Personal Narrative: A Problem In The Black Community

I am the problem in the black community: I am unplanned pregnancy, educational malpractice, welfare - shared and borrowed EBT, stolen uniforms in exchange for street opium, the overdose and the uncomfortable pain of going cold turkey. I am ghetto life, extreme poverty, gun violence and genocide in the streets. A piece of me lie motionless in a yellow square reading crime scene on a square block that inherits the plight of failed urban development and public policy. A St.Michael’s prayer card is suppose to protect me from bullets; superstition amalgamated with pious belief. Not knowing any other reality, I would casually brush my teeth with baking soda and rags preparing for bed. In my sleep, I would dream of being the pipeline to prison
It was the most thorough history lesson of my life; an emancipation of the broken spirited, a trail of tears, an exodus from generations of corrupt government practices, but most importantly it marked my genesis to a New World. At the age of 14, leaving New Orleans after Katrina was the first time I really thought about race or injustice; it was the first time I felt angered about my unchosen victimization. So, when Kanye West said, “George Bush does not care about black people,” I was my first time I thought about democracy. As President Bush battled criticism over the response to Katrina, his mother, Barbara Bush declared it a success for evacuees who “were underprivileged anyway,” saying that many of the poor people she had seen while touring a Houston relocation site were faring better than before the storm hit. I knew, then, my suffrage although it didn’t always receive national coverage had been well-documented by “the people”. It was my first time hearing black folks point to “the man”. Rather naive — I was hoping the man was Richard Pryor in pajamas acting as the Wiz with no real power. But, I was wrong. The man they were referring to was Andrew Jackson, driving Native Americans to unknown lands called reservations, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who alienated slaves and women from the same freedom
- to find myself enrolled in a Maryland public school. The school’s teachers and counselors collaborated to get to the pathology of my academic challenges. I was reborn. I was more than another black boy from a disadvantaged background or the Lower 9th Ward. I was Christian. I was no longer invisible. This was my first introduction to democracy - to having an identity. This is when I learned that my academic progress may have been stunned by Attention Deficit Disorder. Eager for growth, looking for a positive outcome, I was willing to accept anything that rationalize my lackluster grades. Anything that justified my existence; anything that signified a greater purpose in life. I graduated from high school, but I was rejected from every single college I applied to with the exception of one. In my mind, college was the thing that validated something that eluded me until I opened that letter - relative worth. Yet the majority of the kids I grew up with - still displaced - finishing high school in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Lord knows where else weren’t going to college. Like me, they were combating the inherited ignorance such as “College isn’t for everyone.” The other shock-jock phrases would include “Some people are simply good with their hands” and “The military is a good option.” It’s not that these statements are false as much as they are remnants of