Me Myself And I: Hogwarts Is Now An HBCU

“What I do ain’t make-believe
People say I sit and try
But whan it comes to being de la

It’s just me myself and I” — Me Myself And I, by De La Soul.

I grew up in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. There was no gang-banging in my adolescent years, and there did not appear to be any on the horizon of my adult years. Sadly, I was not menacing in high school; I was medically certified to wrestle at 103 pounds my senior year. Most people are not intimidated by anyone who weighs 103 pounds. Compton was where I was from, but my family left in 1977…before it was terraformed by crack. My parents’ memory of Compton is that of a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles…not the hellscape that was ushered in when crack got a grip on the people who were lured by its siren’s song.

Yet, the rhymes of NWA, DJ Quick, Comptom’s Most Wanted, Above The Law, and other gangsta rappers had a vice lock on the youth of America. The once highly coveted Hammer Pants and Cross Colours clothing were quickly banished and replaced with black Raiders’ hats, Raiders’ Starter Jackets, black or blue jeans, and some type of black Nikes. That was the uniform of many of the wannabe Suburban gangstas who imagined the immaculately paved roads of the posh tony towns and burbs they lived on the same level as many of the gang-infested neighborhoods found in the politically and economically isolated portions of our large American cities. For them…