Newspaper Page Text
May 4, 1978
Maroon Tiger
page 11
JOE MOREHOUSE
fiction
BY SPIKE LEE
This story is fiction. Any
resemblance to persons living
or dead is purely coincidental.
Morehouse College, builder
of men. The Harvard of the
South. Martin Luther King Jr.
went here. “You can always
tell a Morehouse Man but you
can’t tell him much”; and all
that stuff. What does it mean?
Now that I think about it, not
much. Spelman College, the
voice of Black womanhood.
Home of the light skin “good
hair” bourgeoise babes. Before
you women send out the lynch
mobs to Hubert Hall let me
explain. These 2 institutions
have always gone hand-in-
hand. I’m not knocking them.
My father and my grandfather
went to the “House” and my
mother and my grandmother
went to Spelman. It’s just that
these 2 schools mean different
things to different people.
Take my roommate, for exam
ple.
Let’s call him Joe
Morehouse. Joe is an all right
guy from a small town in
Georgia. Since freshmen week
I witnessed his decline. He
used to party and snake over at
the Yard every night. Then
around mid-semester that
exuberance was gone. No
longer did he make that so
journ to Spelman, no more
parties in Graves, no slave auc
tions, no nothing. Now he even
barely spoke to me. He just
went to class and that was
that.
One day I looked on his desk
and saw his mid-term grades, 3
D’s and 2 C’s. This neckbone
was messing up shop. I
remember him telling me he
had been a straight-A student
in high school. I sat and
awaited his return to the room.
I should have helped the
brother before now. I had
never really taken the time or
effort to really sit down and
talk to him. Well, today would
be different.
Joe opened the door and
grunted, “What it is,” and
jumped on his bed.
I asked, “How are your
books?”
“I’m doing OK I guess.”
I answered, “You don’t have
to lie, I saw your mid-term
marks. What’s the story? You
got problems or something?
You started out good. You
might as well tell me the deal.”
There was silence as Joe
turned over in his bed. Then he
spoke.
This first year in college has
been disheartening to say the
least. It has sucked. Never
before have I had such a
miserable social life like this. I
don’t know who's at fault, this
campus or me? The first few
weeks of school was the joint. I
was over at the Yard all the
time. Then I noticed someth
ing peculiar. Nobody was com
ing to seeme. So I have stopped
going over there and have
gone into self-exile. Everyth
ing wrong that could have
happened has. Nothing has
gone right. I have always
thought college would be
different from this. The
Atlanta University Center will
sometimes make you wanna
jump off a building. I have
never seen a colder at
mosphere than here.
I called Rozell last Saturday
and asked her when was she
coming over to the crib? She
said Friday night around
eight. So all week I was thin
king whether she would come
or not. I crossed my fingers,
carried lucky coins and I even
checked my horoscope and
biorhythms. I saw her Wednes
day and she still insisted she
was coming. I wanted her to
come but I knew fate would
have it another way. So here it
is Friday and I’ve been thin
king all day about the excuses
she would give. “I’M SORRY
JOE BUT I HA VE 5 MAJOR
EXAMS MONDAY
MORNING.”
I first met Rozell in one of my
classes. This babe is no good. A
number of times she would tell
me to come and visit her. I
went over a lot but not once
was she in. And yet I continued
to go over there, only heaven
knows why. She knows every
frigging nigger at Morehouse,
Clark, and even Brown. There
was this guy named Dale in
our class; Rozell had his nose
wide open. He used to confide
in me that he was trying to get
in her pants. I can see now
that’s the only reason anybody
talked to her. Every time class
met Dale would ask me, “Did
you get it yet?” You wouldn't
believe the ignorance of these
Negroes around here. Just
listen to the way they talk
about Black Women. To them
they are nothing more than
hoes and bitches. “Do you
know so and so? Yea, I know
the hoe.” That’s your everyday
conversation around this cam
pus. Anyway one day Dale
grabbed me and told me if 1
ever go and see Rozell again
he’ll kill me. This was straight
out of the movies. Negroes are
going crazy. One minute he’s
telling me to bump fier off and
next he’s playing a Mafiaoso
chieftain giving me my death
sentence. But back to the
present. Today, Friday, I saw
her sitting on the steps of
Manley. Styling blue
sunglasses, playing her usual
Hollywood starlet role. I
walked over and said hello.
She said “let’s take a walk. ” It
turned out to be the most
humiliating walk of all time.
Even before we took 2 steps
nigger til pulled her aside. I,
playing it off, kept walking.
Within a half minute she
caught up. Then nigger #2 sit
ting on the wall asks her would
she be in tonight. Two minutes
later nigger U3, her frat brother
she says, runs up to her and
Writing Ability Linked To
Teaching Quality
“It ought to be fairly plain
that the decline in writing
ability coincides with the kind
and amount of teaching that
governs it,” says Ronald
Berman, former chairman of
the National Endowment for
the Humanities, in a recent
editorial on what he terms
“educational illiteracy.”
Rather than blame the
effects of television for the poor
writing of today’s students,
Berman suggests the public
should focus its attention upon
policy decisions of high
schools and universities,
which determine if and how
compostion will be taught.
Bermam points out that,
within the last decade, writing
courses have been dropped at
universities and are never
undertaken in many high
schools. Also, senior faculty
members, “anxious to assert
their professionalism,” have
refused to teach composition to
incoming students.
According to Berman, the
amount of writing demanded
in the classroom has decreased
sharply, the theory often being
that students cannot do it(i.e.,
they are culturally disad
vantaged), will not do it (in
light of the rebellious 1960s)
and should not have to do it
(i.e., faculty are nervous about
course enrollment). “It’s not
much of a theory,” says
Berman.
The remedy to these
problems lies in new emphasis
on writing as “the single most
important aspect of higher
education.” He advocates a
smaller-scale approach to com
position instruction, where the
teacher interacts with a select
group of students rather than
rely upon a textbook or lecture.
Each student’s effort should,
says Berman, be judged “in
painful detail” and then
studied again in the writer’s in
dividual presence. At this
level, Berman says, writing is
neither a “skill” nor a form of
abstract self-expression;
rather, it is a procedure
whereby “form is given to im
pulse, and consciousness
becomes thought.”
Above all, Berman believes
that educators must begin to
recognize the overall im
portance of writing and give it
top priority in curriculum plan
ning. The act of writing forces
the author to use logic and
make conceptual decisions,
says Berman. In general,
writing’s responsibility is to
translate feeling and intuition
into statement. That act
underlies everything in the life
of the mind.
starts huggin’ and kissin’.
Right about now I was pissed.
Rozell told him we had to go
and we tipped. We were leav
ing the back gate of Spelman
when nigger #4 stops traffic
with his car and screams,
“Baby, what’s your name?”
and then pulled off without
waiting for an answer. As far
as niggers 1 to 4 were
concerned and Rozell for that
matter too. I was invisible, not
there, transparent, oblivious. 1
asked her. “Are you coming
over tonight or what?” She
smiled, shuffled her feet and
stuttered, “I don’t know. ” For
the first time I felt the passion
to kill. Instinctively I grabbed
her by the neck and
commenced to beat her head
rhythmically against the
pavement. Actually what I did
was bite my lip and walk
away.
It’s funny now. This whole
thing has been one big joke. I
remembered how yesterday I
gave you five dollars to go see a
movie or something and told
you don’t come back until 3
A.M. so Rozelland I could have
the room to ourselves. Things
never work out the way you
plan ’em!
My roommate Joe
Morehouse had come to college
gung ho, full of energy and
high expectations. In the
beginning he talked nonstop
about Morehouse, about the
beautiful women at Spelman.
To his surprise instead he
found cold Hollywood droids,
Farrah-Fawcett dolls,
cafeteria slop, fags and
loneliness. Joe didn’t come
back second semester. He
didn’t even tell anybody he
wasn’t returning. At least he
will be happy in his hometown
with real people. How many
Joe Morehouses are out there
in the A.U. Center rotting
away in their dorms? You can
smell the stench.