I recently received an interesting e-mail from a friend of mine. The e-mail was linked to a video about the singer T-Pain and reminded her of a conversation the two of us had a day earlier. The gist of our discussion was that there are far too many of "us" who enjoy being ignorant and uninformed. While this certainly doesn't define the bulk of the African American community, there are some of us who are proud of the fact that we don't read, don't understand things and don't want to educate ourselves. Even actor Will Smith recalls hiding his books on the way home from school, because he didn't want his friends to know that he studied.

T-Pain seems to be determined to take ignorance to a new level. Known as the artist who once showed up to an awards show wearing a necklace with the words "Big Ass Chain" on it, Pain was made to look really silly by Fox News conservative Sean Hannity, who tricked the artist into endorsing the Republican Party.

I don't blame Hannity for pulling his rope a dope on T-Pain, since the artist is an easy target. As I've mentioned before in articles about black males and education, any man who refuses to educate himself is begging to be another man's sucker. When caught in his embarrassing moment, T-Pain only made matters worse by issuing a statement in which he bragged about not being registered to vote and not being concerned at all about what happens in American politics. So, with his statement, T-Pain jumped out of the frying pan of ignorance and into the fire of flat-out coon-ography.

Look, here's the moral of the story:

1) It is not cool for a black man to be stupid. In fact, being stupid can get you killed or incarcerated, depending on what situations you are confronted with. A black man's greatest weapon in this world is knowledge, so if you choose to remain uneducated, you are going to battle in the nude with no weapons.

2) We must all be politically informed. Sorry, T-Pain, but politics does impact the lives of black people in an incredibly significant way. Issues like mass incarceration, excessive unemployment and a terrible inner-city educational system (all of which may have led to T-Pain's lack of informative conditioning) play a huge role in the status of our communities. Guess what? The conservatives are the ones who work night and day to keep us ignorant, which is the reason Hannity was laughing at T-Pain under his breath.

3) If you don't know what you're talking about, then maybe it's best to shut up. We pay T-Pain to make bad music, not to endorse political candidates. Brother, you need to stay in your lane. Wait, I retract the use of the word "brother." Any man who enjoys the idea of being ignorant absolutely cannot be any kind of brother of mine.

I won't say anything else, and will simply allow T-Pain to speak for himself. You can watch the video below:



Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the author of the new book, "Black American Money." To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.