The Center Of The Black Community
“I care enough about black young boys and girls that I have actually won Volunteer of the Year at the local Boys and Girls Club Teen Center here in Raleigh. Yea, by volunteering. I remember a teenage black girl, after seeing me in the center after several days, asking me why I was there. Before I could answer, she followed the question with a quick quip, ‘What you gotta do community service?’. When I told her that I was just there as a volunteer, she put a bewildered look on her face that struck home with me. Bill, the teen center manager, would soon tell me that volunteers at the center are few and far between. One day while signing in on the volunteer log, I noticed that only I had signed in as a volunteer for the past several weeks that the log displayed. This spoke directly to what Bill had told me.I know, I know. give me a hero cookie, right? The only reason I’m mentioning this is to qualify that I’m no hypocrite. BUT I SURELY DO HAVE A WAY OF VIEWING A LOT OF BLACK PEOPLE WHO CHIME IN ON THE TOPIC OF BLACK UNITY AS HYPOCRITES. What I find is that most of them will write something or take a position in conversations, like brothapeacemaker has, when the facts are that they themselves are all talk no action.” – Regular Brotha
It’s wonderful that some people take time out of their busy lives to go and volunteer at the community center. There are a lot of black children who can benefit from such personal sacrifice for a few hours a week, a month, or whatever. More people should be so motivated. And after the few hours are done, the volunteer can go home knowing that they made a change in a child’s life or in children’s lives at least for a few hours. Such sacrifice can be its own reward, but it helps just a little bit more when you win something as noteworthy as the Volunteer of the Year recognition from the community center. Then again, if you’re the only volunteer showing up for weeks on end, you’re a shoe in for the award.
I have to confess that it has been years since I’ve volunteered my time in such ways. But one thing I must say in my defense is that while some are volunteering at the community center, I choose to live in the center of the black community. Being able to play games and entertain children for a few hours is nice. But living in the neighborhood with a number of underprivileged black children it can be considerably helpful to be one of the steadily dwindling number of black professionals in the black neighborhood, to be a neighborhood role model, rather than the weekend only role model.
Case in point, sometime ago a single black mother in the apartment next door decided she was going to go under her car and change her starter out herself. I have to give this woman some serious credit because I have difficulty trusting myself to change my oil correctly. I’ve done it a couple of times. But I have no confidence in my automotive mechanic skills and will stress myself out constantly worrying if I did it right. But this woman was under her car replacing her starter trying to save some money. The woman had two sons who were playing with other children in the alleyway. One looked about twelve, the other was walking and climbing but still in diapers. The younger started to climb a leaning chain linked fence. He climbed to the top and was doing his best to reach the tree just an adult’s arm length away. However, junior looked inevitably like he was going to fall. Mom was under the car working so I called out to the little boy’s older brother who was playing with some of the other kids his age.
Hey! Is that your brother climbing that fence?
Yes.
Doesn’t he look like he might hurt himself?
My mom is right there.
She’s under the car and looks kind of busy. Why don’t you help her out by watching your little brother for her? I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.
The older brother took his little brother down and actually started looking out for him. Do I need a cookie? While it would be nice to have one right now, that’s not even close to being necessary. It’s not even necessary to get an award at the end of year. The fact that I can help teach a kid in my neighborhood about taking responsibility for caring for his little brother is just a little thing that helps make the black community a little better. Black people who chose to stay in the black community don’t get rewards for making the sacrifice to do what’s right for the black community. When we see the kids in our neighborhoods throwing rocks into a neighbor’s garage, looking for something to do because the nearest community center is about three miles away, we are there to stop them and make them realize that not only are they doing something wrong, but there are other people watching them.
They don’t give awards for people who sleep in the center of the black community at night, who wake up in the middle of sleeping to hear gunshots outside and press local politicians to take responsibility for cleaning up the community the way they promised when they were trying to be elected or trying to stay in office. However, I really don’t think that this type of strategy to help counter some of the social problems of the black community makes me a hypocrite. In fact, I suffer no doubt that I’m being hypocritical at all.
“This is why I care brothapeacemaker. While working in the teen center, there were some rough looking young men in there. I mean, to the common white person (and even some blacks) they looked like thugs. I’M FROM A CITY THAT IS 95% OR MORE BLACK. These were the bay-bays and shine dogs that I grew up with when I was a young kid. I saw the kid in these teens. After they get to know you a little, the tough shield starts to dissipate and what’s really there is a teenage kid that has hopes and dreams that are constantly being [challenged] by OUR culture.” – Regular Brotha
Glad to hear it. But, I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t just the neighborhood kids whose shields came down. I don’t even think they had a shield. I believe the author of this comment, Regular Brotha, was the one who dropped his shield. Once he spent a little time with the people he realized they aren’t as bad as our culture describes black people in general. This is the same man who claims that other black people are inspired “…to sport long white T’s as a fashion statements that influences them to stare me up and down while we’re in line at Wal-Mart ridiculing me in their minds because I’ve got on slacks and a dress shirt. They view me as sell-out. I got a damn mortgage. I gotta pay college tuition next year for my daughter. I’m doing what people died for, marched for during the 50’s and 60’s. And [you’re] looking down on me?” He also wrote, “I know what I see and I know what a mean mug is when I see it.”
This is the kind of thing that happens when we don’t bother to live amongst each other in a black community. Chances are good that if Mr. Brotha actually talked to those white T-shirt wearing brothers he would find out that they aren’t the thugs that he has been previously programmed to think they are. If Mr. Brotha got to know other black people he wouldn’t be so quick to judge them through the lens that the dominant community has defined black people to be. Without knowing any thing about other black people this black man reads other black people’s thoughts and can determine that all these other black people are ridiculing him. That sound like some pretty narcissistic paranoia.
When we take a moment to talk to each other we can learn who each other are and what each other are thinking and feeling. Like the girl in the original quote above we should have the gumption to talk to each other and ask questions instead of making propaganda fueled assumptions about how some black people hate other black people because they wear slacks. And when black people live in the center of the black community we can learn so much more about our other black brothers and sisters that no amount of propaganda can drive a wedge in between us. Black people should have an affiliation with each other, instead of just standing back and making asinine guesses as to who they are and what they are thinking. I can learn the conditions of the black community better when I live in the black community and not just by what I hear or read or learn through the filter of the dominant community. Volunteering at the community center for a few hours a week is really a good thing. But there is nothing better than black people actually living in the center of the black community if we are to rebuild the black community.
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Just a Quick Note
Again with Kahn? Did rebooting the Star Trek franchise mean rebooting the same old bad guys as well?
Peace
Your blog should be called Say It Again Brother because you’re saying some stuff that needs to be said. Time out for folks talking a good game–they need to start doing things and let their actions speak for itself.
Thanks for the feedback ConfessionsofaSBW,
I really appreciate the positivity. I would hope that more people would get the message that we need to start doing for each other instead of just preaching to each other some bull about taking personal responsibility or whatever.
Peace
I know that is right! How can we be truly and completely involved in how the black community turns out if we live in the middle of an all white or close to it suburb? I agree that living in the black community and being there daily talking and interacting with these black kids and adults does a heap more good than trying to influence someone in a few hours a week.
I know that living in the black community gives me a first hand look at what is going on. I can be involved on the scene when something is happening. I can be here to involve myself in the lives of the black families around me daily not just a few hours a week. They can see how my family lives and the choices we make. We can show by example, not just as some dude who comes to the rec center for a couple hours a week and lectures me on what is what.
I am in no way putting down people who choose to volunteer because that is a well needed commodity. I can see the benefits to both. But there is big significance of one over the other. It says a lot to the kids when you live right in the thick of it with them. It just lets them know that when you “make it” you don’t have to run to a white suburb.
Thanks
The proplem is with your focus. It’s on me for criticizing young black boys and their parents for looking like their wearing White dresses (long white T’s). Essentially, you are going out of your way to go after me for saying that we should be hard on our own. I will not apologize for that.
In fact, I’d say roughly 90 to 95% of my previous posts have been soley directed at pointing out the failings of the majority. You fancy yourself as someone who is a “so call peacemaker”. Yet your response(s) to my perspective has been nothing attacks on me and my way of thinking.
This is how we get to unity? When black folk are criticized for anything, we get defensive and want to attack. Sometimes if the shoe fits, we gotta wear it.
I guess what your trying to convey is that I’m simply par for the course “black guy making a little money, looking down on black folk”.
I won’t try to minimize your living within the commmunity statement, though you’ve certainly “attempted” to minimize a qualifying example I provided to show how we as a people can attack the oppressive state in which most of our people live within, by going into the parts of our communities that truly have the need for a helping hand and volunteering.
From reading your post, you have done this in the past.So I applaud you. I too have not been able to do it recently due to the demands of raising my own 17 and 12 year old daughters the past two years.
If you do live within the black community, surely the fact that these boys and their lack of any insight of being something or anything in the future other than a “baller” is viewed as a problem in YOUR community. When I speak of this, I speak from a perspective of having lived and been raised in that environment. We can no longer sugar coat the problems that we have in our “own” communities.
After all, we are the ones primarily affected by our youths lack of focus. Not anyone else. We have to interact and have dialogue amoungst one another. Even with opposing view points, we’ve got to be able to address our issues in a way that we don’t attack the other whose views aren’t aligned with ours.
That’s what I meant by “Focus Man”. I am not your enemy. But I don’t have a problem speaking on something within our own community that I see as a problem, whether you criticize me or not. And I won’t let attacks like yours deter me from speaking out about what our youth are doing, where they are going, and what I or we got to do about it.
Regular Brotha,
You have got to take your own advice and FOCUS MAN. The problem is that it ISN’T about YOU! You should relax. You are just a drop in a proverbial barrel. There are plenty more people than yourself with the same mindset. Making it about you diminishes the whole conversation about certain mindsets and whether they are or are not destructive for unity or whatever is being discussed.
You have a point of view and it differed from my own when you decided to do a play on my post “what is wrong with blacks.” Should I have decided that it was an attack on me since we didn’t share the same viewpoint? I doubt it, as we can’t get all views if we don’t have opinions. Criticism is on your point of view, NOT ON YOU.
I didn’t see any where in the post anything about a “black guy making a little money, looking down on black folk”. That isn’t what this post is about. The post seems to be about either being in the middle of the black community helping from the inside out or being outside the black community and trying to help from an outside vantage point. The point is that the black community will never be repaired if the tax dollars keep leaving. That is the truth.
It doesn’t matter that YOU were raised in that environment. What we can no longer do is sit in our suburbs and talk about all that ails the black community. We can’t continuously move out then expect the poor that are left to somehow raise the tax bracket in order to have the clean streets, nice homes and productive schools. It isn’t about where or what YOU do. You do what you feel is necessary and if you help then that is commendable. But the black community will not have the support it needs if we all leave it to fend for itself all the while chastising it.
Volunteering is a great thing and like I said before is badly needed, but there are other concerns. Such as it doesn’t bring in the much needed tax revenue. It does not show those black kids or their families see what productive citizens do to make good choices. It is a matter of perspective about what is being said. I don’t think that you are considering all sides.
You are not the enemy. Maybe a bit misguided but not the enemy I speak about. We have to get over the stereotyping and the lookist behavior that is bringing us down and just let people look the way they look without disrespecting their choices. The lack of focus on the big picture is the problem. The big picture is what is bringing the black community down. And it isn’t the long T-shirt wearers nor the ghetto fabulous culture. What is bringing us down is the lack of money makers in our midst. We need to bring our tax dollars home.
Thanks.
Thanks for the feedback Regular Brotha,
But believe it or not I am not attacking you. No one is trying to minimize your choice to volunteer at the community center. No one here has ever implied that you are a “hypocrite” and no one ever said that you were “all talk and no action”. However, you must admit that you tossed both comments in my direction.
I am offering a critique of black people who feel entitled to stereotype other black people because of a hip-hop or urban appearance or because of dreadlocks or the usage of poor grammar or a lack of an education. I find it totally uncool that so many black people who do well feel the need to criticize blacks who may be less fortunate. And instead of trying to find out what their problems are we make blatantly ignorant assumptions about their character, or more accurately, the assumption of their lack of character.
Well to do blacks add fuel to the fire that is gutting the black community. Like white women who clutch their purses tightly when they see a black man walking down the street or the white man who makes sure his doors are locked when he sees a black man in the vicinity, we don’t need to give the dominant community any validation for their disapproval of black people. How can we expect others to change when we are so quick to do this kind of thing to ourselves?
I find it comical that you tell me that “We have to interact and have [dialog amongst] one another” but then turn around and talk about how you knew exactly what the black man in the T-shirt mugging you thought without any form of contact. No offense but that sounds totally hypocritical.
You also say that you “don’t have a problem speaking on something within our own community that I see as a problem…”. And neither do I. Brothers who make the choice to wear T-shirts are not a problem in the black community. We can do this all day long and nobody gets hurt. But when brothers go around making comments that other brothers who wear T-shirts are the problem simply because they make the choice to wear T-shirts, it feeds the propaganda that relegates black people to second class status. You are now doing the work of the oppressor. It hurts us all.
Peace
You know what? I’ve been doing the work of what a black man should be doing for 18 years. That’s being a faith full husband and a father to my two daughters, both who go to predominately black schools here in the Raleigh area.
Obviously, I’m wasting key strokes going back and forth with you two about how we need to call out our own. That crap about “brotha’s who make a choice to wear long white T’s are not a problem in the black community. QUITE SIMPLY. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT!
Ask these elderly black women who have to live like prisoners within their own communities who the problem ones are. They won’t say the ones wearin the a pair of slacks and a polo on the corner slangin rocks are the problem.
I don’t know if you two are fathers or have kids that your actively involved with raising, but I do know who the ones are that give my daughters hell calling them out their names when they want their attention. You two are fooling yourselves thinking we shouldn’t spend some time focusing on what our youth are wearing and how they are acting. In fact, that’s what I got a problem with. Like I said, I don’t give a damn about what white kids are wearing or how they are acting. I do, however, care enough about how our young men and women are acting and behaving within our own community.
There’s just as much a need for this as there is a need for us to keep the pressure on our oppressor. You keep doing your thang and I’ll keep doing mine. But I won’t say your doing the work of the oppressor. But on the topic of “What’s Wrong With Blacks”, I do think you two have your heads in the sand on the issue of how do we police our own.
Misguided. I think not. Unafraid to say something that’s not popular but true amongst my fellow brothas, that’s me.
Regular Brotha,
I don’t think we need to be police men for our own. That seems to be well covered. I do have two sons and one is a 17 year old and he is at the top of his class in an all black school. He has never been in any trouble. He wears whatever he feels is clean and sensible. Whether that be a white T-shirt or not. He does not deserve to be judged by you and a bunch of others if he chose to wear a white T-shirt.
I could care less what the white boy is wearing as well and don’t understand why that is an issue in a conversation about the black community. Being an active mother in the lives of my children I know exactly what is the problem with our black neighborhood in which I live. It isn’t the fact that people are wearing dumb looking clothes. It happens to be unemployment. It happens to be underfunded schools. If more people were to invest money into this community instead of running from it, we wouldn’t be so down and out. They need guidance NOT policing by their own.
You don’t know what you are talking about. It just so happens that white men with a felony record and high school education received a 17% call back for employment compared to black men with NO criminal record and a 4 year college degree who only got a 15% call back. THAT IS THE FREAKING PROBLEM IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY! And who in the world do you think is subjugating those black men with this disparity? The black guys wearing white T-shirts and hanging on the corner.
Not hardly, they are the ones who are being locked out of a job. You may believe that those stats don’t matter. But in case you hadn’t noticed those men in white T-shirts acting stupid and scaring the hell out of old ladies locked in their homes are the ones who don’t have any jobs to go to during the day. Maybe you believe that these black men in the black community just don’t want to work and are just sitting around being fools because they can. But what I see everyday I walk out of my inner city door is a bunch of men who are down trodden and broken. Who need a break. Who need dignity. Who need a job, not a new police force.
A break that you and those like you who don’t know or don’t care what their circumstances are won’t bother to give them. I think that forcing the key master of the employment world to end this disparity of opportunities for blacks will do a whole lot more than me trying to point my finger and chastise someone, because we see how well that works. For all I, you or brotherpeacemaker knows that stupid dressed man we try to chastise already has a damn job. I can’t just look at a person and make assumptions. I have to know what is up with them in order to help not hinder.
The only head in the sand is yours. You think you know everything that is going on in the black community from growing up in the black community a good 30 years or so ago. I am living it everyday just like peacemaker. I know what is needed in this community. I see no lack of police, city cops nor black community people police who walk the neighborhood making sure we all do right. That is not the issue.
I am trying to get you to understand that a college degree isn’t the end of all problems. Not if white high school drop out felons are getting called back for jobs before clean nosed black college graduates. I think you need to get a clue as to what is REALLY going on in this world before you tell me my head is in the sand. What is wrong with blacks is that all we are focused on is blacks. It is high time that we focus on getting MORE blacks a foot in the door of white dominated big business. And we can’t do that playing cops and robbers with the black community.
Thanks
Regular Brotha,
I’m glad to hear that you believe that you have been doing what a black man should for eighteen years. I’m glad to hear that you are faithful to your wife and a good father for your daughters. That’s good stuff to hear. But the fact that you like to focus on white T-shirt wearing brothers is, quite frankly, disturbing. Not every black man in a white T-shirt is gang banging. It is too easy a stereotype for people to focus on.
The elderly woman has more to fear from the white man in the business suit down at the mortgage company than the brother man on the corner. But because of dominant culture propaganda, the kind of propaganda you are helping to promote with your focus on identifying all black youths in white T-shirts as some kind of criminal, black granny would rather focus on the black man on the corner while the white man downtown robs her blind. You see, not that you do but it’s a cliche I occasionally use, elders in the black community know that you cannot determine who’s a criminal by their attire just like people should know you can’t determine the character of a person by the color of their skin.
I asked my elderly mother, she’ll be seventy nine this year and lives across the street from me in our black neighborhood, who bothers her the most, the kid on the corner or the people who sell gas for four dollars a gallon? It’s the gas seller. I ask my mom who bothers her the most, the kids in the white T-shirts or the man at the drug company who wants to sell her medication at exorbitant prices? It’s the man at the drug company. I ask my mom who bothers her most, the black kids on the corner or the people who have allowed her investments to plummet so fast so far in the past year? Her answer is the people who messed up her investments. My mom may have had her garage broken into by a couple of thugs in the neighborhood. Replacing a lawnmower is a hassle and having to secure everything so that it doesn’t disappear is a nuisance. Nobody knows how these people are dressed so I won’t just assume that it’s a young black man in a white T-shirt. Regardless though, the real problems are the day to day issues the black community faces from corporate America that refuses to be socially responsible with respect to black people.
Here in the black community we have problems. Yes there are gang bangers and there are people who will rob and steal. But the way some people like to tell the story black people are looting and shooting each other left and right every single day. But in all honesty, people in the black community have more to fear from people outside the black community than we do from the guy on the corner. That’s a fact. If you lived in the black community you would know this.
Instead, you want to accuse me of not knowing what I am talking about. If the brother on the corner had all this power and influence over the black community then the black community would have it made.
But the black man on the corner is not the black community’s biggest problem. The problems of the black community are far deeper and more systemic that any T-shirt wearing brother can accomplish on his own. The problems in the black community stem from poverty from a lack of employment opportunities for black people and a poor educations from a lack of educational opportunities. The dominant community doesn’t want to associate with black people because of the propaganda against black people. The propaganda that fuels the hate of black people. The same propaganda that you have bought into hook, line, and sinker.
In my forty six years of experience, working to raise my son to be proud of his black ethnicity and to embrace his black community without question so that he will want to be with other black people every day of his life and not just donate his time at the black community center while living else where, in doing my best to be a good man for my woman, I have come to realize that no black person is above fault when it comes to caring for the black community. I have made mistakes against the black community in the past. Hopefully I can help others not make those mistakes in their own lives. Regardless, I’m looking to help without judging people because of what they wear. We don’t need to more people to help police our youth. We need more people to reach our youth.
How would you feel if somebody saw your daughters dressed in a way that they didn’t approve and called them ho’s? Are they young, black, and female? They they are definitely ho’s. How would you feel if somebody saw your children in the Wal-Mart and assumed them to be hood rats simply because they didn’t like their attire and/or hair? I’m sure you wouldn’t like it. All the more reason you should not be so quick to judge. And yet, you feel entitled to judge other black people based on nothing but appearance. You really need to stop assuming so much and learn to dialog, especially the listening part. I seriously doubt if you are the one wasting keystrokes in this conversation.
Peace
All of you have good points. Blacks are held in low regards so stereotypes will always be easily applied to us. The long white T’s and etc are a youth driven culture and not a criminal driven one. Its extremely unfair to box someone based on their appearance which is not self defining of anything. But regular brother is on point about his assesment. The attire is slightly different in the south as opposed to the north and northeast. If someone on the block is a do dirty type ni@@a, he will look the part accordingly, just as regular brother described. The white men you refer to that bother your grandmother wouldn’t bother any old ladies in our hoods. Simply, because THEY DON’T EXIST. No investments, gas sellers, etc. What is the concern is the drug selling in front of the houses, the stray bullets, the break ins, the fights, and random disrespect towards any living thing. Back in the day my grandpa and company use to “police” our hood, from threats forein and domestic. When ni@@a! got a couple of crumbs from master’s table, they went AWOL and left the less talented behind to fend for themselves. We do need to regain that internal power structure again.
Thanks for the feedback brother J,
The man who sells gas doesn’t exist? The last time I was in the south I could’ve sworn cars ran on gasoline. Maybe things have changed since I’ve been there. And people who employ others exist as well. People who make the choice not to employ black people do indeed exist. I think it is very shortsighted to say that they don’t. I refuse to believe that all I have to do is go down south with a white T-shirt and become part of the problem. This is not to say that stray bullets don’t happen. They happen here in the Midwest just like a lot of other places. There are break ins and fights as well. Not all of these problems are caused by brothers wearing white T-shirts. Outlawing white T-shirts is not the solution.
I will agree with you that too many black people “…got a couple of crumbs from master’s table…” and made the choice to abandon the black community. If every black person who does well make the choice to leave the black community, taking their tax dollars and status and potential role models away, it is inevitable that the black neighborhoods will fall prey to criminal behavior. And instead of black people realizing that we can do better if we stick together, these same black folks want to judge others as less than and criminals because of attire or whatever. We won’t regain any internal power structure as long as black people continue to leave the black neighborhoods as soon as they’re able.
Peace