Why Some Make It Out Of The Hood (My Response)

On August 27, 2013 I was presented with the question on why some make it out of the hood and others do not. Through countless days, hours, and years of studying race relations primarily poverty stricken areas I can honestly say I don’t know. No one can really know, not even a Nero-Scientist can tell you what propels one individual as opposed to another. Especially when they share similar experiences living in the, “hood.” 

We can talk about every policy, law, and institutionalized practice that keeps blacks in the hood, but when thinking about what gets the select few out is the question. W.E.B. Du Bois authored The Talented Tenth which didn’t answer the question, but stated the responsibilities for those who would make it out to help those who weren’t afforded the resilience to excel past their peers. 

The majority who don’t make it out of the hood have what I would like to call, “hood mentality.” They don’t see life outside of their zip code and life outside of their circumstances. At birth they are given a disadvantage that perpetuate a low ceiling for them.  When an individual has no incentive to better themselves or anything to aim for they start to live day to day instead of anticipating a future. Even when you look in the media from news outlets and even music, people are consistently reminded that they might not live to see 25 or that they will end up being a welfare queen. Many of “us” in the hood also have a false sense of inclusion into dominate society.  They feel that maybe if I can buy this or put an image then I have made it. 

If you look at history in the 1500’s all Jews lived in ghettos. They didn’t have exceptions because Christians during that time made sure that if a Jew tried to escape that they would be placed there. In contemporary times blacks are not segregated by color into lower income communities, but by policy they have been grouped there. Also they have been grouped there by gentrification. These types of practices have been going on for so long that many develop a “hood nigga psychological” complex. In today’s thought process we have been made to believe that hood and black coincides with one another. For those who don’t accept this and reject these notions (The Talented Tenth) they are looked at as acting white, sell-outs, and less than black by their “hood” counterparts. Even though no one will openly say that they want to struggle or live in poverty, many will tell you that they don’t want to be rejected by their own. 

Even though we have given ourselves low ceilings we has a collective have refused to work together to break through the glass, and even though some may not be spiritual we still use the principle of GOD as a deterrent by just believing that he will make a way instead of individuals taken it upon themselves to put in the work. 

For those who made it of the hood without the use of entertainment and sports can be looked at as simply wanting it more. They reject every negative notion about themselves. In my opinion the only way to make it out of these conditions is to believe that you have a higher ceiling. Even though you know racism and discrimination exist you must always keep in the forefront of your brain that you belong here and you just as good as your counterparts, if not better. Of course it is best to avoid earlier pregnancy and incarceration because those things can just return you back into that same cycle of poverty. To make it out you have to have discipline, especially the ability to deal with the processes of obtaining new information. The brain consumes about 20-30 percent of all the calories that the body intakes daily. When a person is consuming information that rapid increase of information can cause many to feel tired or bored. Those who don’t accept these feelings are able to confront limitations that are presented to them. The gap between the talented tenth and those who go to jail or those who are stuck in the hood isn’t that much different when you focus on it with wide lenses. Few take that leap of faith and many take steps back and look at the probability of the outcome by past history and expectations that they or others may have for them.

Our choices ultimately depend on fear. Do you anticipate the banquets that life will cater to us, or are you scared? Those who make it have a purpose in life. They don’t believe that they just live here, they believe in living. From working with secondary educational students I can tell at an early age who will make it, not by listening to their words, by observing their actions. When you look at a person’s everyday choices that will reveal what they believe is central and that in-turn will drive them there. If you take steps towards trying to be a street nigga that’s how you will be, but if your actions are propelled towards learning that will bring you into that demographic. We must also note that an educated demographic doesn’t coincide with hood, even though the hood may be a part of their studies. The difference is that you just study the hood from the sidewalk. 

At the end of it all are conscious actions and beliefs are the ones the run the show and get us out of the hood. No government program, scholarship, speech, or black president can. The only thing that brings us out of the hood is ourselves and willpower. 

Where Has The Love Went (Misogyny in Hip-Hop)

“I hear my conscious call telling me I need a girls whose as sweet as a dove, but fuck that my names “ “ and you know I’m a thug, if you drunk off love I suggest you get over it, ma cry me a river build a bridge and get over it.”

Many will argue that with the black women participating in the feminist movement along white women this helped bring a divide amongst black families and put them at odds ends instead of standing strong together. Other may also attest to the low levels of black men receiving degrees in higher education compared to black men or the high level of black men in the caught in the judicial system. Hip-Hop and RnB are important to the black culture like no other genre, it was partially built upon getting the messages that were affecting the community to the masses, but if you’ve been listening later it is apparent that the love is gone.

It was a point where love was profess more than going to the club and standing on couches with overpriced bottles in your hand. It was a time where all you needed in this life of sin was you and your girlfriend.  There was a time where it was normal for artist to get on the mic and profess that they needed love, but now the genre has become so overly misogynistic that sex is the only main concern. Even the new era of RnB cats have stopped singing about the quest to find love and different scenarios that revolve around it. Music has taken a detour in finding the girl that you’ll take a life sentence for and make your wife to only being concerned about the one you can have for one night. The question is; whether today’s music is just indicative of the times that we are living in, or is it another avenue for the male dominant society to victimize, exploit, and exploit women.  

Many use the argument well musicians didn’t invent domestic violence, they didn’t invent the “B” word, they aren’t responsible for the decline of marriage in the black community and the high levels of single parent households, but every time you use your stage (the mic) and dehumanize women through song you become a part of the problem and divert yourself from the solution. No one is calling for every rapper or singer to get back to making songs about love, but when you elevate a pimp, one of the most despicable figures to a high status you’ve done something wrong. Even though many artist have used their voice to stand up against these issues, most run into the hurdle of not being heard because their voice box doesn’t reach a wider demographic. It was be ignorant to ignore the appeal that Hip-Hop has to the world, things that can be deemed as detrimental are starting to becoming normalize in popular society.

For instance stripping is one of those things, instead of showering women with love and affection, the newer generation has decided to make naked women a commodity in which they shower her with dollar bills for dancing and taking her clothes off. Even though artist didn’t invent stripping they still have to be held accountable. Glamorization and glorification are an excessive concentration of things that are preexisting, you are just mirroring these oppressions back to the people and causing harm. Even if rappers don’t want to be Drake and find their love they still have a social responsibility to show a woman’s intellectual cognitive ability to do more than shake her ass.

We all understand that in Hip-Hop trends comes and go, but I thought we were taught that love supposed to last forever and not just for a couple decades. Are we the to blame that we are hearing less of “All I Need,” and more of “As Long As My Bitches Love Me?” In reality the lack of love amongst blacks didn’t begin nor will it end with Hip-Hop, but lowering the complexity of black female identity to just objects such as breast, thighs, and ass is brought is further away from adoring her heart, soul, and brain.

When we kill the love and heart then the soul goes shortly thereafter.

Black Television Before & After Cosby

"I try to tell her about how they show us on the TV screen, but all she want me to do is unzip her jeans"

At my age I wasn’t able to fully take in the cultural impact that shows like The Cosby Show had when it was premiered. My generation only experienced this iconic show through TV Land and Nick at Nite re-runs. Even though it is a fictitious and currently not airing any episodes it still till this day is mentioned in college classrooms across the nation as the leading example of a presentation of a black family that was painted in a luminous light and also breaking stereotypes. 

The Cosby show was one of its kind, a true trendsetter in the sense of the word. In television, "Before Cosby" much of the black family life was depicted of a poor lower class family struggling, but used jokes just to buy our attention till next week’s episode. After Cosby blacks are still portrayed in somewhat of a negative light, even though a handful of sitcoms followed the blueprint of the Cosby Show many after just showed blacks as buffoons, aggressive, criminals, and flamboyant. Even though some blacks, just like all races fit in these same categories, blacks disproportionally are promoted to mass audiences in negative fashion therefore perpetuating these images as facts to viewers.

A survey done by the Boston Globe in 1991 showed that young children and older adults disproportionally saw the Huxtable’s as a realistic expectation as to what black family life was like, even though by statistics the wealth that the Huxtable’s possessed was very rare in the black community. Attitudinal data suggest that the more television we watch the more likely we are to hold ideas that contradict each other. For example most people know just by looking at statistics that majority of black couples aren’t lawyers and doctors, but at the same time seeing a positive image of that on TV suggest that it isn’t far fetched and that it is normal to come across that in everyday life.

Before Cosby we had shows like Good Times & What’s Happenin’, they were both black family sitcom shows that were comedic strips, but showed black families in low economical classes. These shows were built just like the Cosby Show aside from the fact that The Cosby Show's family were doing better financially. Even though I wasn’t of age to witness the dynamic altering of race and class in America this was still something very monumental for Black America.

This shift in modern television not only brought sitcoms back to the forefront, but for a good few years blacks were taking out of working class roles and places as professionals on our weekly TV screens. Blacks were now in roles as top police officers, lawyers, professors, and business owners. Even though many of us won’t admit it The Cosby Show and others that followed gave us a new direction to aspire to follow. Cliff and Claire were “step-parents” to some and inspiration for those who may never have anyone with a college degree in the home to motivate them. For those of other races who may have little to no contact with black families they could look at The Cosby Show as a model for how black families act and look at it as normal, instead of thinking of black families as they are portrayed in “reality TV,” shows.

After Cosby network sitcoms had a small run and they began to fade, soon they were replaced by “reality TV.” BET, VH1, MTV (all owned by Viacom) and many others decided to join the ranks in broadcasting our reality (I use that term loosely) to the masses for their consumption. These new shows place women in roles such as gold diggers and sponsor the idea that maybe if you sleep with someone of mild importance then maybe you can be famous too, even if it’s only by association. Most of the women are dealing with infidelity, on the search for love, or recovering from a difficult break-up. Even though women of all races, not just black go through these and it wouldn’t be reality if it was excluded, but it seems as though happy women in relationships always seem to be extinct or nonexistent in the realm of reality TV. Even though these lives may be real, it begs the question on whether or not other tales can be told?  We are presented with more women who have the, "She’s been with [such and such]" stigma, instead of being shown what she is doing for herself independently. I don’t see how anyone can see that these shows are a portrayal of reality, maybe it gives them an escape from difficulties in their lives that they are going through. Viewers have accepted these shows and look at them as the norm in The Black American Experience. These shows have taken the concerns that many have of fictitious Tyler Perry movies and showed that they are reality, even if they are exaggerations.

Even though critics may argue that The Cosby Show ignored institutionalized racism and ignored obstacles that many blacks face with upward mobility obtainment, or that they may reinforce the notion that blacks lack of achievement could be attributed to laziness, lack of education, and many other things that can be attributed to other oppressions that they face from outside forces. Those arguments however beg the question is it enough to be acknowledged on shows like Love & Hip-Hop, Flavor of Love, Basketball Wives, and many others or should we want respect from these stations that broadcast our “realities” to millions daily? Is thirty to sixty minutes of entertainment worth looking like buffoons and coons on modern day minstrel shows? When looking at blacks on TV think of this Jay-Z quote, "When you see me, see you." 

Darkness on the South-side

I see more needles with dried dark red blood in the street than kids happily playing in them,

Babies crying for food, and mothers crying oceans because they don’t have the means to feed them,

Schools are closing yearly, but prisons seem like they are opening daily,

Cost of living is skyrocketing, but social funds are plummeting,

I just want to be a lawyer, a scientist, or somebody with a Ph.D but I’m 6’3 and my community says that I should try to live out hoop dreams,

I have more access to a ball court than a library,

I see more despair than hope, more junkies and crack fiends, than people that look like me living out million dollar dreams swiping black cards for expensive things,

Gentrification, felonies, kids misdiagnosed with mental retardation, but a lack of youth leading my country to become a better nation,

Will I overcome or just become another statistic stuck at the bottom,

Either my people are dying, or they are clocking in 9 to 5’s and 10- 6’s minimum wage living at 63 because 70 for us is when we are retiring,

Not because they want to, but to keep the heat on and to give Junior a couple presents for Christmas,

Streets lights are shining like a thousand watt light bulb, but those are the only things bright on Chicago’s southside,

Mother’s cry, their babies die, and children wonder why,

They wonder why it has to be like this,

Sometimes we just want to see the our side shine, brighten up our day like the Chicago Skyline,

But no we walk in darkness on Chicago’s Southside, looking for hope that our former Senator, and current President promised us, but no one can see the pain because the sun doesn’t shine on the Soutside.