An oppressed people?

It's Black History Month and I have a lot on my mind. I work at a GED school that is walking distance between two sets of housing projects in the city. Everyday, I look at most of these students and wonder what happened. Why are my brothers and sisters so lost? Why is their mind-set so self destructive? Some of these students are high school drop-outs, some have been expelled from public school; some are court-ordered to be here, and some are here as part of community service so that they can receive their welfare check and have their childcare centers paid so they can run the streets and do whatever else is so important that they can't get an education.

Every morning,
on my way to work,
I pass a store where people from the surrounding neighborhood gather to pass the time. That is something that they have always done. The only difference is a long time ago (when I was a child.... because I'm so OLD now) the only people I used to see at this store were older men... retired and disabled men. Now, however, when I pass this store at 7:50 a.m., I see young men. I see black men that are capable of making a living wasting their lives smoking cancer sticks, drinking cheap beer, and sitting under a tree.

Every morning,
on my way to work,

my heart breaks.

It is hard to give credit to our ancestors for the way we have turned out as a race. Think about it. My ancestors were slaves. Hard working, dexterous, and strong. Their children marched for civil rights. Determined, progressive, and revolutionary. But then what happened? Can one blame society? Is that unAmerican? I don't think so. How can we improve if we never acknowledge our flaws? I am not saying "Blame the White Man!" but obviously there is a missing link somewhere. Every two weeks, our school gives an assessment test to new students. Every two weeks, the black students score between a 3rd and 6th grade level in Reading, Language, and Math. Every two weeks, the "other" students score AT LEAST an 8th or 9th grade level. The only exception to that are special education students.

There is a missing link somewhere.



"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."

-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

-Frederick Douglass

"Hence, I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."

-Malcolm X

"They ask us why we mutilate each other like we do, they wonder why we hold such little worth for human life... To ask us why we turn from bad to worse is to ignore from which we came. You see, you wouldn't ask why the rose that grew from the concrete had damaged petals. On the contrary, we would all celebrate its tenacity. We would all love its will to reach the sun. Well, we are the roses. This is the concrete. And these are my damaged petals.

-Tupac Shakur

"Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared."