip Hop tells young Blacks that they are Nig--s, pimps, whor-s, and bitc--s, and that there is no hope. And you wonder why I am proud.

Too much time is spent in Black communities demeaning those who are achievers. I got it in school as a pretty fair student who lived on a "good" side of town. All of this because the two people who parented me and my siblings stayed together 51 years and worked hard to create a good life for their four Black children. My wife and I have spent the past 44 years working hard to make a good life for our three sons and six grandchildren, and if you think I am not going to praise them, you must be crazy. And I didn’t allow them to watch movies or listen to music that called them Nig--s or hang out with kids who thought it was cool to be thugs.

By the way, where were you when I was working two jobs and going to school at night to be able to buy my wife whatever she desires today? Where were you when I couldn’t afford to get my car painted so I painted it myself with a paint brush? Where were you when I got fired at Hughes Aircraft for fighting too hard in the Affirmative Action Department for Blacks to get into the departments that the whites didn’t want them in such as electronics and engineering contracts? Where were you when I worked at the Girl Scouts designing relevant programs to recruit Blacks to get into their programs? And now I am proud that my grandchildren are members of the scouts instead of the Bloods or Crips. I am proud they take piano lessons and play soccer, baseball and basketball, rather than listen to hours of hip hop telling them they are Nig---s. Yes, I'm proud to be an achiever, and I'm proud that my children and grandchildren are achievers.

Were you there when I, as an older married student at Pepperdine, was the first president of the Black Student Union working to get the first Black studies classes and first Black professors on campus? If you have time to criticize someone without knowing enough about them, I say you have too much time on your hands. If you knew me you would know that my achievements have all been based on helping Black people achieve. Other Blacks have the attitude of "I got mine, now you get yours." I don't necessarily fault them, because I don't know their story, but if you knew me or even if you read The Journal, you would know that I have a passion for my people. And I don't think my way to success is everybody's way. But I have some experience in my 65 years and a proven track record. I've seen the failures others have tried. And I've represented too many Black sons and daughters in criminal cases, so I think I've established some credibility.

In the process of my work I have learned what works and what doesn’t work for the masses of Black folks. A Hip Hop culture that calls gangsters and thugs, like 50 Cent, a role model doesn’t work, while criticizing a giant like Bill Cosby who gave us the role model of The Huxtables on "The Cosby Show."

My message is also to the parents of young children that their children don't have to follow the role set by thugs, crooks and criminals like guys with prison records and names like Ludacris, who hate being Black so much that they think it is endearing to call African people Nig--s, publicly. But they can achieve the way Black folks have done since slavery?

As for the argument that there is good rap and for that matter good Hip Hop, it reminds me of two points: first, Malcolm X's made a statement that there are good snakes and there are bad snakes. He said that the majority of snakes are good and non poisonous. The point is that when you enter a den of snakes you should just start killing snakes because the very one you don't get will kill you.

The other point is that Jesus, a man that is foreign to many in the Hip Hop world, ran the money changers out of the temple and dealt with the negative culture by destroying it. Can you say, Sodom and Gomorrah? Hip hoppers and so-called preachers and teachers, like the one at Fuller Seminary (Ralph Watkins) and PCC Community Education Center (Dean Rick Hodge), want to return the money changers and the negative culture of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Black Church. Fuller Theological Seminary is apparently proud to facilitate that downfall of Black America in a manner that allows them to throw a rock and hide their hand like the ones that facilitated the crucifixion of Jesus saying that Black folks killed Black hope and pride by promoting Hip Hop instead of teaching the Gospel of hope. According to an article that appeared in the Pasadena Star News (July 11, 2003) Fuller gives out a PhD in Hip Hop and Theology. It quotes a former gang member who says it was hard getting his masters at Fuller because "professors could not teach from an urban context." To me this means that because you haven't been in a criminal gang, or in prison, you can't relate to Black America. Not so. Maybe you can't relate to criminal gangsters and thugs who think that this is the real world that must be perpetuated. How sad it is to glorify a self professed thug like Tupac in God's church. This is an example of the old saying, "In the eyes of the blind the one eyed is king."