After I watched the video above this morning, I started to wonder if this was staged somehow or could people really be this idiotic to film themselves while hold guns and talking about hustling when their face is clearly shown on camera. Besides that point I started to wonder about the people who are not in front of the camera, but doing the exact same things portrayed in the video snippet. What do we do about them? Shouldn’t there be this giant uproar from our so-called Negro leader about this matter? The 800lb Gorilla in the room that at times no one seems to want notice are the atrocities that we do to one another. I find it interesting how the same people who want to hold accountable other people for their misdeeds against the African-American community, happily ignore what’s going on within the community itself. Are we no longer compelled to speak out against all violence and situations that bring down us as a community or should it be the norm now? A better question is: Why are so many people willing to glorify the negative aspects?
I tried to set some sort of rationalization in my mind and the only conclusion I could come up with was that this life is their DEAD END, so nothing really mattered to them anymore. Nothing, but the here and now and what they can accumulate in the meantime. How can some one feel worth anything when they see nothing around them that IS worth anything? If this video was real, the people exposed have accepted the fact that there is nothing more to what they see in front of them since some many have been detoured because of lack of education, employment opportunities, health care and other hurtles that seem to just knock people off the straight and narrow path and onto the broad and crowded one, which only leads to the dead ends of prison and premature death.
If this video is false, you have people trying to glorify or make role models of images that clearly DO NOT deserve it and once again exploit a “Thug Gangster Lifestyle” we see all over the mass media. Besides, with so many people of color advancing in the arenas of politics, film and industry, a child’s role model should not be Pookie the drug dealer that stands on the corner, but some one who is going to stand for them even when they do not have the strength to stand for themselves. While parents carry the bulk of the responsible in making sure that their children are taught with certain moral values, I ask myself if the old proverb that it takes a village to raise a child is true. In fact shouldn’t we all be each others keeper in this day and age? Is it finally time for people to stand up and say that this is not acceptable anymore and we want it out of our neighborhoods?
Kenny.
