EXCELLENCE
IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
ABOUT
BLACK CREATIVITY
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Due to that passion I’ve observed many young Black people who truly are brilliant, and who have a trove of natural abilities that are much more pronounced than my own, and I'm proud to say that many of my own children are among them. So I’ve dedicated my life to encouraging these young people to purposely focus on what I only stumbled upon by accident. I’m on a constant mission to try to get them to see what I see, because many of these young people are doing just the opposite of what they should be doing. These exceptionally gifted young people should be singularly focused on developing their intellect instead of wasting their time trying to fit-in with the crowd.They should be striving to become unique and independent thinkers, instead of trying to be one of the many, because "exceptional" means just that - different from most.
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I try to get them to understand that Black people don’t have to go hat-in-hand begging the White man for a blue-collar job. If they’d just take the time to develop their unique skills, they could make those skills marketable and sought-after. I've been relatively successful in that regard when it comes to my own children and grandchildren, so now I've focused my attention on the Black community as a whole.
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I learned to do legal research and brief writing, for example, and that allowed me to make a killing by simply doing what I love most, writing. Yeah, I had a 9-to-5, but only so I would have a guaranteed income. But on the side I did legal research and brief writing for attorneys, and as a result, my son and daughter never had to want for a thing throughout their entire childhood. I charged the attorneys a third of their fees to work on a case – and they were happy to give it to me, because, as a former hood rat, I understood the key to winning cases, something they didn't always learn in law school.
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While the various law schools taught them to be competent in interpreting the law, the key to winning legal cases is grounded in psychology. Instead of going out of your way to try to sound learned and scholarly, you should stay away from dry legalese whenever possible and focus on making the judge as upset with the opposition as you are.
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I loved having that kind of impact on people. It gave me a sense of power. It’s like being a screenwriter, but instead of writing fiction, you're using factual information as the basis for your plot, and instead of manipulating fictional characters, you're having an impact on the lives of real people. By using that technique - along with solid legal research and a little hyperbole and gaslighting - in many cases the judge would walk into the courtroom as mad at the other side as I was. In fact, in many cases when the opposition’s attorney would read the brief, that alone, would cause them to want to settle.
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That’s why attorneys didn’t mind paying me, because they got two-thirds of the fees, and I did all the work. But I didn't mind that a bit. While I'd never tell them, I enjoyed it so much I would have almost done it for free, because it allowed me to walk out of that courtroom not merely saying, but knowing, "I am somebody!" It made me immune to feeling like I had to prove I was equal, and all my life, it's allowed me to deal with the White establishment eyeball-to-eyeball. When a bigot tries to talk down to me, I don't look down at my feet, I want to know who the hell he think he's talking to.
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Then, one day I was in a courthouse lobby talking with an attorney and he said, "You know, you could start writing appellate briefs and you wouldn't even need us anymore, because you'd never have to step foot into a courtroom." And he was right, but they kept ringing my phone off the hook nevertheless. I did so much legal research that I knew more about the law than they did, so attorneys would call and consult with me over pending cases that I wasn’t even involved in. They'd call and give me the details of a case and ask, “So what do you think, Eric?” If I could answer them off the top of my head I would, but if I couldn't, I'd research the law and try to devise ways of outwitting it through loopholes, and using one law against another - it was like playing chess, the only game I've ever enjoyed. And you know where I learned to do that, and play chess - when I was a teenager going in and out of jail. So all knowledge is valuable, regardless of where it came from.
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In my case, I just happened to stumble upon the joy and skill of writing and research while preparing for various court hearings, and I was highly motivated because I was constantly catching drug cases and it helped me to stay out of jail. It also benefited me when I was on the street, because it got me a lot of respect as a young, jailhouse lawyer. I knew every gang member in the city, regardless of what gang they were in. I’d party with one gang one night, and another on the other side of town the next. I was given a pass, because I wasn’t looked upon as a gangbanger. I was the guy who could help them beat a case - and quite often I did, and for free. Even many old-school criminals would come to me. So it wasn't only a hobby that I enjoyed, but one that's allowed me to reap huge benefits all of my life.
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So I learned my most valuable skill in jail. As the son of a lifelong drug dealer I started getting arrested for selling the drugs I was stealing from him when I was 12 years old, and by the time I was 19 and caught my one and only case as an adult, the judge was so taken with my attempt to represent myself that he sent me into the Marine Corps instead of prison.
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I'll never forget the look on the judge's face when he asked me where was my attorney and I told him, "If it pleases the court, Your Honor, I'd like permission to appear Pro Per (Propria Persona - Latin for represent myself). When I look back on it I have to laugh at my arrogance. Here's this 19-year-old hood rat with the audacity to try to speak Latin to the court - but I was dead-serious - you would have thought I was Perry Mason. The judge obviously thought it was some kind of joke, but he allowed me to proceed. To his complete surprise, however, I mounted one hell of a defense, but it was based entirely on technicalities in the law. I knew I was headed for the joint, so I already had my toothbrush with me, but I thought, "What the hell," I'll give it a shot.
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I’d been busted dead-bang with a entire briefcase filled with hard drugs - and I mean HARD drugs. So I knew that fact alone was next to impossible to overcome without a huge violation of my civil rights. But unfortunately - for me - the particular cops who busted me were quite professional in the way they went about doing their job, so I could only come up with minor violations of procedure, but nothing serious enough to get the case thrown out. So I was convicted, just as I figured I'd be.
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But when the case was over the judge called a short recess and took me into his chambers. I was prepared for a lecture on how I had thrown away my life, but instead, he offered me a proposition. He was a former Marine Corps office, so he told me that if I would agree to go into the military, he would hold my conviction in abeyance, and if I came out with an Honorable Discharge, he would throw out the conviction. Of course, I jumped at the deal, because that meant I could go home and get high instead of going back to the county jail, because I didn't have a penny for bail money to get me on the street until my sentencing date. So when I walked out of the court onto the streets of downtown Los Angeles I wanted to kiss the ground, because I hadn't planned on seeing the streets again without handcuffs for, at the very least, 5 years. So by developing just one simple skill, the skill of writing, I changed my entire life. It not only kept me out of prison, but exposed me to experiences in life that I otherwise never would have known.
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But what I didn't know was my good fortune was just beginning. The first thing they do when you enter the Marine Corps is test you, and through those battery of tests they identified my predisposition and love for the written word, so they sent me to the Army/Navy Academy to further develop it. Then shortly thereafter, a naval captain (a colonel in the Marine Corps) who was my instructor, got me a job with my battalion commander, and later I became an aide to the Commanding General of Camp Pendleton.
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The general and I became as close as father and son, and his senior officers treated me as such. Everything that came out of his office, I wrote - including their fitness reports, so the officers used to rely on me for a heads-up on what was coming down the pike. The General was also a classical pianist, and I played saxophone and was heavily into jazz. So on the weekends the General and I would drink his scotch, talk about my life, his life, and listen to music. I introduced him to the music of Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Phineas Newborn Jr., and it really turned him out. He also setup private living quarters for me in a room in the rear of the main base library so I could work through the middle of the night without being disturbed, and I lived like a king. I also learned a lot from him, so when I got out of the Marine Corps and went to college, I damn near slept through it - and I made extra money writing term papers in the process.
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So, again, while I’m far from brilliant, and I don’t have many other skills, writing has literally been a lifesaver for me, and it exposed me to many experiences that I ordinarily wouldn't have had. In addition, it's allowed me to take full advantage of what mind I do have. Also, by the way, when I got out of the Corps I went before that very same judge who had sent me in (again, in Pro Per), and he expunged my entire criminal record, juvenile and all. So today, I could run for Pope of the Catholic Church.
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Writing also forced me to organize my thinking, pay attention to detail, and become a critical thinker. That helped me tremendously with my education, because the minute they tried to feed me bullshit – and many educators are filled with it – a red flag would immediately go up, and I’d think, "Wait a minute! That doesn’t make sense." From that, I learned to always do my own research, and I also learn to never give priority to anyone else’s ability to think over my own – no matter who it was, or how many letters they had behind their name. While we should always be open to consuming new knowledge, we should always connect the dot and assess the relevance of that knowledge, for ourselves.
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That came in very handy when they tried to feed me bullshit about how wonderful the White man was. That’s all an illusion that the White establishment tries to convince us to embrace. While the White man has power in this society, he's far from invincible – I proved that by only losing one case in 20 years. But that said, my life experience and common sense has also taught me that you can't profile any entire group of people. You have to assess each individual as an individual. So when I say, "The White man", I don't mean all White men, that's simply ghetto shorthand for "The White establishment". We must also remember that every Black man is not Barack Obama, and every White man is not the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
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Writing and research also helped me to recognize that knowledge is free. As a result, when I got married and had kids, the first thing I did was taught both my son, and daughter to write (or at least, exposed them to it) and they taught all 5 of my grandkids. I’ve gone out of my way to see to it that all of my kids are effective writers, because writing is nothing short of thinking on paper.
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Thus, knowing my attitude toward writing, when my son was in high school he came home very excited about getting an “A” on a term paper. He couldn’t wait to show it to me. But when I looked at it, I immediately recognized that it wasn’t an “A” paper, and I told him as much. My wife and daughter were livid over what they referred to as my "gross insensitivity". They felt that I had thrown ice water on his excitement, and I was discouraging him. But he was about to go to college, so I felt that it was better for me to tell him, and then help him with it, than to just stroke his ego and let some college professor trash him while I was thousands of miles away. And he understood that, because I started by telling him what was excellent about his writing.
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And much of the paper was indeed excellent. It was very well written. That’s obviously what his teacher had graded him on, it’s flow. But he had failed to substantiate many of his assertions, and that’s what I had a problem with. When it came to grammar and style, he had that down. The paper read beautifully, but writing is about much more than just sounding pretty on paper (that’s what I’m also telling his son, and my grandson, Eli, who’s also an excellent writer). Writing is about making an effective point. So what Eric had to learn was very simple - whenever he made an assertion, he should start backing it up in the following sentence, or no later than the following paragraph.
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That’s all writing is about, making statements, and then backing them up with facts. A writer should try to drench the reader in so many facts that his point defies debate. Once he’s done that, then he can go back and make it sound pretty. If he’s only interested in beauty, he should write poetry and stay away from non-fiction. But Lil Eric reminded me of myself. I had the same problem. But when I was in college I had a Professor name Immel, and she told me in front of the entire class, “Eric, you say absolutely nothing more eloquently than any student I’ve ever had.” Then she started reading excerpts from my paper and asked, "What, are you such an authority that I'm just suppose to take your word on all this?" She embarrassed the hell out of me. So Lil Eric and I spent the next day reviewing his paper and driving that point home. He needed to understand that he was writing, not rapin’, and there’s a big difference.
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A year or so Later, after he’d gone to college, my wife read one of his papers and said, “Eric, you’re gonna have to stop writing Lil Eric’s papers. That’s not doing him any good.” So I looked at the paper and said, “I didn’t write this, Eric did.” I was flattered that she couldn’t tell the difference, because by that time he had become a much better writer than myself. But she was greatly impressed, and I took that opportunity to throw back up in her face how she scolded me when he was in high school over his writing.
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Still later, after he had become a federal agent, an FBI agent who he worked with, pointed out how well written one of his reports was. He then asked, “Who helped you with this?” Eric look at him and said, “What do you mean, who helped me with it? I wrote it myself.” And shortly after that, Eric was later given the job of reviewing the reports of all the agents before they went to the U.S. Attorney.
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So the ability to write is a very valuable skill that can allow Black people to not only avoid having to depend on the White man to give them a blue-collar job as a handout, it can also provide them with a sense of personal confidence and independence - and there are many other skills just like it. I've only focused on writing because that just happens to be my thing. But Black people, have many talents and skills, and we have the intellectual creativity that will allow us to standout in life just like we do on Soul Train.
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But unfortunately, this society works to discourage us, and it tends to pour all of its resources and dedication into convincing us that we're merely beasts of burden, and that it's "uppity" for us to think beyond that. But don't buy into that bullshit. Be smart and develop your intellect. Then, instead of having to go beg the White man for a job, you can force him to come knocking on your door begging you to apply your intellect on his behalf.
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Thus, whenever you consider your standing in society, you should always remember the following - what we dismissively referred to as soul is nothing less than creative brilliance straining to be unleashed, and it can be applied to any endeavor. We’ve just got to stop Twerkin’ long enough to recognize that fact.
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Eric L. Wattree
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND
INDEPENDENT THINKERS
.Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.