Once upon a time, California had it all. It had a perfect, welcoming climate, a reasonable cost of living, a booming economy, and among the best schools anywhere. Then Democrats took over, and California became a one-party state. Schools immediately began to decline, at least in part because teachers were beholden to the Democrat Party. DEI and CRT infected staff hiring and curriculum, not only as a reflection of the communistic beliefs of teachers and administrators, but in service to the ideology of the Party. The results for students and California’s future have been as predictable as they are alarming.
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Enter the Merced school system, where only 33% of kids are reading proficient and only 20% are math proficient. Many have heard of Merced only as one terminus of the “High-speed-rail-to-nowhere” money pit. With a population of just over 100,000, Merced’s median household income is just over $63,000, and its poverty rate is nearly 24%.
One would think this would inspire those in charge of that school system to redouble its efforts to prepare kids for productive futures. One would think wrongly. Instead of teaching kids how to read and do math, the school district has spent more than $600,000 on a rap company.
The New York Post reports the Merced City School District has paid more than $600,000 over roughly the last year to the company School Yard Rap, which purports to “provide a supplemental curriculum infused with music, lesson plans, videos, and worksheets, making education a thrilling journey” for students.
The district’s contracts with the company include a Rap Camp during the summer, and an African American Affinity Group for “up to 100 African American students.”
At the latter, students “receive hands-on training in DJing, dance, and Hip Hop/Rap songwriting” and record their works in a professional “studio environment.”
Students also “explore identity and community” via “reflect[ion] on personal stories, heritage, and the role of African American culture in shaping resilience and creativity.”
This is in a community that’s 53.7% Hispanic and 26.5% white. bestneighborhood.org/race-in-merced-ca/
Here’s part of the invaluable skills those kids will learn:
Explore identity and community: Reflect on their personal stories, heritage, and the role of African American culture in shaping resilience and community.
Music education is invaluable, but Rap has only some of the elements of music, while ignoring its most important technical elements. It is perhaps best categorized as accompanied poetry, but poetry on a very low level. Not only is it largely focused on thug culture, which exalts the worst aspects of black life like crime, misogyny, rejection of responsibility, accomplishment, and educational excellence—anything that looks “white”–drug use and violence, its “artists” all too often embody those negative and self-destructive traits and live short, violent lives.
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Graphic: X Post
While School Yard Rap claims its programs are open to kids of all races, their own literature reveals a black focus, which has attracted the attention of the DOJ:
“It is illegal for the government to offer benefits solely on the basis of race,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division told The Post in a statement. “We have not had the opportunity to investigate these allegations, but if true, they are troubling.”
Troubling indeed, but not exclusively because their offerings are potentially racist and illegal. Ignore, for the moment, that few Merced children can read and figure competently. Actual music education provides the opportunity for them to not only learn to perform, but to learn discipline, responsibility, and accomplishment. There’s a reason music is the universal language.
Unfortunately, even apart from the destructive aspects of rap lyrics and culture, most rap “musicians” are musically illiterate. They can neither read nor write music. That limits their creativity to writing hateful, usually obscene poetry, angrily shouted over a background of AI-generated music that is neither musically complex nor beautiful or inspiring. It is not, as good art must be, an example of the best and most uplifting art human beings can produce. Instead, it often mires those who produce and hear it in racial hatred and resentment.
While it’s true that many of the people making millions in popular music are also musically illiterate, their lyrics and themes do not tend to encourage self-destruction and the destruction of productive culture.
Merced’s children deserve better, and so do all California’s kids, but that’s what happens in a one-party state.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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