Twenty-five years from now, these fingers will have been up to no good for 69 years. Assuming that I haven't been forced into retirement or sent to a gulag, I'll still be filing this column, as pathetic as that sounds.

There is a method to what would otherwise be a case of wearing out one's welcome by several decades. There's no reason for me to hang out at this newspaper except to write the following column:

"Today, on the 75th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the academic achievement gap between black and white students has been eliminated in all but the most militantly anti-intellectual households.

"In what can only be described as the long delayed fulfillment of American democracy's greatest promise, a child entering kindergarten in 2029 can now look forward to a first-rate education regardless of the racial or economic demographics of the communities in which they live.

"The .02 percent of African Americans who continue to insist that being dumb is the only way to be 'authentically black' in an academic environment are, fortunately, a minority within a vast sea of intellectual achievement.

"Still, 'keeping it real,' continues to be the mantra of the willfully dumb decades after it was exposed as an irony-drenched lie and a marketing hustle. 'Keeping it real' assumes a universe sharply divided between white achievement and black failure. It is a convenient fall-back position for the chronically lazy.

"Twenty-five years ago on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, academics, politicians, social scientists, teachers and black parents agonized over the unfulfilled promise of a legal milestone.

"It was 2004 and the long-promised revolution in the quality of urban education had yet to yield the dramatic results we see in classrooms today. I vividly remember how black youth were once blissfully indifferent to their potential, thanks to an efficient brain-washing program orchestrated by BET, organized sports, insipid black leadership and Madison Avenue.

"It was a time when black and white youth pumped billions of dollars annually into the pockets of merchants who traded almost exclusively in degrading images of blacks as Dionysian nitwits who never read a book.

"Despite intense feelings of self-loathing, blacks became fashion icons to white kids who looked to them for cues about the ephemeral nature of what was 'cool.' For inexplicable reasons, young blacks were flattered by this. Instead of being deeply appalled, they looked for ways to keep the mindless spectacle humming profitably. They talked a lot about 'keeping it real' in those days.

"Then around 2005 and 2006, when hip-hop hit middle age, millions of blacks began taking a hard look at their lives and their accomplishments in light of their historic reluctance to confront the fact that they were collaborators in their own oppression.

"Scales fell from the eyes of African Americans of all socio-economic and political stripes who realized that there was nothing glamorous about being illiterate and susceptible to commercial manipulation.

"Suddenly, young blacks realized that they were dooming themselves to second-class citizenship simply by being intellectually incurious. The economy was no longer capable of assimilating people who had no marketable skills except aspiring to the rap charts or a spot in the NBA.

"Overnight, the rate of television consumption by blacks dropped dramatically. Libraries began keeping longer hours and blacks began showing up in public with books.

Even that became a competition as folks competed to 'look intelligent' for the first time in a generation. Baggy pants, baby pacifiers and gold teeth were out. Community colleges enrollment was up.

"It took a decade, but the culture of complacency was gradually transformed into one of intellectual rigor as blacks attempted to reclaim the pro-education values of their ancestors. It was as if having awakened from a deep sleep, they suddenly remembered they had a moral obligation to try. So they finally did."