Why I Don’t Have a High School Diploma

When Mike Wallace, the decaying corpse from that venerable CBS sleazefest 60 Minutes, profiled me in March 1994, the cadaverous charlatan described me as a “high school dropout.” His wording, like his reporting, was inaccurate. Strictly speaking, a “dropout” is someone who willingly withdraws from or abandons their schooling. I was not technically a dropout. That said, it is true that I have no high school diploma.

Bear with me for an anecdote. Don’t worry—I’m gonna circle around to something more current soon enough.

In my 85% black L.A. public high school, the theater department was my little kingdom, my duchy. Our drama teacher, we’ll just call him Mr. J, was a bitter alcoholic who never shied away from whipping out the bottle in front of students (considering that our school district also featured a teacher who tricked kids into eating cookies topped with his own semen, alcoholism was a relatively benign flaw by LAUSD standards). Mr. J’s booze problem made it easy for me to more or less take control of the class. Indeed, J was always happy to have his workload reduced (the joke is totally on me, though, as these days “drunkard’s fatigue” is perhaps the greatest Chinaman in my armor). Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $25.00 (as of 11:36 UTC - Details)

Mr. J did have one passion, one thing he really cared about: leftist politics. He took every opportunity to force his students to perform anti-Reagan scenes and playlets. Several times, I persuaded him to tone down his partisanship (J was white, but boy did he love then–presidential candidate Jesse Jackson), but mainly I indulged him. As long as I got the lead in whatever we did, I was fine with it.

The theater department was a safe space for the school’s Jewish students and white chicks. The Jewish kids were drawn to theater class not just because dancing excused us from having to take PE, but also because Jewish kids often grow up immersed in theater. We’re the ones who get dragged to Broadway musicals by our parents. We know the plays, we know the songs. By the time I was in high school, I’d seen Fiddler with Zero and La Mancha with Kiley. My classmates and I loved musical theater. It wasn’t work to us; it was fun.

We had several very talented black kids in the class, but we also had a few blacks who didn’t give a rat’s ass about theater. They took the class because Mr. J couldn’t fail someone for being a bad actor. As long as you showed up and “participated,” you were guaranteed a C, and compared with the alternatives for some of those kids, that was a great deal.

And we made it easy for them to loaf, because we didn’t want their illiterate asses in our shows. We were fine with them doing nothing, and they were fine with it too. Racial harmony!

In my 11th-grade year, I decided to take a run at bringing home a trophy at the annual Drama Teachers Association of Southern California Shakespeare festival. The DTASC was a prestigious organization founded in 1920, and I saw a trophy as a kind of personal footprint that I could leave behind after graduation. I chose a scene from Twelfth Night, with me in the lead as the pompous, unlikable Malvolio (of course). Mr. J let me do the casting and directing. For my supporting players, I chose two Jews and two blacks. I chose them because they were the best for the roles. And we did bring home a trophy…3rd place.

That was Hamilton High’s first-ever Shakespeare trophy, and a year later, as a senior, I was determined to get 1st.

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