While scrolling through my timeline and on my news feed, I see so many things that irritate me. One thing that tends to spill off of my online life and infiltrates my everyday existence is "hood loyalty". In my workplace, I see and hear so many things that deeply disturb me and tend to make me try to "get to the bottom of it".
Every single day, I see/hear people expressing the belief: "We all we got." "Ima rep my hood to the fullest." and similar stupid phrases that lets everyone else around them know that they believe that their hood is the greatest, strongest, most fearsome place on earth. They also seem to believe that the sun rises and sets on their "hood" and that the people in said "hood" share their same beliefs. Also, they tend to see people that leave the "hood" and do not return as traitors who have committed the unspeakable act of being "fake" or not "real".
Someone out there can explain this craziness to me, I'm sure, but it wouldn't make sense. So here is my public service announcement to all these hood fools:
1. Your hood is about 6-10 blocks of houses, apartments, schools, streets, etc. It is NOT the most important place on earth. It actually makes up so small of an area that it could be eviscerated and no one would notice or care. There is an entire world outside of your hood that continues to move, expand, and progress, even though you choose to stay the same (i.e. stay REAL)
2. Your hood probably consists of a mixture of welfare recipients who live in public housing and old people who bought their homes before it was overrun by fools like you. What this means is that there are a population of indigent people who live in your area and the older, retired people would leave if they had the means to. No one of importance will move to your area because you live there and they don't want the mentality that has poisoned you and your friends to poison their families and children. And because you live there and no people of importance (people with real jobs and money) will move there, your hood will always live in poverty as there are not enough citizens with the means to raise the bar of the neighborhood.
3. Your hood is an area that will always attract unsavory characters because they know that you will welcome them. While it may seem "cool" to brag about how rough your neighborhood is and how "hard" you and your friends "go", when it comes time to raise your children there, they will be subjected to the drug dealers, child molesters and gang bangers that you have welcomed to your area by praising their criminal ways. your children will not be able to walk home by themselves without the risk of abduction, molestation, robbery or violence. Or if they CAN make it home safely, they will see illegal activities on every corner and believe that this behavior is acceptable. Do you want your child to aspire to be a doctor, lawyer, architect or engineer? Or did you want them to aspire to be a babymama or a drug kingpin?
4. Your hood will always be just that: a hood. It will be a rundown area that everyone else avoids like the plague while you call it "home" and think its cute to brag about how unsafe it is. It will never be the community of people that help each other and uplift each other because people like you deem it acceptable to rob, steal, kill and otherwise keep each other downtrodden. People who take pride in their neighborhoods do not refer to them as "hoods" and they keep watch out for each other. They call the police at the first sign of trouble and they take strides to keep their neighborhoods safe. If they see you coming, they shut their gates and interview you to make sure you deserve to live amongst them. This is not profiling, this is keeping their people, their children and the place they choose to live safe.
5. The people in your hood are not loyal to you. They are not even loyal to themselves. They pretend to be "all about their hood" and they say that you are family, but they do not want what's best for you. Think about it: do people that love you encourage you to do bad things? Do they turn a blind eye while you endanger yourself? Do they allow you to make decisions that will ruin your life? Or do they encourage you to do better? to BE better? Every parent will tell you that they want their children to have a better life than what they had. Why wouldn't your hood family want the same for you?
6. You are loyal to a place that is not yours. Chances are, you don't own your house. You don't own any property. More than likely, you live with your parents or a relative that rents their home or gets a voucher from the government for their housing. Which means that this "hood" you are so loyal to belongs to someone else who would not DARE live there. But they WILL take your money and let you kill each other there. And the people who actually OWN their houses HATE the fact that you live there. I'm sure they would exterminate you like roaches if they could. Your mere presence brings down the value of their house and makes the area unsafe for their families. Wouldn't you get rid of something that was hurting your livelihood? your child? your family?
We as a people tend to latch on to what everyone else does and thinks, without taking time to have a mind of our own. We blindly follow whoever talks the loudest, no matter what they say. You hear on the radio that this gangbanging lifestyle is awesome and that hood loyalty trumps all. And you hear this from a rapper who gets paid to tell you these things while they live in their mansions in their gated communities as far from the "hood" as they can get. Matter of fact, they probably call security when they see you coming. They feed you an image and you break your neck to uphold that image. you hurt yourselves, your families and your children to uphold it. I bet you never ask yourself why.
Do better people. If you don't know how, ask somebody who DOESN'T live in those 10 blocks with you.
It had to be said.
The truth, the whole and nuttin but.
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