Just How Privileged Was ICE CUBE’s Upbringing? | Larry Elder
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Well, not a lot of love for President Trump from a gentleman named O'Shea Jackson, more widely known as Ice Cube.
You know, the rapper, actor, entrepreneur who starred in the movie, Boys in the Hood.
I mean, you did impeach the president and they did impeach the president.
Yeah, I mean, I said arrested, but they still haven't got to arrest the president.
That's what I want to do.
He got that White House.
He definitely gonna be in handcuffs.
Man, I can't wait to see that, man.
Now, as mentioned, Mr.
Cube co-starred in a movie called Boys in the Hood, which revolves around a inner city high school in an area of Los Angeles known as the Crenshaw District.
The high school is called Crenshaw High.
I went there.
He go to Washington?
Uh-uh.
He go to Crenshaw.
Now do you know who was raised by two parents?
Something increasingly uncommon in the inner city?
Ice Cube.
Do you know who did not attend Crenshaw High School?
Ice Cube.
With a set of strong parents behind him, Cube was able to navigate the tricky landscape that was his neighborhood.
When Cube reached his teens, his parents pulled him out of his local school and bused him to a suburban high school in the San Fernando Valley.
For the young Cube, who'd known little beyond the deteriorating South Central LA, the affluence and stability that marked his new surroundings left a deep impression." So Cube was bussed 40 miles to escape his local inferior high school and was bussed to a suburb called Woodland Hills to attend a high school called Taft High School.
Now about Cube's street cred, check out what rapper Crazy D said.
He grew up in a bad area, but that still didn't make him authentic.
He lived in an upper-class neighborhood.
Nice home.
Parents had money.
He always had it made.
Not to take anything away from him as an actor, right?
But he was acting like a gangster, and he was good at it.
You can't take anything away from it.
He's an incredible talent.
But just he ain't the real deal.
End.
You see, Trump, you know, the man that Cube wants to see in handcuffs, supports school choice.
Trump wants to give parents the same option that Cube's parents had, and that is to get out of an underperforming nearby government school and possibly go to a better school.
I say it again, what do you have to lose?
Look, what do you have to lose?
You're living in poverty.
Your schools are no good. - The problem is not the parents, The problem is not the children.
The problem is a system that protects academic failure.
Parents are literally fleeing their zone schools as they buy for seats in charter schools.
A child's destiny should not be determined on the pull of a draw.
Every year we wait to offer parents the choices they deserve is a year in which children's futures are destroyed.
Capital that is raised to repair school buildings in Detroit is often misused.
One big example was Southwestern High School.
Their swimming pool was shut down in the 1990s, I believe, because it couldn't pass a health inspection.
The district allocated a significant amount of money to repairing the pool.
The construction work was so poor that they ended up closing the pool again after it was reopened.
This has only gotten worse in recent decades.
From 1999 to 2012, more than $100 million was spent upgrading schools that were closed within a few years.
From a high of 380 schools in 1975, only 97 are open today.
Closing a school can rapidly accelerate the decline of neighborhoods in a city that is already hollowing out.
Property values drop, kids travel longer distances to school, and communities fall into disrepair.
When you tell people that you go to a Detroit public school, they always Pity you.
In order to escape poverty, you need to do three things.
Number three, don't have a kid unless you get married.
Number two, don't have a kid until you're age 20.
Number one, finish high school.
Ideally a high school that's good enough so that when you graduate, you literally can read, write, and compute at grade level.
Take Obama, for example.
Obama went to the finest prep school in the state of Hawaii.
And Punahou was originally called Oahu College. .
The president's home is a Gothic-style mansion built in 1897 and overlooks a 76-acre campus.
The campus takes its name from Kapunaho, an artesian spring that bubbles up through a lily pond at the edge of the Thurston Memorial Chapel.
And like Mr.
Cube, Michelle Obama chose to spend hours on a bus so that she could avoid going to her local inferior government school.
Michelle attended high school at Chicago's Whitney Young Magnet School, a school geared toward academically high-achieving students from throughout Chicago.
The school gave Michelle access to high-level college prep curriculum and reinforced that, with hard work, she was able to rise to the challenge." And what about Sasha and Malia?
Well, in Chicago, they went to a private school affiliated with the University of Chicago.
And when they moved to Washington, D.C., where did Sasha and Malia go?
At the very private, very elite Sidwell Friends School.
It's the same school once attended by Nancy Reagan, Chelsea Clinton, and scores of other children of Washington's rich and or powerful.
In every grade at Sidwell, you have the children of diplomats and of, you know, wealthy parents.
How bad are inner city schools?
Well, nationwide, roughly 10% of families send their kids to private schools.
Black families, it's around 6%.
Where do public school teachers send their own school-age kids?
More than one in five public school teachers sent their children to private schools.
In some cities, the figure is much higher.
In Philadelphia, 44% of teachers put their children in private schools.
In Cincinnati, 41%.
Chicago, 39%.
Rochester, New York, 38%.
San Francisco, Oakland, 34%.
New York City, 33%.
End of quote.
And what about members of Congress with school-age kids?
Well, here's what the Heritage Foundation said.
37% of representatives and 45% of senators who participated in a survey indicated that they had sent their children to private school.
52% of Congressional Black Caucus members and 38% of Congressional Hispanic Caucus members sent at least one child to private school.
End of quote.
Now, Mr.
Cube and his wife of 25 years have four children.
Congratulations.
And where did he send his first child?
To the same suburban school that Ice Cube had to be bused to when he was a kid.
One more thing about Obama and school choice.
You see, before Obama met Jeremiah Wright, he made an appointment to see him.
Obama arrived early.
Wright wasn't there yet.
So Obama had a conversation with the church secretary.
Single mom had a son who wanted to be in a marching band.
Well, the son's urban school does not have a marching band.
The mom found a suburban school not only with the marching band, but also which would give free uniforms.
So she told Obama she was thinking about relocating to the suburb, but that Jeremiah Wright did not want her to move there because Wright felt that her son would lose his identity as a black person.
So when Obama met Jeremiah Wright, he brought it up, and Jeremiah Wright said to Obama, that's right, that boy won't know who he is.
Now think about this.
Obama is a half-black, half-white kid whose mom sent him to live with his white maternal grandparents so he could have a better education.
The church mother is doing the same thing that Obama's mom is doing, and instead of criticizing what Jeremiah Wright said, Obama joined the church.
Now, Cube's opposition to Trump, of course, is based upon the notion that Trump is a racist.
And Cube is very, very concerned about racism.
Do you think Hollywood is racist?
Yes.
Yes.
Well, what else is no?
Speaking of racism, I have a hypothetical for you.
Assume somebody asked President Trump, Mr.
President, why do the New York Knicks keep on losing?
And Trump said, well, they need more white players.
Would you assume that that was racist?
Me too.
Check this out.
Hey, you're an L.A. guy.
Why do these Dodgers keep choking, man?
What's with them?
They need to get some black ballplayers.
Is that it?
Yeah.
I love it.
Need more black players?
I wonder what this gentleman would say about that.
I have a dream.
My four little children...
Will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.