IT'S EVERBODY'S FAULT...but mine

"Society's fault? No. Nobody put the crack into the pipe, nobody made you smoke away your life."

:Ice T "You Played Yourself"


This morning while listening to a morning show on an R&B station that goes out of it's way to define "blackness" (whatever that means today) I found myself bombarded by pro black messages, some positive some negative. Though I'm not a morning person by ANY stretch my BS filters are particularly well tuned first thing in the morning and the show in question seems to sound like "black black blickity black black...'How you feeling this morning Ted?'

'I'm BLACK Phil...I am black.' Anyway while listening to this interspersed with sparse offerings of hip hop, classic R&B and the nauseating begging for sex that has BECOME R&B I heard a social commentary on street gangs killing civilians in street violence in Chicago and how some were asking for the National Guard to be called in. I listened more intently and the velvety voiced female commentator she went on to say that the problem should have been stopped at it's roots. I couldn't help but agree. No one wakes up one morning and decides to join a gang, begin selling drugs and shooting at people. It happens over time.
She then went on to say that part of the problem stems from the fact that young black and Latino males need places to feel as if they belong and are respected and gravitate to gangs because the government has failed on some level to provide sufficient programs for them and that the chasm between rich and poor have driven them to it.
At that point I was glad I wasn't in the studio with this woman as her argument was the reason someone invented hip waders...chest deep BULLSHIT. Bad neighborhoods are nothing new and neither are gangs and thugs. I grew up in a big city and there were gangs and drugs but the bulk of us didn't belong to a gang? Why? I can't speak for my friends, but in MY case my father was a contractor and always had work to be done. He had me out on a job site whenever I didn't have an activity.
Activities? There was cub-scouts, Pee-wee football, baseball and just old fashioned getting a ball and playing with your friends. If you didn't have an activity the best reason NOT to join a gang was the thought of your mom and or dad cutting a switch from the nearest large tree or taking a worn leather belt and taking a layer of black off your "narrow black ass" as they so frequently put it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for government programs that encourage programs to get young people to do constructive things in their spare time. When I was a kid they offered a myriad of programs at my local park and there were other programs which I took part in which cost next to nothing.
My parents were working class and never let me forget that for a second and I understand that there are people in my old neighborhood who are so poor they can barely afford food for their children. But honestly there are some things you can get your children to do which don't cost any money. How much does it cost to take your kid to the park and push him/her on a swing? How much does it cost to go for a walk with your son or daughter? How much of your weekly income is taken by simply offering your child praise and encouragement?
Government programs are great, but they are NOT the ultimate solution. Psychologist have shown in study after study that the type of person your child will become is shaped by the time he/she is 2 years old. That being said, if you don't curtail certain things your kid does while he's still a kid, you will soon have an adult on your hands who has no respect for you or anything else. The end result my generation (the lovable losers known as "Generation X" are raising a group of lazy, violent, disrespectful, thugs incapable of using simple logic who have an ungodly sense of entitlement. Who can we blame for it? No one but ourselves.
Mike Rutherford once said "Every generation blames the one before" and to that end Gen X blames our parents as they blamed theirs in the 60s and 70s, and our grandparents blamed their parents in the great depression. But let's stop for a moment and take stock as we look at the lazy, disrespectful, semi-literate, logic impaired, recreational drug using, oversexed, tattooed youth that we've spawned and stop passing the buck. This is entirely our fault and the time has come to come up with some solutions and preventative measures to insure that our grandchildren (some of whom might either be with us now or on the way shortly) don't fall into the same trap we obliviously led this current generation into as we pointed the fingers of blame.