COLUMBIA, S.C. - Filmmaker Spike Lee extolled the virtues of a college education and said some things are too sacred to laugh about during a speech to the Black Expo here.

Lee said Saturday that jokes in the film "Barbershop," about civil rights leaders were over the top.

"I cannot laugh at a joke about Rosa Parks," he said to scattered applause. "I'm sorry, but that's not funny."

Parks made history in December 1955 when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks and led to court rulings desegregating public transportation nationwide.

Lee also told black parents in the audience to steer their children toward real role models and away from rappers. He said violent images from rappers such as 50 Cent are damaging the next generation.

"Forget about the beat," he said. "Let's talk about the lyrical content."

Lee, a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, said education was the path to success. He lamented that young black scholars sometimes are ridiculed as fakes who are "acting white."

"But if you're on a corner, holding a 40, smoking a blunt and holding your privates, then you're real."

He also urged his audience to boycott any business that displays the Confederate flag.

The flag flies at a Civil War monument on Statehouse grounds in Columbia. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is continuing a boycott of the state until the flag is removed.

"The rest of the world is in 2003," Lee said. "I don't know what's happening in South Carolina."

The Rev. Willie Sims, who attended the expo, said that while he agreed with many of Lee's points, many blacks in South Carolina have concerns that outrank the Confederate flag. "I don't have a problem with the flag," Sims said. "What makes people prejudiced is what's in their hearts."

Information from: The State