TORONTO — Many black students today are failing in school on purpose because peer pressure via media images has convinced them that smart equals white and that it's cool to become pimps or "video ho's" says pre-eminent African-American filmmaker Spike Lee.

And Lee told an audience comprised largely of Ontario university students that people can vote with their pocketbooks to convince artists, record companies and media conglomerates like Viacom that the images in today's music videos or lyrics in gangsta rap are unacceptable.

"As African-Americans we let artists slide," Lee said in the Monday night speech. "(But) those days are over. I think that we have to start to hold people accountable."

Lee was invited to speak in Toronto by the Ryerson University student administrative council to help mark the International Day For the Elimination of Racial Descrimination on March 21.

While known for his outspokenness, especially on issues of race, Lee seemed to aim his heavy guns at fellow black artists. He said that while he wasn't calling for a boycott, the father now of a 10-year-old girl said he could no longer listen to the music of R. Kelly because he saw the bootleg video of the rapper with some underage females.

"These artists talk about 'ho this, bitch this, skank this' and all the other stuff. They're talking about all our mothers, all our sisters. They're talking about their own mothers, grandmothers."

"You have to have knowledge of self and knowledge of history. Because if you had that you would not use that terminology. You would not even be in that mindset. And we're in a time when young black boys and girls want to be pimps and strippers, because that is what they see. . . . Something is definitely wrong."

Lee says his grandmother, still alive at 99, saved all her social security cheques to put him through film school and he now feels blessed to be doing what he loves to do.

Sitting on a stool on the bare stage of Roy Thompson Hall, Lee held his audience rapt as he lit into what he called "gangsta rap craziness" that puts pimps on pedestals. He said parents today who let their children watch TV unsupervised, especially music videos, are guilty of a criminal act.

"That stuff is not who we really are. We're more regal than that. We have more dignity than that, despite what is sold."

Lee also stressed that while some black actors like Denzel Washington can now command $20 million a picture, they are still not in the positions of power in Hollywood that the so-called gatekeepers are, the people who decide what pictures get financed.

"I do believe that when we get in those positions, films like Soul Plane will not be made," he said to laughter and applause.

Soul Plane was a comedy about a black airline that served fried chicken and had Snoop Dogg as a pot-smoking pilot.

Lee said that when he was a kid growing up, he wasn't allowed to see Tarzan movies because of their insulting portrayal of Africans, and there was no Aunt Jemima syrup or Uncle Ben's rice products in their kitchen because of their demeaning stereotypes.

Lee was given a standing ovation at both the beginning and end of his monologue. At one point, the audience was thrilled when fellow filmmaker John Singleton, a Lee protege, joined him onstage.

Born Shelton Lee in pre-civil rights Atlanta, Ga. in 1957, the director moved at a very young age to Brooklyn, N.Y. His father was a jazz musician and his mother an art teacher who nicknamed him Spike because of his tough nature.

His first film was issue-oriented - a 10-minute 1980 reworking of the classic but notoriously racist Birth of a Nation. Lee's major breakthrough came with 1986's sex comedy She's Gotta Have It. His landmark film was the race relations-themed Do the Right Thing in 1989.

Other notable titles include Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever and the biographical Malcolm X. He has become a notoriously outspoken show business personality, especially on issues of race in American society. But in 2003 he even indulged in legal action to try and stop the specialty channel Spike TV from infringing on his name. The issue was settled last year with the channel's owners, Viacom.