“Who else is gonna hire a man who went to jail for killing somebody; somebody you have to call to wake and pick up…nobody” J
Systems are not designed to fix the problems they create. So you create a new system to fix the old one. The lineage goes something like this:
The State begat the education system
The education system begat the jail system and GED programs
The jail system begat the prison system which had twins, welfare and child support
You could contest that order, and I could rearrange it but family is family and they all carry the same legacy: failing urban communities.
At the forefront of every media outlet is the failing school system. It’s supposed to prepare students for their next step in life, whether it’s further education or work. If they don’t get an adequate education life forces them to move on to the next step, unprepared.
So when Ray Ray and Nique Nique apply for jobs and school and are unsuccessful we blame them. In reality fault lies with a system that was designed to fail them. (Yes parenting and self-motivation play a part in this. We all know someone who overcame a bad public school education, but that’s why we call them overcomers.) When they have no money and nothing to do they run around committing petty crimes and conceiving kids who will be born into the same system.
The jail system and GED programs which are supposed to rehabilitate, teach lessons and provide second chances don’t. The teachers who work in GED programs are mostly retired public school teachers who came from the same system who failed these people in the beginning. They are trained to teach 12-year-old 7th graders not 30-year-old 7th graders.
If the State would have done its job the first time the Department of Human Services wouldn’t be overflowing.
It’s amazing that Michigan has such deep budget problems. If you spend the bulk of your money re-correcting the school system’s wrong you don’t have the money to fix it.
But states like Massachusetts and Connecticut are known for having great school systems and the largest populations of affluent resident.
It’s an old principle, if you get it right the first time you never have to do it again. Does this mean I’m saying if the state created a better educational system we could eliminate crime, not one hundred percent, but it’d be a heck a lot less.
I read it in Mrs. Swayne’s classroom when I was in the 6th grade on a red and yellow poster: Education is the key to life. Which makes lack of education….
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
I'd Rather Be a ToysRUs kid...
I’m afraid that one day I won’t be who I am today. I get the privilege of talking with a lot of older people and hear them talk about how they had an elaborate plan when they were my age. And then they say the very thing I’m afraid of.
Life happened.
I know all too well how life can change your life. So ideally, I’d hope to plan for what life brings. But like the day when the principal called me into the office and I was shoved from foster home to foster home, life doesn’t knock, it already has a key.
Still, I’ll tell myself that I won’t make the mistakes of my mother. You would think her story is ideal. She had one love, my father. She’s been with him her whole life. All she has to show is 9 beautiful children, she didn’t raise and a life-long relationship of ups and downs that will probably end down.
Or your mistake, loving a man who makes you look happy on the surface but inside you’ve been so busy supporting him that he never really supported you. My condolences, I watched you dying to please him.
What girl doesn’t want a fairy tale life? But how many of us deserve it or could really handle it. I’ll say, I can, but I’m afraid that means that I actually can’t.
So today I’ll judge an older woman and say that she lost herself trying to find a man to love her while clutching my ID to my heart, hoping to never lose it.
But how do we know that we won't be one of those men or women who loses themselves in life. I could say, I'd never do that to my children, I'd never gain that much weight, I'm not like them...
they weren't always them.
Life is a journey, that I'm afraid of.But I guess if I get off track, how hard can it be to be me again.
Life happened.
I know all too well how life can change your life. So ideally, I’d hope to plan for what life brings. But like the day when the principal called me into the office and I was shoved from foster home to foster home, life doesn’t knock, it already has a key.
Still, I’ll tell myself that I won’t make the mistakes of my mother. You would think her story is ideal. She had one love, my father. She’s been with him her whole life. All she has to show is 9 beautiful children, she didn’t raise and a life-long relationship of ups and downs that will probably end down.
Or your mistake, loving a man who makes you look happy on the surface but inside you’ve been so busy supporting him that he never really supported you. My condolences, I watched you dying to please him.
What girl doesn’t want a fairy tale life? But how many of us deserve it or could really handle it. I’ll say, I can, but I’m afraid that means that I actually can’t.
So today I’ll judge an older woman and say that she lost herself trying to find a man to love her while clutching my ID to my heart, hoping to never lose it.
But how do we know that we won't be one of those men or women who loses themselves in life. I could say, I'd never do that to my children, I'd never gain that much weight, I'm not like them...
they weren't always them.
Life is a journey, that I'm afraid of.But I guess if I get off track, how hard can it be to be me again.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Who's That Girl
As women we constantly live in awe of each other. We compliment each other’s hair, outfits and the mole that sits above that woman’s lip. While we live in awe, we simultaneously live in fear, afraid that one day the mole that God strategically placed just above the curve of her lip will cause for him to notice her and not me.
Older women build misconceptions against young women that their shapes seduce the men that remain. If he says to her, I love your ambition, she snaps, feeling at 22 she had ambitions and drive too. She only has fragments to carry on her sleeve because while he chases and swears he doesn’t like a woman who wears weave she sits stationery with her fro going unnoticed.
While young women strut the shape of youth devoid of the pounds and wrinkles that stress will leave they drag the scars and pigments changes of skin and slowed beats of hearts that disappointment leaves.
When he says to her, I think you are beautiful, she assumes it is because of thin waist perked up a chest and a round behind. Looking down at her gallon figure she wonders if she will ever have that feeling, if she never changes.
Feeling beautiful is a constant race to emulate an outfit, hairstyle and persona we saw on someone else. Young women constantly chase the feeling that a second glance by a man and envy from another woman leaves. Yet we live as if they day never comes when that beauty fades.
We search for love believing we have to please him so we can love us. But if we really loved ourselves it would broadcast the deeply encrypted message of inner beauty.
While I used to thrive off someone telling me they loved my smile, I have learned to dash to the mirror to embrace a light toned woman who stares deep into my eyes and in cadence with my needs says to me, you are beautiful.
Older women build misconceptions against young women that their shapes seduce the men that remain. If he says to her, I love your ambition, she snaps, feeling at 22 she had ambitions and drive too. She only has fragments to carry on her sleeve because while he chases and swears he doesn’t like a woman who wears weave she sits stationery with her fro going unnoticed.
While young women strut the shape of youth devoid of the pounds and wrinkles that stress will leave they drag the scars and pigments changes of skin and slowed beats of hearts that disappointment leaves.
When he says to her, I think you are beautiful, she assumes it is because of thin waist perked up a chest and a round behind. Looking down at her gallon figure she wonders if she will ever have that feeling, if she never changes.
Feeling beautiful is a constant race to emulate an outfit, hairstyle and persona we saw on someone else. Young women constantly chase the feeling that a second glance by a man and envy from another woman leaves. Yet we live as if they day never comes when that beauty fades.
We search for love believing we have to please him so we can love us. But if we really loved ourselves it would broadcast the deeply encrypted message of inner beauty.
While I used to thrive off someone telling me they loved my smile, I have learned to dash to the mirror to embrace a light toned woman who stares deep into my eyes and in cadence with my needs says to me, you are beautiful.
Monday, February 7, 2011
For The Love Of Detroit
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
No, seriously, if you can make it in Detroit, a city that is painted as, well you’ve seen the picture, you’re Super Duper Man and Woman.
Does that make our success stories belong in comic books, with action heroes and sheroes because they made it in his bleak town, escaping the grip of Mr. Poverty, Queen Welfare and Maximus Minimumus Educational Value Kid?
No. It makes us Detroiters.
Detroit is the birthplace of pioneering. Motown changed the music industry and while Atlanta is a mecca for today’s musical talent, Jermaine Dupri had to call them the new Motown.
Henry Ford envisioned more than the car, he redefined the mass production process. And if you try and convince me that there is anything better than a Faygo Red Pop I will push you off our scenic international border.
Chrysler painted a well-rounded picture of the feelings that resonant with Detroiters.
We love our city and we’re not pretending we don’t have problems. We are learning to bench press our issues so they make us stronger.
It’s time out for, “someone who has never even been here,” as the Michigan man’s voice stated over Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” baseline, telling people about our story.
We get so strong-willed about our city we argue and nearly sever relationships over a Chrysler 200 commercial disputing its impact on the economics of our city. (I’ve seen the Facebook arguments.)
We are the big brother city. As cute and cuddly as New York, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta are, they walk in our footsteps, trying to be like their big brother.
Big brothers and sisters know when to let the younger have its shine as we prep for our comeback.
While our population dwindles, the few who remain have been learning lessons to duck and dodge adversity from every aspect of city government.
Throw your punch education, kick us in the side police corruption, trip us dirty politicians, but when you get done you had better duck, because we’re coming back…pow, right in the kisser.
No, seriously, if you can make it in Detroit, a city that is painted as, well you’ve seen the picture, you’re Super Duper Man and Woman.
Does that make our success stories belong in comic books, with action heroes and sheroes because they made it in his bleak town, escaping the grip of Mr. Poverty, Queen Welfare and Maximus Minimumus Educational Value Kid?
No. It makes us Detroiters.
Detroit is the birthplace of pioneering. Motown changed the music industry and while Atlanta is a mecca for today’s musical talent, Jermaine Dupri had to call them the new Motown.
Henry Ford envisioned more than the car, he redefined the mass production process. And if you try and convince me that there is anything better than a Faygo Red Pop I will push you off our scenic international border.
Chrysler painted a well-rounded picture of the feelings that resonant with Detroiters.
We love our city and we’re not pretending we don’t have problems. We are learning to bench press our issues so they make us stronger.
It’s time out for, “someone who has never even been here,” as the Michigan man’s voice stated over Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” baseline, telling people about our story.
We get so strong-willed about our city we argue and nearly sever relationships over a Chrysler 200 commercial disputing its impact on the economics of our city. (I’ve seen the Facebook arguments.)
We are the big brother city. As cute and cuddly as New York, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta are, they walk in our footsteps, trying to be like their big brother.
Big brothers and sisters know when to let the younger have its shine as we prep for our comeback.
While our population dwindles, the few who remain have been learning lessons to duck and dodge adversity from every aspect of city government.
Throw your punch education, kick us in the side police corruption, trip us dirty politicians, but when you get done you had better duck, because we’re coming back…pow, right in the kisser.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Words Will Hurt You
Niggas are black men.
Now before you start with black women are niggas too—and we all know some white people who are blacker than us—l am not talking about having nigga tendencies. I’m referring to a socially lived hidden stereotype placed on the black man as being the plague of the black community.
Watch an old movie, they call men niggers, or some variation, and women colored girls.
Fifty years later black leaders decide to bury the word “nigga.” No offense to the NAACP but black men have purposefully been buried for centuries.
They buried niggas by taking away their right to be fathers to their children during slavery, made their wives conduits to birth more slave babies. They buried them by lynching, burning their houses on fire and made them defenseless when protecting their women.
Today, they bury them under child support, unfair judicial practices, assumptions that jail will “rehabilitate them” when they’re 15 years old by placing them in a prison to be mentored by criminals.
In their community black leaders on television bury them, again. Tyler Perry makes some movie that he thinks helps but really demonizes the black man and paints black women as damsels waiting for the right nigga to save her.
To every black woman, we live in a society where everyone challenges the worth of the black man. If you don’t uplift him whether he’s your son, friend, man or brother, don’t ever expect someone else to.
They help us black women mourn their deaths. They herald the black woman as “superwoman.” She is strong enough to raise her kids all by herself and blah blah blah. Don’t you know that before a convicted murderer can be released on parole he has to apologize to the family of his victim?
Thanks for apologizing by plastering on new papers that 75percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Thank you for depriving nearly half of all black women from ever having a whole home because so many black men are locked up or out of jail and still imprisoned to what incarceration made them. What is your apology to the black children who will be raised by bitter mothers in fatherless homes? Is it a failing urban education system that places them in the same cycle as their parents? No, really…thanks.
In order for a black man to really be something he has to learn how to act white. But over time when a black man becomes too powerful, he has to be shut down.
When Fredrick Douglass began learning to read he became a threat to his slave master and so on the field he whipped Mr. Covey’s butt with pride in his blows.
Today they bury our fathers; tomorrow they will borrow our sons. Cycles are so harmful because they are natural, it takes hardly any effort to continue to a cycle.
Now to every defender of the NAACP. I do understand they have worth in our community. But burying the N-Word was nothing but a display of how we spend frivolous money.
I know a nigga they could have given 1/10th of the money to who would have kept his business a float that gives young black males a job, a role model, and teaches them work ethic and respect.
I know a nigga they could have given $2000 to help buy his first car so that he could go visit his son. When the pitter patter of feet came he didn’t run, he pulled his pants up, turned his hat frontwards and lived up to his responsibility.
They used stick and stones to break our bones and one word to tear our community apart.
Now before you start with black women are niggas too—and we all know some white people who are blacker than us—l am not talking about having nigga tendencies. I’m referring to a socially lived hidden stereotype placed on the black man as being the plague of the black community.
Watch an old movie, they call men niggers, or some variation, and women colored girls.
Fifty years later black leaders decide to bury the word “nigga.” No offense to the NAACP but black men have purposefully been buried for centuries.
They buried niggas by taking away their right to be fathers to their children during slavery, made their wives conduits to birth more slave babies. They buried them by lynching, burning their houses on fire and made them defenseless when protecting their women.
Today, they bury them under child support, unfair judicial practices, assumptions that jail will “rehabilitate them” when they’re 15 years old by placing them in a prison to be mentored by criminals.
In their community black leaders on television bury them, again. Tyler Perry makes some movie that he thinks helps but really demonizes the black man and paints black women as damsels waiting for the right nigga to save her.
To every black woman, we live in a society where everyone challenges the worth of the black man. If you don’t uplift him whether he’s your son, friend, man or brother, don’t ever expect someone else to.
They help us black women mourn their deaths. They herald the black woman as “superwoman.” She is strong enough to raise her kids all by herself and blah blah blah. Don’t you know that before a convicted murderer can be released on parole he has to apologize to the family of his victim?
Thanks for apologizing by plastering on new papers that 75percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Thank you for depriving nearly half of all black women from ever having a whole home because so many black men are locked up or out of jail and still imprisoned to what incarceration made them. What is your apology to the black children who will be raised by bitter mothers in fatherless homes? Is it a failing urban education system that places them in the same cycle as their parents? No, really…thanks.
In order for a black man to really be something he has to learn how to act white. But over time when a black man becomes too powerful, he has to be shut down.
When Fredrick Douglass began learning to read he became a threat to his slave master and so on the field he whipped Mr. Covey’s butt with pride in his blows.
Today they bury our fathers; tomorrow they will borrow our sons. Cycles are so harmful because they are natural, it takes hardly any effort to continue to a cycle.
Now to every defender of the NAACP. I do understand they have worth in our community. But burying the N-Word was nothing but a display of how we spend frivolous money.
I know a nigga they could have given 1/10th of the money to who would have kept his business a float that gives young black males a job, a role model, and teaches them work ethic and respect.
I know a nigga they could have given $2000 to help buy his first car so that he could go visit his son. When the pitter patter of feet came he didn’t run, he pulled his pants up, turned his hat frontwards and lived up to his responsibility.
They used stick and stones to break our bones and one word to tear our community apart.
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