One of the most magnificent voices in all of music is owned by Fantasia Barrino, the singer out of North Carolina. Most of us know that Fantasia attempted suicide recently. Of course, the suicide attempt led to instant national media attention, and Fantasia was all over the news telling her story. Her management team, understanding the value the incident could have for her brand, pushed out her VH1 special before you could say the words "publicity stunt."

Now, I'm not here to say that I know what happened to Fantasia or whether the suicide attempt was genuine. But one thing that remains fundamentally true is that before the suicide attempt, she'd seen a significant decline in the status of her career. Also, we know that the television specials and additional PR from the incident have put Fantasia in the limelight in a way that far exceeds what he's had over the last few months. The final thing we know is that Fantasia is working furiously in the studio to get an album out in order to profit from the re-establishment of her celebrity status. Unfortunately, her team may be looking to replicate the experience of Jennifer Hudson after her difficult experience last year.

The financial windfall from Fantasia's recent revelation is nothing compared to the financial drama of her life. Since she won the lottery ticket called "American Idol" just a few years ago, she has seen her life go from rags, to riches, back to rags again. She nearly lost her home earlier this year as part of a string of highly publicized financial problems. After the suicide attempt, she might be able to get back to riches, but to be quite honest, I suspect that the financial drama will come right back into her life.

The deal with poor Fantasia is that she is simply a female version of the saddest story of the African American male. In the black man's story, we often choose to pull ourselves away from education to chase a dream that involves either sports or entertainment. The pursuit of that dream is often accompanied by a set of very bad choices, like building a long list of baby's mamas (i.e. see New York Jets corner back Antonio Cromartie, who has eight kids with six women in five different states) or engaging in some kind of illegal activity. Either way, it always comes back to haunt us, no matter what.


In Fantasia's case, we have a person who admits that she neglected her educational opportunities (she dropped out of school at the age of 15) and then had a child at the age of 17. I am the last person to criticize teen mothers, since my mother had me when she was only 17. But I am the first person to criticize anyone who seems to glorify the aspiration of becoming a single mom with no daddy in sight. Fantasia's famous song about baby's mamas is appreciated as a tribute to struggling single mothers, but I cannot accept the song's influence on young women who are thinking about their future child-rearing decisions. To go out and get pregnant with the full expectation that your child doesn't need a responsible father is to bring your child into the world with an immediate list of liabilities. With a very small number of exceptions, no one should be a baby's mama on purpose.

With that said, Fantasia, like many black male athletes in America, turned her back on education so she could live off her dream of becoming a singer. Fortunately for her, she got the one in a million opportunity to win American Idol. But unfortunately, there are millions of other Fantasias who will never get that chance, being left with no education in a world that is going to eat them for lunch. Life would have been sad for her if she'd never been discovered.

What is also true for Fantasia is that fame and fortune can't protect you from deliberate academic self-neglect. By not being educated properly, Fantasia soon found herself the victim of every vulturous attorney, agent and manager within a 5,000 mile radius. She was milked like a healthy cow by those who understand the opportunity of dealing with a woman who focuses so much on singing a song that she doesn't spend any of her time reading through a contract. The same things have happened to numerous black entertainers and athletes, many of whom are so focused on singing, dancing, rapping, acting, blinging, balling, flossing and shining that they don't realize that their Harvard-educated attorneys are the ones who are actually making all the money. While NBA superstar Antoine Walker is now broke, I can almost guarantee you that his agents, attorneys and managers are doing just fine.

My point in this is not to dog Fantasia or say she's a bad person. My goal is to explain that by choosing to ignore education, we are volunteering to be victims. Fantasia's team has positioned her brand in such a way that she earns money by being portrayed as the victim, when the truth is that nearly any observer can look through her list of choices and predict all the outcomes we are seeing today. In fact, by making bad choices in the past and experiencing the consequences later, we are sometimes both the victim and the victimizer in our very own lives.

Fantasia wrote a book called 'Life is Not a Fairytale.' This is the lesson she is teaching with her life for all of those who think that the fairytale experience of entertainment success is going to get you to the economic mountain top. When it comes to your financial success, the only path to get there is through education. Getting educated is every bit as easy as working at McDonald's every day, shooting 300 jump shots in practice, or working on your vocals at church. Even if you win American Idol, get selected in the NBA draft, or sign a blockbuster contract with a music label, you'll find yourself at the bottom of America's capitalist food chain if you don't develop your mind.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.