Following a 2006 Black Enterprise Magazine Board of Economist Report that examined the lost potential of young men in America and detailed strategies to improve their lives, a nationwide survey concluded that most concerned U.S. citizens believed that the biggest reasons for the waywardness that leads to increased crime and unproductive families in the community fundamentally stem from inadequate education and low self-esteem.

I used to get tired of every young black male telling me they wanted to be a pro football player or a rapper. Man, I wished they’d stop telling me that.

As it turns out at least they wanted something.

While making this film, I would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

From 16 to 36 the answer would most often be, “I don’t know”. And then they’d laugh and say it again. But the problem is “Ain’t Nothing Funny”.

We must change the mentality or thought processes that give rise to destructive behavior amongst our young people.

No longer do we allow inferior public school systems, uninterested teachers, and inadequate school resources to be acceptable excuses for our lack of education. Libraries are everywhere and as adults we need to be pouring into these young people.

Just really look back on your life and realize how much more successful you would have been, at a younger age, had somebody, anybody, in your life truly cared.

What if someone would have taught you to wear a tie to all job interviews? What if someone would have taken you on trips just to show you that there was much more to life than what was happening on your block?

What if someone would have shown you in a dollars and sense kind of way the value of education? Had proven to you the direct correlation between what you choose to do now and what you will be able to choose to do later?

I’m offering you a chance to help somebody else. This DVD is a working tool. As families, youth organizations, social agencies, educational institutions, and other groups sit down and watch this DVD it will spur dialogue, action, and then progress.

Ain't Nothing Funny is an entertaining and thought provoking motivational commentary veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. But, this is not a film that is supposed to make you feel good. It is commentary that will challenge you to look inside yourself and decide, once and for all, what it is that you will do to help make your life better.

This is a movement we are continuing. Change has already started on the national level, but we must keep it going, one by one in our own cities, in our own neighborhoods, in our own families.

Reading in the paper about another one of our babies lost to drugs, the cemetery, or incarceration, most often because they didn’t use education to free themselves from whatever bondage may have existed in their immediate environments, hasn’t ever been a laughing matter to me. I’m sure you agree… “Ain’t Nothing Funny”…