Scholarship or would-be scholarship should NEVER be done in the context of needing to eat. That produces bad scholarship which muddies the intellectual waters from which our people - who perish for the lack of knowledge - MUST drink. If one has to hustle to survive or to shine, scholarship should NEVER be the means to that end. Thats Hustle Scholarship. And the scholarship that is slung is often about as good for the Black Community as is the crack cocaine that is slung. In order for Scholarship to be at its BEST and most serviceable to our people, it must be carried out for Scholarships sake ONLY. It cannot be done for money or a deadline on a book deal; it cannot be done for status or for controversys sake; it cannot be done for the appeasement of ecclesiastical authorities; it cannot be done to eat; it really cannot be done for ideological reasons. Once completed it can be USED to advance a religious, political, or ideological agenda, but it should not be DONE in the service of that agenda unless the ones doing it have total freedom and true integrity. Other =wise the waters get muddied. I know what Im talking about: in the 25 years of writing and of Scholarship, there were absolutely times when a particular project was carried out or published under the duress of financial circumstances, time considerations or some other pressure. NONE of those projects were my best work, though they could have been. Even my doctoral dissertation, as good as it was/is, could have been better than it was. But it was completed under duress. Thats why I am forever thankful to Allah for the Honorable Brother Minister Louis Farrakhan who brought me to Chicago and totally freed me to pursue Scholarship unhindered and unpressured. The consequence is that, in my humble opinion, I am doing the best work that I have done in my entire life. At least, to me. But in truth my point here actually isnt me and my thing. My point is Hustle Scholarship and its hustlers. Hustle Scholarship has two meanings: 1.) Pseudo-Scholarship put out by those who are straight gaming, straight hustling the knowledge in order to get women, to get money, to get shine. Their aim is a convincing and profitable SHOW, not true intellectual edification or the tedious excavation of Truth. These persons are in contrast to 2.) Those who mean well who, like all of us, gotta eat and their scholarship is the means by which they eat, and sometimes they have to hustle it. There is no rebuke on this one as there most certainly is on the previous one. This is benign hustle scholarship, the other is malignant Hustle Scholarship. But whenever we have to hustle our scholarship, our scholarship takes a hit in quality. We cut corners that we should not be cut. And the corners we cut are the openings by which error can creep into our work. So that Brother or Sister or whoever who says to me, Buy my book, I gotta eat, is the one whose book I will have very, very low expectations for. Ill buy it though. My point: To me CERTAIN things should just NEVER be hustled, even benign hustling. Religion and Scholarship should never be DONE as a means for any end other than their inherent purposes. But thats just me.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 03:18:57 +0000
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