Jayden Smith tweets, “If Everybody In The World Dropped Out Of School We Would Have A Much More Intelligent Society,” Easy to say for a 15 year old rich kid with four blockbusters under his belt. Now part of me wants to go old school Malcolm X on the dude and holler, ‘Get your hand outta my pocket!’ because he is (A) Messing with the minds of millions of Americans who both respect him and are looking for any reason to not learn and (B) He is messing with my livelihood and thus my nation by failing to realize that his reality is not that of an American but is that of the post-national 1% whose borders are defined by tax brackets and shared ideals. Yes, you can be more intelligent without the controlled curriculum of pubic schooling, but it requires a cadre of private tutors; a Rancho Solano-styled education where the parent cue more resembles the limo pickup line at the airport than anything remotely of the real world. Smith’s head is in the clouds and I wonder how long before he winds up delving into the world on non-prescription drugs in order to stay that high up.
He is one of a rash of recent cases of entitlement. He is an example that entitlement crosses racial barriers–as does ignorance. Take, for example, the many Americans who took to twitter after Ms. New York earned her Ms. America crown. There were gems like, ‘And the Arab wins Miss America. Classic.’ from a kid calling himself Pookie. My personal favorite: Egypt dancing? This is America. #MissAmerica. Two things here. 1: She’s American-Indian–the real Indian, not that crap Columbus made up. 2. The bollywood inspired dance she did in traditional Indian garb is about 3000 miles off of being even close to Egypt, which is about the same distance between Cali and NYC, or the space between the slow-firing synapses of these neanderthals on twitter. Jayden Smith, dropping out of school wouldn’t improve that, because these folks aren’t learning their idiocy in school (unless they live in Texas, in which case it is debatable).One person even tweeted, @ABC2020 nice slap in the face to the people of 9-11 how pathetic#missamerica in response to the news coverage of Ms. Nina Davaluri’s win.
Enough is enough. For too long we’ve proclaimed to be the world’s best, but in the age of new media all we do is showcase our worst. Every dumb, diamond grill-wearing, camouflage wedding dress having, Mountain Dew guzzling, gum-chomping, rifle toting American is on display to the world. We look like fools. When someone with real beauty and talent steps forward to restore this idea of what America was meant to be, all we can do is lump them in with everyone else on that side of the world who isn’t Chinese, Russian, or straight up Black. We accuse them of being immigrants, which somehow makes them Un-American?
Of course people still want to come here. Why wouldn’t they? The new American dream is crossing the border and finally being the smartest, hardest working person in the room. We are not a post-racial country. We will never be a post-religious country so long as we define the war on terror as a war against Radical Muslims. We will never be a smart country so long as we keep pointing the fingers and blaming each other for why we became so damn dumb. There is a lot of work to do, and each time I hear some noise like this I remember why I’ve made it my career and mission to do that work.