Complex: "Catchin' Bodies: Nas' History Of (Alleged) Female Conquests" Look Here

F-Listed: "Zoe Saldana Loves Sex" Read Here

The Atlanta Post: "The 64th Richest Billionaire" Read Here

Your Black World: "Kansas City To Close Half Its Schools" Read Here

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed.   You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

Currently campaigning for Governor of the state, he insisted that the country could not afford to keep giving away money without nothing in return.  Some of the stipulations he wants to invoke include poor people losing their benefits if they don't pass drug tests, and parents should be required to be more active in their children's education and be forced to attend PTA meetings.

Receiving flack for his “stray animals” comments, Bauer has since tried to clean up his words.  He added,

"There's no way that I was trying to tie animals to people, but what I was trying to talk about is the dependency culture, and just like when you feed an animal, you create a dependency."

Hip-Hop Wired recently spoke to Dr. Boyce Watkins about the comments and if he felt they were racially biased.

Dr. Boyce Watkins: He may not have been talking about all Black people but he was certainly talking about poor Black people.  But his comment wasn't exclusively aimed towards Black people but Black people have a greater reason than most to be offended because we do have a disproportionate representation among America's poor.  Also the Republicans have for the longest time made Black people the face of welfare so it's not inconceivable that his comments would be considered to be racist.

HipHopWired:  As we know the problem is way bigger but he chose to start with the kids.  Many kids who are on public assistance have drug addicted parents or some type of hardships so it sounds as if he's saying the children should suffer the parents' consequences.  Not once did he mention about trying to fight the drugs coming into the country because he knows that's controlled by the ones at the top.  It's well documented that the government pumped drugs in the ghetto to control Black people, could this be phase two?

Dr. Boyce Watkins: Now with this guy's remarks…his remarks were not just controversial, they weren't just a little bit insulting.  They were disturbing because he was effectively saying not just that poor people are like stray dogs.  But that if those people don't behave the way you think they should behave then you should take food from their children.  You should stop giving their children free lunch and then he connected feeding the children to breeding.  That these people should be discouraged from breeding by starving their children.   That almost sounds like some sh*t that Hitler would've said in Nazi Germany, that certain people should not be allowed to breed.

You're opening a real dangerous and ignorant and destructive door when you talk about controlling the reproduction patterns of people that you don't agree with. So for him to really say that, it's unbelievable and then you can go to another level.   He believes as a lot of people do, that the government has the right to control the actions and the behaviors of people that are getting government assistance but he doesn't feel that middle class and upper class people should have their behavior controlled.

HipHopWired:  How ironic when in actuality they get more government assistance than everybody?

Dr. Boyce Watkins: Exactly, because in this county the wealthy get more government support than anybody because the wealthy get corporate welfare.  You saw the government bailing out the bankers.  Even this politician himself is living off of government money.  How is he going to sit there and say that people getting government assistance should not be fed, their children should not be fed.  They should not be able to reproduce and all these other things when in fact he himself should also be subjected to the same behavioral modification mechanism.

And also when he talked about breeding he was actually saying that these people don't know any better.  Like they don't know how to stop breeding.  All these things that really are disrespecting the humanity of his fellow Americans.  So it makes him look as inhuman as you can imagine.  I think this guy, his comments are worse than anything anybody has said in politics in the past five years that I can think of.  His comments are worse than what Bill Clinton, Rob Blagojevich, and Harry Reid said. His comments go to the point of almost advocating various forms of genocide which is incredibly problematic which is why the need to get his butt out of office immediately.

HipHopWired:  Now let's be fair.  He's not the first person to complain about welfare abuse, Black or white.  Some people do sit on their ass and have baby after baby and wait at home for check.  What's the difference?

Dr. Boyce Watkins: The difference I think is… number one.  He compares them to stray animals which is problematic to begin with.  Number two… while a lot of people can criticize those who are irresponsible parents and while we all can agree with this idea that you shouldn't have children if you can't take care of them, the truth is irresponsible parenting is not just something poor people do.

I've been around rich people all my life and their parenting can be just as irresponsible.  They also impose a cost onto society when you raise a child who's hooked on crystal meth or some little rich boy who goes off to Wall Street and ends up destroying the whole financial system. Or goes to college and drinks like a fish and act like an ass and rapes some girl in a  fraternity house or whatever, you've got a lot of irresponsible parenting going in middles and upper class America too.   So my feeling is while we certainly can criticize and critique poor parenting, we can't sit here and assume that only poor people do it because we know that all different types of people do it.

For more information on Dr. Boyce Watkins, log on to www.yourblackworld.com.

Idolator: "American Idol Season 9: Let The Countdown Begin" Read Here

Complex: "Peep The 'A-Team' Movie Trailer" Watch Here

F-Listed: "Scientists Say Have More Sex For A Better Heart" Read Here

Black Voices: "Black Families & Marriage: Why Are Black People Not Getting Married" Read Here

AOL Black Voices: "Black Coaches Association Is Happy With NCAA College Football Hires" Read Here

Complex: Ballin' Vs. Budget: How To Dress Up For New Year's Eve" Read Here

F-Listed: "Afternoon Pick Me Up: Brittany Denham" Look Here

Bossip: "WTF: Montana Senator Gives Speech On Health Care While Slizzard" Watch Here

Complex: "Whip Game Proper: A History Of Jay-Z's Video Cars" Read Here

F-Listed: "Porn Star Mistress Comes Out Of The Tiger Woods-Work" Read Here

Your Black World: "Dr. Julianne Malveaux Speaks On The CBS vs. Obama" Read Here

Bossip: "Bryant Gumbel On The Mend After Cancer Surgery" Read Here

After the dust settled, Heather was arrested and charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, and two felony counts of assaulting a police officer. These charges  delayed her education and cost her potential employment opportunities.   Black activist Boyce Watkins also held a march and protests to help bring light to this case.

When Heather refused to sign a plea deal (she insists upon her innocence), prosecutor Stephen Sokoloff chose to prosecute Heather for the original felony counts. If convicted, she could have faced up to 15 years in prison. When Heather protested her trial publicly, she was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan.

From reports we've received from this region of the country (Rush Limbaugh was born roughly 100 miles away), the treatment of African- Americans in the criminal justice system is abominable.

Under the new plea deal, Ellis will serve a year of unsupervised probation, attend an anger management course and serve four days in jail before the end of the year.  If she remains out of trouble for a year, the charges will be sealed and the arrest will be abolished from her permanent record.

Speaking after the trial, the young sister still held her ground and  seemed pleased with the settlement.  She stated,

"I didn't break the line, she actually broke in front of us.  We also found out that I was shoved first and that I didn't yell or curse.  I was speaking in a loud tone  as I do always.   And i still think that it's important that my story got out and that people understood the truth and heard it.  If I would have signed a plea bargain or anything before, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to let the world know now and let the jurors know what actually happened."

We'll take a victory however we can get it because it's apparent this was about to be modern day lynching.

I always knew it would be, since African American athletes have always been center stage in the NCAA's multi-billion dollar money machine. Millions of Americans go mad during the month of March to see "Tyrone G. Anyhood," the latest corporate product being lined up on the Great American assembly line of mass exploitation and academic fraud.

The NCAA has profited handsomely from the Black community's commitment to producing and delivering hoop dreams that put young Black men on the court during the hours they should be spending in a book. We perform death-defying athletic circus acts for the amusement of America, while universities profit under the guise of providing education. The NCAA's professional sports league has created hundreds of multimillionaires and has facilitated the purchase of summer homes, yachts and private planes for many of the fat old men who refuse to even hire African American coaches.

Some of the players have finally said, "enough."

Ed O'Bannon, a former star for the UCLA Bruins, has put his name at the top of an historic class-action lawsuit being filed against the NCAA for the illegal use of player images in videogames. This lawsuit is significant and opens a Pandora's Box of disturbing issues, like a maid charged with cleaning out a house with dead bodies and asbestos. To make things simple, here are just a few reasons the suit may actually end up having massive implications for the African American community:

First, it sets a precedent. If the players win this lawsuit, it will call into question the NCAA's practices, which I believe violate anti-trust law. It is my hope that Attorney General Eric Holder will help the public to understand that by being able to restrict mobility of labor and trade, the NCAA is allowed to operate in a manner that would be illegal in nearly any other industry in America. Secondly, the tax-exempt status of the NCAA would be called into question as well.

The NCAA is very good at convincing the public that collegiate athletics is nothing more than an extracurricular service being provided to enhance the lives of little bookworms who barely remember to go to practice. Anyone who has taught on a college campus knows that student athletes are forced to endure the rigors of professional athletes and spend dozens of hours each week going to practice and missing class for road trips. This is hardly the life of an amateur and top coaches push the athletes to earn every penny of their $20 million dollar contracts. As a result, the NCAA earns more during its post-season than the NFL and the NBA earn in their respective playoffs, including the Super Bowl.

Secondly, the attorneys in the lawsuit have the power to win. The lawyers filing the suit seemed to be licking their chops when they saw the egregious violations of anti-trust law alleged against the NCAA. It is my hope that we finally become intelligent enough to use the courts as a path to remedy this grave injustice to the families of African American athletes. The idea that the coach can live in luxury while the star player's mother is in poverty is nothing less than shameful. We've even been convinced that it is somehow scandalous and unethical when a player's family gets a mere fraction of the revenue being generated by the athlete on the basketball court.

When I participated in a CBS Sports special during March Madness, the question being asked was whether or not college athletes should be paid. I was surprised that the same network that paid $6 billion dollars for TV rights to March Madness would host a show that questions the operating practices of its economic empire. So, as the special went on and on about how it is clearly "impossible" for the NCAA to share its revenue with the players, I noticed one interesting fact: Every single person on the show arguing that athletes shouldn't get paid was earning at least half a million dollars per year off the backs of those very same athletes. If there were ever a visual representation of the word "hypocrisy," it would be Billy Packer, a millionaire commentator on college sports, explaining why athletes shouldn't get paid for their labor.

The same way that Dr. Harry Edwards called for the Olympic protests of Black athletes in 1968, we should call for the athletes of 2009 to stand up for their families: Demand the education you are being denied, demand the compensation your families deserve, demand the labor rights you should have as Americans. This lawsuit sends a clear message that the second-class citizenship of African American athletes will no longer be tolerated.

“For more than 140 years, HBCUs have released the power of knowledge to countless Americans. Graduates of HBCUs have gone on to shape the course of American history-from W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, to Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. Today, in twenty States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin_Islands, these colleges and universities are serving hundreds of thousands of students from every background and have contributed to the expansion of the African American middle class, to the growth of local communities, and to our Nation's overall economy…”

Obama also made note that with the help of HBCUs he expects America to have the highest proportion of college graduates 11 years from now, saying that HBCUs will help “employ new, innovative and ambitious strategies.”

“This week, we celebrate the accomplishments of HBCUs_and look to the future with conviction and optimism. These institutions will play a key role in reaching our ambitious national education goals, including having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. As our Nation strives toward this goal, we invite HBCUs to employ new, innovative, and ambitious strategies to help the next generation of Americans successfully complete college and prepare themselves for the global economy. During National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week, we recommit ourselves to never resting until equality is real, opportunity is universal, and all citizens can realize their dreams.”

While Obama is busy singing the praises to Black Colleges and Universities, others are too but they do see the area for some improvements and drastic overhauls if they intend to survive in the 21st century. Accomplished Black scholar and Syracuse University professor, Boyce Watkins told HipHopWired he thinks HBCUs no longer “exist” and are being taken over by non-Black professors.

“We still need them. I think HBCUs are a critical part of the Black community but the problem with HBCUs right now is that if you go on most of these campuses, the HBCUs have become plantations. Just like the prison system, just like the school system. A lot of these HBCUs don't have a lot of African-American professors. If you go to most of these HBCUs and you major in something like engineering, you might go to school for four years and never have an African American teacher. What happened is we think these schools are standing up for the Black community where you learn to be Black and all that and to some extent you're learning it because you got Black classmates and you have some Black administrators, but many of these HBCUs are not hiring Black professors. A lot of prominent Black scholars get criticized because they don't teach at HBCUs but the untold story is that a lot of them can't get jobs at HBCUs because when they go to apply for the job, there's an Asian man or an Indian man who puts that person's name at the bottom of the list for applicants because they want to hire somebody else from China.

So that's what people need to look at when it comes to HBCUs is the fact that Black people don't control them anymore. (Laughs) So the question is what is an HBCU anyway? I don't even think HBCUs exist anymore. There really are no HBCUs. There are a couple of them that have a Black presence like Morehouse has a little bit of a Black presence, Spelman, some of the top schools absolutely. They're still there, it can't be denied but people need to go look at the numbers. Go do a tour of the HBCUs, go to the science department and see how many African-American professors you find. When I looked at a lot of HBCUs for example in the field of business, there were a lot HBCUs I saw that did not have one single African-American male professor in the entire business school. Out of 80 faculty, not one of them was an African-American male. So what's the point of even going to an HBCU if you're not even being taught by African Americans?”

By contrast, political activist and radio talk show host, Warren Ballentine, offered a different opinion, saying that HBCUS are less expensive and more accepting of Black students than predominantly white institutions.

“Man we need as many as we can get because we have a lot of HBCU's that are accepting children to go to college that big universities will simply not accept. The price of the education is so much cheaper, you have a faculty and staff that want the student to do well, you're not just a number. When you go to these big universities, and you go to a biology class, there may be 160 people in there. If you go to a Black college there may be 25 in there including you and your professor. You know your professor and your professor knows you and that makes a world of difference. Now some of these HBCU's are failing academically so they need to uphold their end of the bargain, but this memo that everything is post racial after Barack became President, I didn't get that memo. We are fools if we believe that we need to get rid of HBCU's. I'm a strong supporter of HBCU's and I think we need to be popping up with more of them than trying to get rid of the ones that we have.”

Despite opposing views on their relevancy, HBCU attendees and Alumni can revel in the national spotlight they'll receive this week. It should be duly noted however that his is not the first National Historically Black College Week in history. In 1987, Ronald Reagan declared September 21 through September 27 National HBCU Week and Bill Clinton deemed September 19-25, the same in 1994.

In keeping with the celebration of the week, BET is kicking off its annual Black College Tour. The tour is sponsored by Microsoft, Microsoft X Box, Verizon Wireless, Def Jam Recordings, The U.S. Air Force and Sierra Mist. The tour begins Wednesday September 5 at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama and will give HBCU students a chance to compete in games like a 2 on 2 basketball tournament and catch performances from celebrities like Ace Hood and Playaz Circle.

The Black College Tour schedule is as follows:

Miles College Wednesday, September 2
Delaware State University Wednesday September 9
Morgan State University Friday, September 11
North Carolina A&T State Friday, September 18
Alabama A&M University Friday, September 25
Jackson State University Friday, October 2
Fayetteville State University Wednesday, October 7
Winston-Salem State University Friday, October 16
Florida A&M University Wednesday, October 21
Grambling State University Friday, October 30
Xavier University Wednesday, November 4
Southern University Friday, November 6
Texas Southern University Wednesday, November 11
Prairie View A&M University