Political And Racial Agendas Ruining Sports

[Juror#8]

On 6/8/2018 at 1:56 PM, TakeYouToTasker said:

 

Fully acknowledging that people don't start in the same place, and the truly disadvantaged have the tallest hills to climb, individuals absolutely shoulder the blame for the poor choices they make; and the choices people make are even more important when their is less margin for error.  Poverty, like wealth, is intergenerational.  If you are poor, and you do not graduate from high school, do not have a job, and/or have children out of wedlock you are far more likely, by multitudes, to normalize that lifestyle for your progeny, and pass down your poverty to them.

 

This is a fact, and regardless of how uncomfortable it may be, it does not change the reality.

 

There is no substitute for an involved two parent family who takes an active involvement in their child's education.  None.

 

Worse, you won't even begin to solve the problem until you accept this absolute truth.

 

Black Americans have agency.  They are responsible for the choices they make.

 

The change needs to begin in black communities, where black community leaders must advocate for intact black families who embrace upright social responsibility.  There has to be a massive cultural change. 

 

You’re on to something here, I think. Not everything, I know. But something, I’m sure. So I’m going to try to support and develop your post  in the best way I know how - experientially. 

 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that half you mother!@#$ers have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. 

 

(Yes people have a reason to be protesting and good on them for using their platform and a peaceful means through which to try to bring attention to something they consider a social ill. You don’t have to agree with why they’re protesting, and as such you can peacefully protest too with your pocketbooks, but don’t make your disagreement about an ideological refutation of why they’re protesting). 

 

That’s not entirely your fault though. It’s truly probably just as well. Your idea of the inner city comes from nightly news programs, rap personalities, and tv dramas which sell out verisimilitude in their quest for sensation. 

 

“Verisimilitude”: thanks mom. 

 

The issue, and the disconnect, and where the failings are within the black community are grounded in educational shortcomings. The fault of those shortcomings are complex and fall into a lot of categories that would take a while to explore. 

 

But back to the experiential ...

 

I grew up in the hood. 

 

For the uninitiated white folks,  the “inner city.”

 

1. Reisterstown Road in the 410

 

2. then we moved to Takoma Park and lived in the high rises behind the Old Giant (a little ghetto but not really a hood spot), 

 

3. then to District Heights and Mt. Ranier within the same year

 

4. then right across the line and we stayed with my uncle Lamont in Barry Farm (at the tail end the crack epidemic but it was still a **** storm)

 

5. then Silver Spring back before the revitalization (I still remember walking from City Place mall to where we were renting a room off Thayer Ave when I worked at the Burger King in the food court at City Place and Paris Glendining was walking with a bunch of people with hard hats. I recognized him and said “hi” and he ignored me). 

 

There is a hood motif - “if you want to get out of the hood you either sell crack rock or have a wicked jump shot.” 

 

As cynical as that is, it’s a prevailing theme in the parts of the inner city that I’ve lived in. No one extolled the benefits of academic success. You went to school so you didn’t have to see the truancy officers and the truancy vans. Not because it was an avenue to success. 

 

It didnt help that architecturally the schools were dilapidated, the books were outdated and some in the same class had different text book editions, and that during 10th grade the heat in most of the building was out so they sent a letter home telling students to bring a coat and if they couldn’t afford one, the school had a coat lend program. 

 

No one is thinking about breaking the cycle of multi-generational poverty, or the benefits of academics, when they don’t have a !@#$ing coat when it cold and they don’t want to wear the one with the sewed on orange patch on the inner right side that identified it as a school lend. 

 

Are you kidding me?? People are having meltdowns over cyber-bullying now when back in the early 90s you were pilloried if you wore the woats (they called them “woat” for “welfare coat). 

 

“Show me the inside of your coat.” 

 

“No.” 

 

Someone yells: “This nigga wearing a woat.”

 

In the middle of the cafeteria no less. 

 

Most people aren’t thinking about being the rose that grows out of the crack in the cement when they’re wearing a woat and they just got made so they know they’re either going to get mercilessly made fun of, just have to be cold, or jack a coat and hope for the best. 

 

That thought is penetratingly all-encompassing and doesn’t leave room for retaining scientific classifications in Biology. 

 

And then just getting to school was a !@#$ing show. Because you couldn’t make it there without being intercepted by someone about something. Either someone wanted something, wanted you to do something, or wanted you to try something. 

 

If you ignored them, it was either disrespectful and an ass whoopin or you got the woat treatment. 

 

People arent thinking about academic excellence when they have to maneuver their way to school to and from in order to avoid an ass-whoopin. 

 

And I wont even go into the !@#$ing bass heads asking everyone for money with puss around their lips and scratching their !@#$ing bleeding scab-filled skin that we’d see everyday on our way to this place every morning that’s supposed to be some salvation from all the craziness. 

 

The fiend lines at 6:30 in the morning were epic.  Niggas can’t get up for work but theyll be 10 minutes early for that early-morning allocation of the best smack. The hoppers want people od’ing and drooling on themselves early and the rest of the bass heads to see them so they can sell the weak **** the rest of the day. 

 

Hood marketing. 

 

My mom didn’t want us to make excuses for not going to school so she drove us past the rifraf and to the front school doors every day in her 1976 Toyota Corona. 

 

My dad wasn’t in the picture from about middle school on. When he wasn’t thinking with his dick he was acting directly on its behalf. 

 

Probably a trait that he handed down. 

 

He also probably liked the idea of having a family more than he liked having a family. 

 

A trait thankfully that he didnt hand down. 

 

So my mom and her 2.5 jobs was how we made it. And also why we moved so much because we were frequently living with family members and my mom’s friends (shout out Ms. Thelma) when times were tough and there was less overtime at the Wendy’s she assistant managed. 

 

My my mom was the first black Republican I ever knew. Politics has less to do with this than it does the fact that she did push an agenda of not letting us feel sorry for ourselves. So I keep that as part of my politics and even though I’m middle of the road, I have a strong self-determination streak that informs my politics. And it’s why I’m independent and have voted cross the isle many times. 

 

One Christmas we knew we wouldn’t have any gifts. My mom told us in advance that we wouldn’t have gifts to avoid the suspense. 

 

“Either they evict us or no gifts this year.” But we woke up to something under the tree. And my mom standing there almost crying. She said she couldn’t give us anything nice, or Jordans, or a Starter Jacket, but she could give us this. There were two red milk crates with old books in them. Some had torn covers and pages missing. They were free from the public library because the condition was such that they were  no longer considered  fit for public readability I guess. Vonnegut, Dostoyevsky, Bronte, dictionary, a Latin dictionary, a bunch of Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mysteries. 

 

We read them all. 

 

No bull ****, we did. 

 

And my mom made us write sentences using dictionary words and find a synonym and antonym and the correct part of speech. 

 

!@#$ing brilliant. 

 

I didnt realize the impact that had until I used “egregious” naturally speaking in a sentence in school and it just made sense. It rolled off the tongue naturally at 15.  

 

“Egregious”: thanks mom. 

 

I have an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League light school and a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. I live in a neighborhood where the median family income is about $200,000 a year. My white neighbors would probably

look at me weird for being there if I didn’t step out of a new M3 everyday. 

 

They probably think I have a wicked jump shot. 

 

Not everyone has a mom who wouldn’t let their family veg out on tv and who would drive them to school and make them read to supplement for what wasn’t being taught at school. 

 

My best best best friend growing up is 14 years into his 276 months in Jessup. 

 

He was tired of wearing a woat. 

 

He couldn’t avoid the rifraf 

 

He was tired of being 12 and also cold and hungry and being told to learn algebra. 

 

He just didn’t think that at 17 it should be that hard. 

 

So he found a temporary avenue out. 

 

Mother!@#$ers aren’t stupid. The inner city culture just isn’t inherently conducive to being successful. It instead promotes survival instincts by any means necessary. 

 

“They know I’m a sinna, but it was cold in the winta and eating out of the trash, that ****’ll make you a killa.” 

 

-Rick Ross 

 

You can blame it on the parents. But they wore woats too. And they dealt with rifraf, just their rifraf had Afros and leather jackets. And their parents wore woats and had rifraf. Their rifraf put “lie” in their hair and said “daddeo.” Eventually you’ll get back to the root of this generational struggle. And it’s that at some point at some time black folks weren’t allowed to get an education or read. By the time they were legally allowed to get an education,  it was with fifty year old text books in schools that were a collection of closets. By the time a legal correction to that was on the books, in 54, many white teachers didn’t want to teach them and white students didn’t want to sit next to them. 

 

Hold up, social media bullying is the !@#$ing scourge of the earth and the seven-seas though ...

 

And then once white folks said “!@#$ it” and just picked up and left the area en masse, the schools they left in their wake, in what became inner cities, were underfunded and not properly taught. So even though there was no longer institutionalized barriers, the generational and psychological ones had taken hold. 

 

Generations upon generations upon generations of not being able to be equal and then getting the **** end of the stick under the color of law does some **** to people. It attaches itself to outlooks and it admits itself through environmental disrepair. 

 

That falls into into the category of “like it or not.” 

 

Think that was ages ago ... well that’s interesting because my parents were in segregated schools. That’s how recent that **** was. One (just now two) generation ago. I’m the first generation not subject to segregation. 

 

After tens of generations in the shitter, mother!@#$ers get one foot out and people think they should be !@#$ing bar-b-quing and brimming with sustained success. 

 

Not sure it works that way. 

 

People look at **** too theoretically and in a vacuum. 

 

But spend a day down in West Baltimore schools or in Southeast dc or any hood near you and I guarantee you won’t be talking that theoretical ****. But it’s easy to opine in a vacuum. 

 

I get it.

 

Just so long as you realize that it’s incomplete analysis, then I guess it don’t make me no kinda nevermind. 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2018 by Juror#8

[K-9]

2 hours ago, Juror#8 said:

 

You’re on to something here, I think. Not everything, I know. But something, I’m sure. So I’m going to try to support and develop your post  in the best way I know how - experientially. 

 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that half you mother!@#$ers have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. 

 

(Yes people have a reason to be protesting and good on them for using their platform and a peaceful means through which to try to bring attention to something they consider a social ill. You don’t have to agree with why they’re protesting, and as such you can peacefully protest too with your pocketbooks, but don’t make your disagreement about an ideological refutation of why they’re protesting). 

 

That’s not entirely your fault though. It’s truly probably just as well. Your idea of the inner city comes from nightly news programs, rap personalities, and tv dramas which sell out verisimilitude in their quest for sensation. 

 

“Verisimilitude”: thanks mom. 

 

The issue, and the disconnect, and where the failings are within the black community are grounded in educational shortcomings. The fault of those shortcomings are complex and fall into a lot of categories that would take a while to explore. 

 

But back to the experiential ...

 

I grew up in the hood. 

 

For the uninitiated white folks,  the “inner city.”

 

1. Reisterstown Road in the 410

 

2. then we moved to Takoma Park and lived in the high rises behind the Old Giant (a little ghetto but not really a hood spot), 

 

3. then to District Heights and Mt. Ranier within the same year

 

4. then right across the line and we stayed with my uncle Lamont in Barry Farm (at the tail end the crack epidemic but it was still a **** storm)

 

5. then Silver Spring back before the revitalization (I still remember walking from City Place mall to where we were renting a room off Thayer Ave when I worked at the Burger King in the food court at City Place and Paris Glendining was walking with a bunch of people with hard hats. I recognized him and said “hi” and he ignored me). 

 

There is a hood motif - “if you want to get out of the hood you either sell crack rock or have a wicked jump shot.” 

 

As cynical as that is, it’s a prevailing theme in the parts of the inner city that I’ve lived in. No one extolled the benefits of academic success. You went to school so you didn’t have to see the truancy officers and the truancy vans. Not because it was an avenue to success. 

 

It didnt help that architecturally the schools were dilapidated, the books were outdated and some in the same class had different text book editions, and that during 10th grade the heat in most of the building was out so they sent a letter home telling students to bring a coat and if they couldn’t afford one, the school had a coat lend program. 

 

No one is thinking about breaking the cycle of multi-generational poverty, or the benefits of academics, when they don’t have a !@#$ing coat when it cold and they don’t want to wear the one with the sewed on orange patch on the inner right side that identified it as a school lend. 

 

Are you kidding me?? People are having meltdowns over cyber-bullying now when back in the early 90s you were pilloried if you wore the woats (they called them “woat” for “welfare coat). 

 

“Show me the inside of your coat.” 

 

“No.” 

 

Someone yells: “This nigga wearing a woat.”

 

In the middle of the cafeteria no less. 

 

Most people aren’t thinking about being the rose that grows out of the crack in the cement when they’re wearing a woat and they just got made so they know they’re either going to get mercilessly made fun of, just have to be cold, or jack a coat and hope for the best. 

 

That thought is penetratingly all-encompassing and doesn’t leave room for retaining scientific classifications in Biology. 

 

And then just getting to school was a !@#$ing show. Because you couldn’t make it there without being intercepted by someone about something. Either someone wanted something, wanted you to do something, or wanted you to try something. 

 

If you ignored them, it was either disrespectful and an ass whoopin or you got the woat treatment. 

 

People arent thinking about academic excellence when they have to maneuver their way to school to and from in order to avoid an ass-whoopin. 

 

And I wont even go into the !@#$ing bass heads asking everyone for money with puss around their lips and scratching their !@#$ing bleeding scab-filled skin that we’d see everyday on our way to this place every morning that’s supposed to be some salvation from all the craziness. 

 

The fiend lines at 6:30 in the morning were epic.  Niggas can’t get up for work but theyll be 10 minutes early for that early-morning allocation of the best smack. The hoppers want people od’ing and drooling on themselves early and the rest of the bass heads to see them so they can sell the weak **** the rest of the day. 

 

Hood marketing. 

 

My mom didn’t want us to make excuses for not going to school so she drove us past the rifraf and to the front school doors every day in her 1976 Toyota Corona. 

 

My dad wasn’t in the picture from about middle school on. When he wasn’t thinking with his dick he was acting directly on its behalf. 

 

Probably a trait that he handed down. 

 

He also probably liked the idea of having a family more than he liked having a family. 

 

A trait thankfully that he didnt hand down. 

 

So my mom and her 2.5 jobs was how we made it. And also why we moved so much because we were frequently living with family members and my mom’s friends (shout out Ms. Thelma) when times were tough and there was less overtime at the Wendy’s she assistant managed. 

 

My my mom was the first black Republican I ever knew. Politics has less to do with this than it does the fact that she did push an agenda of not letting us feel sorry for ourselves. So I keep that as part of my politics and even though I’m middle of the road, I have a strong self-determination streak that informs my politics. And it’s why I’m independent and have voted cross the isle many times. 

 

One Christmas we knew we wouldn’t have any gifts. My mom told us in advance that we wouldn’t have gifts to avoid the suspense. 

 

“Either they evict us or no gifts this year.” But we woke up to something under the tree. And my mom standing there almost crying. She said she couldn’t give us anything nice, or Jordans, or a Starter Jacket, but she could give us this. There were two red milk crates with old books in them. Some had torn covers and pages missing. They were free from the public library because the condition was such that they were  no longer considered  fit for public readability I guess. Vonnegut, Dostoyevsky, Bronte, dictionary, a Latin dictionary, a bunch of Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mysteries. 

 

We read them all. 

 

No bull ****, we did. 

 

And my mom made us write sentences using dictionary words and find a synonym and antonym and the correct part of speech. 

 

!@#$ing brilliant. 

 

I didnt realize the impact that had until I used “egregious” naturally speaking in a sentence in school and it just made sense. It rolled off the tongue naturally at 15.  

 

“Egregious”: thanks mom. 

 

I have an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League light school and a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. I live in a neighborhood where the median family income is about $200,000 a year. My white neighbors would probably

look at me weird for being there if I didn’t step out of a new M3 everyday. 

 

They probably think I have a wicked jump shot. 

 

Not everyone has a mom who wouldn’t let their family veg out on tv and who would drive them to school and make them read to supplement for what wasn’t being taught at school. 

 

My best best best friend growing up is 14 years into his 276 months in Jessup. 

 

He was tired of wearing a woat. 

 

He couldn’t avoid the rifraf 

 

He was tired of being 12 and also cold and hungry and being told to learn algebra. 

 

He just didn’t think that at 17 it should be that hard. 

 

So he found a temporary avenue out. 

 

Mother!@#$ers aren’t stupid. The inner city culture just isn’t inherently conducive to being successful. It instead promotes survival instincts by any means necessary. 

 

“They know I’m a sinna, but it was cold in the winta and eating out of the trash, that ****’ll make you a killa.” 

 

-Rick Ross 

 

You can blame it on the parents. But they wore woats too. And they dealt with rifraf, just their rifraf had Afros and leather jackets. And their parents wore woats and had rifraf. Their rifraf put “lie” in their hair and said “daddeo.” Eventually you’ll get back to the root of this generational struggle. And it’s that at some point at some time black folks weren’t allowed to get an education or read. By the time they were legally allowed to get an education,  it was with fifty year old text books in schools that were a collection of closets. By the time a legal correction to that was on the books, in 54, many white teachers didn’t want to teach them and white students didn’t want to sit next to them. 

 

Hold up, social media bullying is the !@#$ing scourge of the earth and the seven-seas though ...

 

And then once white folks said “!@#$ it” and just picked up and left the area en masse, the schools they left in their wake, in what became inner cities, were underfunded and not properly taught. So even though there was no longer institutionalized barriers, the generational and psychological ones had taken hold. 

 

Generations upon generations upon generations of not being able to be equal and then getting the **** end of the stick under the color of law does some **** to people. It attaches itself to outlooks and it admits itself through environmental disrepair. 

 

That falls into into the category of “like it or not.” 

 

Think that was ages ago ... well that’s interesting because my parents were in segregated schools. That’s how recent that **** was. One (just now two) generation ago. I’m the first generation not subject to segregation. 

 

After tens of generations in the shitter, mother!@#$ers get one foot out and people think they should be !@#$ing bar-b-quing and brimming with sustained success. 

 

Not sure it works that way. 

 

People look at **** too theoretically and in a vacuum. 

 

But spend a day down in West Baltimore schools or in Southeast dc or any hood near you and I guarantee you won’t be talking that theoretical ****. But it’s easy to opine in a vacuum. 

 

I get it.

 

Just so long as you realize that it’s incomplete analysis, then I guess it don’t make me no kinda nevermind. 

 

 

 

Outstanding. 

 

Over 60 years ago, when he first became an educator, my late dad purposely chose assignment in the very type of neighborhood you describe. Many years later, my sister made the same choice and still serves in the most economically challenged district. My dad and  my sister, like you, pointed to many of the same conditions you describe above. Lack of everything from coats to shoes to nutrition to the very classroom tools required (abundantly available in other districts) etc., render it nearly impossible for kids to learn, let alone succeed. It’s criminal that this is still the reality for so many. 

 

As as an aside, I happen to be in the DC area for a bit and I shopped at the Safeway on Thayer yesterday. Small world.

 

I meant to add that your mom sounds like an incredible person.  Indomitable spirit comes to mind. 

Edited June 10, 2018 by K-9

[Deranged Rhino]

3 hours ago, Juror#8 said:

 

Assignment: read Tasker’s responses in the voice of Robert California from “The Office.”

 

It’s interesting how we envision people in these forums. But that’s how I’ve personified Tasker. Good mother!@#$in dude that drops gems in his posts. Good stuff. 

 

[3rdnlng]

12 minutes ago, K-9 said:

Outstanding. 

 

Over 60 years ago, when he first became an educator, my late dad purposely chose assignment in the very type of neighborhood you describe. Many years later, my sister made the same choice and still serves in the most economically challenged district. My dad and  my sister, like you, pointed to many of the same conditions you describe above. Lack of everything from coats to shoes to nutrition to the very classroom tools required (abundantly available in other districts) etc., render it nearly impossible for kids to learn, let alone succeed. It’s criminal that this is still the reality for so many. 

 

As as an aside, I happen to be in the DC area for a bit and I shopped at the Safeway on Thayer yesterday. Small world.

Yet DC spends in the upper echelon of schools per student.

[K-9]

11 minutes ago, 3rdnlng said:

Yet DC spends in the upper echelon of schools per student.

My dad and sister served/serve in Buffalo public schools so I’m not personally familiar with the DC school experience or with the Maryland schools that Juror was pointing out for that matter. Besides, I don’t think the money per student issue addresses the point he was making. His point goes far deeper than that; the very environments in which the schools he experienced were located for starters. 

[3rdnlng]

1 minute ago, K-9 said:

My dad and sister served/serve in Buffalo public schools so I’m not personally familiar with the DC school experience or with the Maryland schools that Juror was pointing out for that matter. Besides, I don’t think the money per student issue addresses the point he was making. His point goes far deeper than that; the very environments in which the schools he experienced were located for starters. 

Buffalo is also a district that spends I think even more than DC. I posted a link here a short while back that addresses that. I know that there are more issues at hand and that throwing more money at the schools won't solve those issues. We recently had the 1000th discussion here about the breakdown of the inner city family contributing to this mess. It sort of centered around the Intended Consequences of The Great Society.

[Max Fischer]

5 hours ago, 3rdnlng said:

. We recently had the 1000th discussion here about the breakdown of the inner city family contributing to this mess. It sort of centered around the Intended Consequences of The Great Society.

 

Hahaha. Yes, all the problems started in the 1964. You uncovered the conspiracy, congratulations!  Everything was fine before then and all went to hell afterward — as planned. Now let’s confirm the moon landing didn’t happen. 

[row_33]

The insistence on massively increasing public spending while running the war in Nam was dependant on post-war industrial expansion, which fell apart in the 70s

 

so yeah this was folly at its worst starting In 1964

[3rdnlng]

7 minutes ago, Max Fischer said:

 

Hahaha. Yes, all the problems started in the 1964. You uncovered the conspiracy, congratulations!  Everything was fine before then and all went to hell afterward — as planned. Now let’s confirm the moon landing didn’t happen. 

You are being disingenuous. From reading your prior posts it would appear that you have a lot of practice though. You are not a serious person. !@#$ off.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

8 hours ago, Juror#8 said:

 

You’re on to something here, I think. Not everything, I know. But something, I’m sure. So I’m going to try to support and develop your post  in the best way I know how - experientially. 

 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that half you mother!@#$ers have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. 

 

(Yes people have a reason to be protesting and good on them for using their platform and a peaceful means through which to try to bring attention to something they consider a social ill. You don’t have to agree with why they’re protesting, and as such you can peacefully protest too with your pocketbooks, but don’t make your disagreement about an ideological refutation of why they’re protesting). 

 

That’s not entirely your fault though. It’s truly probably just as well. Your idea of the inner city comes from nightly news programs, rap personalities, and tv dramas which sell out verisimilitude in their quest for sensation. 

 

“Verisimilitude”: thanks mom. 

 

The issue, and the disconnect, and where the failings are within the black community are grounded in educational shortcomings. The fault of those shortcomings are complex and fall into a lot of categories that would take a while to explore. 

 

But back to the experiential ...

 

I grew up in the hood. 

 

For the uninitiated white folks,  the “inner city.”

 

1. Reisterstown Road in the 410

 

2. then we moved to Takoma Park and lived in the high rises behind the Old Giant (a little ghetto but not really a hood spot), 

 

3. then to District Heights and Mt. Ranier within the same year

 

4. then right across the line and we stayed with my uncle Lamont in Barry Farm (at the tail end the crack epidemic but it was still a **** storm)

 

5. then Silver Spring back before the revitalization (I still remember walking from City Place mall to where we were renting a room off Thayer Ave when I worked at the Burger King in the food court at City Place and Paris Glendining was walking with a bunch of people with hard hats. I recognized him and said “hi” and he ignored me). 

 

There is a hood motif - “if you want to get out of the hood you either sell crack rock or have a wicked jump shot.” 

 

As cynical as that is, it’s a prevailing theme in the parts of the inner city that I’ve lived in. No one extolled the benefits of academic success. You went to school so you didn’t have to see the truancy officers and the truancy vans. Not because it was an avenue to success. 

 

It didnt help that architecturally the schools were dilapidated, the books were outdated and some in the same class had different text book editions, and that during 10th grade the heat in most of the building was out so they sent a letter home telling students to bring a coat and if they couldn’t afford one, the school had a coat lend program. 

 

No one is thinking about breaking the cycle of multi-generational poverty, or the benefits of academics, when they don’t have a !@#$ing coat when it cold and they don’t want to wear the one with the sewed on orange patch on the inner right side that identified it as a school lend. 

 

Are you kidding me?? People are having meltdowns over cyber-bullying now when back in the early 90s you were pilloried if you wore the woats (they called them “woat” for “welfare coat). 

 

“Show me the inside of your coat.” 

 

“No.” 

 

Someone yells: “This nigga wearing a woat.”

 

In the middle of the cafeteria no less. 

 

Most people aren’t thinking about being the rose that grows out of the crack in the cement when they’re wearing a woat and they just got made so they know they’re either going to get mercilessly made fun of, just have to be cold, or jack a coat and hope for the best. 

 

That thought is penetratingly all-encompassing and doesn’t leave room for retaining scientific classifications in Biology. 

 

And then just getting to school was a !@#$ing show. Because you couldn’t make it there without being intercepted by someone about something. Either someone wanted something, wanted you to do something, or wanted you to try something. 

 

If you ignored them, it was either disrespectful and an ass whoopin or you got the woat treatment. 

 

People arent thinking about academic excellence when they have to maneuver their way to school to and from in order to avoid an ass-whoopin. 

 

And I wont even go into the !@#$ing bass heads asking everyone for money with puss around their lips and scratching their !@#$ing bleeding scab-filled skin that we’d see everyday on our way to this place every morning that’s supposed to be some salvation from all the craziness. 

 

The fiend lines at 6:30 in the morning were epic.  Niggas can’t get up for work but theyll be 10 minutes early for that early-morning allocation of the best smack. The hoppers want people od’ing and drooling on themselves early and the rest of the bass heads to see them so they can sell the weak **** the rest of the day. 

 

Hood marketing. 

 

My mom didn’t want us to make excuses for not going to school so she drove us past the rifraf and to the front school doors every day in her 1976 Toyota Corona. 

 

My dad wasn’t in the picture from about middle school on. When he wasn’t thinking with his dick he was acting directly on its behalf. 

 

Probably a trait that he handed down. 

 

He also probably liked the idea of having a family more than he liked having a family. 

 

A trait thankfully that he didnt hand down. 

 

So my mom and her 2.5 jobs was how we made it. And also why we moved so much because we were frequently living with family members and my mom’s friends (shout out Ms. Thelma) when times were tough and there was less overtime at the Wendy’s she assistant managed. 

 

My my mom was the first black Republican I ever knew. Politics has less to do with this than it does the fact that she did push an agenda of not letting us feel sorry for ourselves. So I keep that as part of my politics and even though I’m middle of the road, I have a strong self-determination streak that informs my politics. And it’s why I’m independent and have voted cross the isle many times. 

 

One Christmas we knew we wouldn’t have any gifts. My mom told us in advance that we wouldn’t have gifts to avoid the suspense. 

 

“Either they evict us or no gifts this year.” But we woke up to something under the tree. And my mom standing there almost crying. She said she couldn’t give us anything nice, or Jordans, or a Starter Jacket, but she could give us this. There were two red milk crates with old books in them. Some had torn covers and pages missing. They were free from the public library because the condition was such that they were  no longer considered  fit for public readability I guess. Vonnegut, Dostoyevsky, Bronte, dictionary, a Latin dictionary, a bunch of Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mysteries. 

 

We read them all. 

 

No bull ****, we did. 

 

And my mom made us write sentences using dictionary words and find a synonym and antonym and the correct part of speech. 

 

!@#$ing brilliant. 

 

I didnt realize the impact that had until I used “egregious” naturally speaking in a sentence in school and it just made sense. It rolled off the tongue naturally at 15.  

 

“Egregious”: thanks mom. 

 

I have an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League light school and a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. I live in a neighborhood where the median family income is about $200,000 a year. My white neighbors would probably

look at me weird for being there if I didn’t step out of a new M3 everyday. 

 

They probably think I have a wicked jump shot. 

 

Not everyone has a mom who wouldn’t let their family veg out on tv and who would drive them to school and make them read to supplement for what wasn’t being taught at school. 

 

My best best best friend growing up is 14 years into his 276 months in Jessup. 

 

He was tired of wearing a woat. 

 

He couldn’t avoid the rifraf 

 

He was tired of being 12 and also cold and hungry and being told to learn algebra. 

 

He just didn’t think that at 17 it should be that hard. 

 

So he found a temporary avenue out. 

 

Mother!@#$ers aren’t stupid. The inner city culture just isn’t inherently conducive to being successful. It instead promotes survival instincts by any means necessary. 

 

“They know I’m a sinna, but it was cold in the winta and eating out of the trash, that ****’ll make you a killa.” 

 

-Rick Ross 

 

You can blame it on the parents. But they wore woats too. And they dealt with rifraf, just their rifraf had Afros and leather jackets. And their parents wore woats and had rifraf. Their rifraf put “lie” in their hair and said “daddeo.” Eventually you’ll get back to the root of this generational struggle. And it’s that at some point at some time black folks weren’t allowed to get an education or read. By the time they were legally allowed to get an education,  it was with fifty year old text books in schools that were a collection of closets. By the time a legal correction to that was on the books, in 54, many white teachers didn’t want to teach them and white students didn’t want to sit next to them. 

 

Hold up, social media bullying is the !@#$ing scourge of the earth and the seven-seas though ...

 

And then once white folks said “!@#$ it” and just picked up and left the area en masse, the schools they left in their wake, in what became inner cities, were underfunded and not properly taught. So even though there was no longer institutionalized barriers, the generational and psychological ones had taken hold. 

 

Generations upon generations upon generations of not being able to be equal and then getting the **** end of the stick under the color of law does some **** to people. It attaches itself to outlooks and it admits itself through environmental disrepair. 

 

That falls into into the category of “like it or not.” 

 

Think that was ages ago ... well that’s interesting because my parents were in segregated schools. That’s how recent that **** was. One (just now two) generation ago. I’m the first generation not subject to segregation. 

 

After tens of generations in the shitter, mother!@#$ers get one foot out and people think they should be !@#$ing bar-b-quing and brimming with sustained success. 

 

Not sure it works that way. 

 

People look at **** too theoretically and in a vacuum. 

 

But spend a day down in West Baltimore schools or in Southeast dc or any hood near you and I guarantee you won’t be talking that theoretical ****. But it’s easy to opine in a vacuum. 

 

I get it.

 

Just so long as you realize that it’s incomplete analysis, then I guess it don’t make me no kinda nevermind. 

 

 

 

What you described, while terrible, isn’t isolated to black communities. 

[DC Tom]

33 minutes ago, Max Fischer said:

 

Hahaha. Yes, all the problems started in the 1964. You uncovered the conspiracy, congratulations!  Everything was fine before then and all went to hell afterward — as planned. Now let’s confirm the moon landing didn’t happen. 

 

You're feeling, not thinking, your way through the discussion again, aren't you?  

[Juror#8]

6 hours ago, K-9 said:

Outstanding. 

 

Over 60 years ago, when he first became an educator, my late dad purposely chose assignment in the very type of neighborhood you describe. Many years later, my sister made the same choice and still serves in the most economically challenged district. My dad and  my sister, like you, pointed to many of the same conditions you describe above. Lack of everything from coats to shoes to nutrition to the very classroom tools required (abundantly available in other districts) etc., render it nearly impossible for kids to learn, let alone succeed. It’s criminal that this is still the reality for so many. 

 

As as an aside, I happen to be in the DC area for a bit and I shopped at the Safeway on Thayer yesterday. Small world.

 

I meant to add that your mom sounds like an incredible person.  Indomitable spirit comes to mind. 

 

Thanks for the compliment. My mom is great as I’m sure everyone’s is. She kept us honest and out of trouble in environments where we had every reason to get in trouble. 

 

Im sure everyone has stories about something great their mom did. My mom just took it upon herself to keep us focused to the point of unyielding level disciplinary parameters growing up. Taking us to Wendy’s during her shift in the summers and making us sit  at the back tables and read instead of being at home and getting into trouble comes to mind. I hated it then. Love her for it now. 

 

But she had to. 

 

Kudos to your dad and sister for working (having worked) in underprivileged areas. The inner cities and other underprivileged areas can certainly stand an infusion of good educators so it heartens me to read things like that. 

 

There’s a great Thai restaurant on Thayer if you’re still in the area and you like Thai food. Can’t remember the name. Also, a great one in downtown Silver Spring shopping district up some steps where the water fountain comes out of the ground in that outside play area. I know that sounds like a riddle but I can never remember the name. I love Thai food so if I were to recommend anything since you’re in the area, it would be that. Take care man. 

Edited June 11, 2018 by Juror#8

[DC Tom]

5 minutes ago, Juror#8 said:

 

Thanks for the compliment. My mom is great as I’m sure everyone’s is.

 

Mine ain't.

 

5 minutes ago, Juror#8 said:

Im sure everyone has stories about something great their mom did.

 

My mom used to yell at me "Stop wasting all your money on books!"  Dad put a quick end to that with "Shut up...at least he's not spending his money on drugs."

 

My sister once told me, in all seriousness, that her parenting philosophy was "Think of what mom would do, then do the opposite."  And my niece and nephew are good, smart, well-behaved, polite kids who would never call someone an idiot.

[Juror#8]

29 minutes ago, joesixpack said:

What you described, while terrible, isn’t isolated to black communities. 

 

Agreed. I can only speak for impact on the inner cities because I saw it firsthand. It was a mess. Southeast dc in the 90s was a mess. Anacostia High School was a mess. 

 

Meanwhile Marion Barry (whom I sat next to in La in 2000 at the Dnc), and his cronies were living very high (see what I did there) on the hog. 

 

I have a colleague whom I met at Uva who is from close to Grundy, Va. He tells me stories about Appalachia and the shitstorm it is out there. Mostly white but also profoundly disadvantaged and abjectly impoverished in some areas. 

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

2 minutes ago, Juror#8 said:

 

Agreed. I can only speak for impact on the inner cities because I saw it firsthand. It was a mess. Southeast dc in the 90s was a mess. Anacostia High School was a mess. 

 

Meanwhile Marion Barry (whom I sat next to in La in 2000 at the Dnc), and his cronies were living very high (see what I did there) on the hog. 

 

I have a colleague whom I met at Uva who is from close to Grundy, Va. He tells me stories about Appalachia and the shitstorm it is out there. Mostly white but also profoundly disadvantaged and abjectly impoverished in some areas. 

 

My mother grew up in circumstances similar to yours, only rural in nature. Yet she too has a masters degree, was an English teacher. Whenever someone blames circumstances for lack of success, that’s why I’m always gonna look at that person with a jaundiced eye.

Edited June 11, 2018 by joesixpack

[Juror#8]

7 minutes ago, joesixpack said:

 

My mother grew up in circumstances similar to yours, only rural in nature. Yet she too has a masters degree, was an English teacher. Whenever someone blames circumstances for lack of success, that’s why I’m alway gonna look at that person with a jaundiced eye.

 

I tend to agree with your mom and I know my mom would too. But man I saw some **** that people just shouldn’t be have to deal with.

 

What sucked was that some parents just didn’t care and gave up on themselves and, by extension, on their kids. My mom would pick my friend Yaru up for school and he would ride with us. His mom was always strung out.

 

Always.

 

Like think Felicia from “Friday” but more emaciated. My mom would give him money for lunch. 

 

Anyway, it’s tough to think people with that many strikes against them should win in life without a significant infusion of care from somewhere. 

Edited June 11, 2018 by Juror#8

[K-9]

16 minutes ago, Juror#8 said:

 

Thanks for the compliment. My mom is great as I’m sure everyone’s is. She kept us honest and out of trouble in environments where we had every reason to get in trouble. 

 

Im sure everyone has stories about something great their mom did. My mom just took it upon herself to keep us focused to the point of unyielding level disciplinary parameters growing up. Taking us to Wendy’s during her shift in the summers and making us sit  at the back tables and read instead of being at home and getting into trouble comes to mind. I hated it then. Love her for it now. 

 

But she had to. 

 

Kudos to your dad and sister for working (having worked) in underprivileged areas. The inner cities and other underprivileged areas can certainly stand an infusion of good educators so it heartens me to read things like that. 

 

There’s a great Thai restaurant on Thayer if you’re still in the area and you like Thai food. Can’t remember the name. Also, a great one in downtown Silver Spring shopping district up some steps where the water fountain comes out of the ground in that outside play area. I know that sounds like a riddle but I can never remember the name. I love Thai food so if I were to recommend anything since you’re in the area, it would be that. Take care man. 

Thanks, Juror. My dad walked the walk for sure. 

 

If I have a chance, I’ll check out those places in Silver Spring. Thanks for he tip. 

[Juror#8]

16 minutes ago, DC Tom said:

 

Mine ain't.

 

 

My mom used to yell at me "Stop wasting all your money on books!"  Dad put a quick end to that with "Shut up...at least he's not spending his money on drugs."

 

My sister once told me, in all seriousness, that her parenting philosophy was "Think of what mom would do, then do the opposite."  And my niece and nephew are good, smart, well-behaved, polite kids who would never call someone an idiot.

 

I wanted to use a laughing emoji but I didn’t want to seem insensitive. 

 

Then I wanted to equate your mom to my dad and thought better of that because at least your mom was there. 

 

So I’ll just since you’re a good dude, someone did something right parentally for ya. 

[DC Tom]

33 minutes ago, Juror#8 said:

 

I wanted to use a laughing emoji but I didn’t want to seem insensitive. 

 

Then I wanted to equate your mom to my dad and thought better of that because at least your mom was there. 

 

So I’ll just since you’re a good dude, someone did something right parentally for ya. 

 

Laughing emoji would have been appropriate.  

[Azalin]

9 hours ago, Juror#8 said:

 

You’re on to something here, I think. Not everything, I know. But something, I’m sure. So I’m going to try to support and develop your post  in the best way I know how - experientially. 

 

 

 

I didn't want to quote your entire post, only for the sake of keeping it brief. You provide an insight all too rare around here; an opportunity to see things from a point of view not shared by most of us. I'm grateful for that, and would appreciate it if you were able to find the time to post here more frequently.

 

And it's good to see someone who knows the proper use of the word verisimilitude. 

Edited June 11, 2018 by Azalin