MY ENVIRONMENT

Since the age of three it would constantly bother me to see my people continuously struggle and live in poverty. My environments harsh reality has instilled a strong street mentality that has me unaffected by constant shoot outs and fatalities.  We have strived for so long to be looked upon as equals but our communities are becoming lethal because we are robbing and killing our own people. My attitude has manifested from constantly being tested in my environment which is infected with ignorance, violence, and crack.  I hate that its already deemed a fact that if a group of blacks interact that we don’t know how to act or we are dumb and have been left back or we lack manners and tact, when some of us have seen the light and stay on the right track. My environment is occupied with drug dealers, thugs, and killers and the young admire them and put them on pedestals and pillars. I try to fight the stereotype of being nothing but jail bound and not let my environment be the factor of what keeps me held down. It’s difficult to bare witness to my people dependant on government assistance and not care if they are on welfare for there entire existence. We all search for good jobs but we need the education to get them.  Instead of saying we are victims of this system we need to finish school and expand our brains, change people minds of thinking we are all the same and break the chain of having generations not knowing there is more to the world then their housing complex. It seems like all of a sudden many of us have become glutens for jewelry and other material objects and it’s this mentality that keeps us trapped in the projects.