Intellectual swagger

I ask King Jay Z, but all he says is I can’t teach you my swag / You can pay for school but you can’t buy class / School of hard knocks / I’m a grad / And that all-blue Yankee is my graduation cap

I must learn intellectual swagger
A vision quest, a search for truth, I journey to the Great Ancestors for the answers…

The mighty totem pole stands before me, I begin to ask it, who will teach me about intellectual swagger?
There are many elders there, but only one speaks

I am Malcolm X, and I speak to you, the youth, look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, ‘We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights - and you’ve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.’ What did we do, who preceded you ? I’ll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don’t you make the same mistake we made…

The same mistake we made…
The same mistake we made…
The voice fades

The sky darkens, and the mighty totem pole speaks no more, the ancestors have gone
I am reminded of other ancestors and what they taught me

2Pac taught me that I will never be able to pay my mama back, but the plan is to show her that I understand, you are appreciated

Muhammed Ali taught me to make sure people knew who I was - What’s my name fool?!

Black Thought taught me that sometimes things fall apart

Willie Colón taught me that the trombone is the instrument with the most swag

Bob Marley taught me about music, like when it hits you, you feel no pain

Zach de la Rocha taught me to rage against the machine

Roberto Clemente taught me not to waste my time on this Earth

Talib Kweli taught me just to get by, just to get by, just to get by, just to get by

Dolores Huerta taught me que ¡sí se puede!

Perhaps intellectual swagger is

that restless feeling inside of a young soul to fight back

to speak the truth

impatience with the status quo, with what does not work

that respect one earns in the struggle

the confidence that what ails the world can be overcome
Don’t make the same mistake we made…

To the Great Elders of the Totem Pole of Intellectual Swagger, your struggles were not in vain