Ed. Note: A few of y’all know my situation right now. I’m having issues. But I can’t tell you what the problem is. Or at least I can’t write it here. All you should know is to pray for me. Pray for me tonight. Pray Tuesday. All day Tuesday. Like pray like you’re directly going ot benefit. Because if your collective prayers work, I will benefit. And if I benefit, so will you. Because I share the wealth.
In my lifetime, I have seen a lot enough. I’ve seen Rodney King get the snot-shyt beat out of him, the officers get off, and the people riot. I’ve seen O.J. kill the shyt out of Nicole and her then boy-toy and get off, leaving white folks to shake their heads in disbelief. I’ve seen parents keep being dumb enough to let Michael Jackson near their kids. But nothing compares to how I’ve seen neighborhoods change. Specifically, I have seen our neighborhood’s change.
This just in, 12/12/05: Edwige finally got a Starbuck’s within walking distance of her not-the-hood-anymore home.
I’m not talking about when we were tricked into handing over our businesses under the guise of integration. I’m talking about the crack! It was the 80’s! I remember it like it was yesterday…No, really I do. No longer were people content to smoke their weed, pop their pills, and shoot their hair-RON (heroin). In Detroit, I watched as people went from hard working, home, car, boat owning good citizens to robbing their child’s piggy bank for the next high. It was horrible. I watched as their kids went from wearing the hot shyt to school to sailing through in high-water pants.
You ever wonder why the kids sag their pants now? I’ll tell you. See, back in the day there was a kid whose parents were victims of this national epidemic. He was going to 9th grade. But all he had in his closet were pants from two years ago. There was no way he was rolling to the school and getting clowned for yet another year. He got an idea. If he wore a big ass shirt, he could put it over his pants and pull the pants down just far enough so that they would look like they were long enough!! That young man, the one who started it all, was named Jayquan Williams. It would be that same fashion trend that would lead to Jayquan’s death. He was running from a pitbull, tripped on the bottoms of his pants, falling face first on a busy street. He was hit by a truck. Dead on impact. Moment of silence for Jayquan…That was the tragedy of the 80’s and early 90’s.
On some level, Blacks see gentrification as the latest tragedy. Yet another well orchestrated plan by ‘the man’ to hold us down. Uh, yeah whatever. The recurring question, asked as we see DC, Harlem, Bed-Stuy, “insert hood in some forgotten city here” go from Black to white is: Where do the Black people go? The answer is simple. They didn’t own the property. They move. Where? Hell if I know. Tragic.
When we ask where the Black residents will go, I bet most of us are talking about the regular hard to semi-hardworking, tax paying, scratching and surviving, “hanging in a chow line”, type Black people. That being the case, I think we are forgetting an integral part of this displaced ‘hood. Members of the ‘hood who have single-handedly, with their existence lowered the ghetto market rate for everything from oral sex to fur coats. The people who do the jobs that not even the Messican will do (Figured I’d throw a blatant Vicente Fox reference in there. Did anyone get it?). The crackhead!! Ladies and gentlemen, where will the crackhead go?? How will s/he survive being displaced. If the crackheads are taken, excuse me, pushed out of certain areas, there’s a trickle-down affect. The programs that were set up to help them and their families in those neighborhoods are no longer needed. People lose jobs!!! If those people lose jobs, you know what else happens?? They can’t pay their mortgage. Let’s not even mention what happens to the drug dealers. The ‘hood is like the Walmart of the drug industry. You go there and you can get everything you need. From legal drugs (40 ounce of beer) to the illegal drugs to VC-Aruhs, and DVD’s!!!! But with no crackheads, this whole system crumbles.
They can’t move to the suburbs. Things are too spread out and rent/mortgage prices are too high. Y’all know crackheads don’t drive! Besides, it would be very difficult for them to peddle their goods and services in the burbs. We don’t even have alleys. Where would the crackheads provide sexual favors? The only time we suburbanites (I live in the hood of suburbia.) ever really need the affordable assistance of a crackhead is when it snows. I can’t count the number of times I cursed the absence of a crackhead to shovel 100 pounds of snow off of my car for the low-low price of $10!! Damn neighborhood kids charge up to three times as much!! Freaking greedy bastards! But no crackhead is going to commute to my neighborhood to shovel my snow.
Mark my words. If we don’t start quickly designating safe havens/neighborhoods for the displaced crackheads, we will look up and they will be scattered everywhere. They will be sprinkled through regular neighborhoods!!! Hello!! Do you not see the danger in this?? No clearly defined crackhead locale!!! So people, I ask you: WHERE WILL THE CRACKHEADS GO??!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment