Wednesday, June 22, 2005

We live in America, where we have freedom of speech and can basically say whatever we want whenever we want. Too bad we don't use our constitutional rights to talk about our problems. Why is America so afraid to have a conversation with itself? Do we not want to solve some of the problems that are breaking us down?

When is the "Baby Boomer" generation going to start a dialogue with "Generation X." I keep hearing "these kids are wild; they don't respect anything; and they don't know what struggle is" from the "Baby Boomers." Then from "Generation X" it's "you all don't know what's going on" or "yall didn't have to deal with the same thing growing up." There's some truth to all that, but what good is it to yell it at each other. I watch these hip hop summits and it's always some dude raised in the 50's or 60's telling us how we don't have any direction and how ignorant we are. The more you keep coming to summits with that attitude, the more summits you're going to have to attend with that attitude. It goes both ways. Sometimes, the young generation doesn't show older folks the proper respect. You get what you give. Let's mash this out folks.

Black folks need to have a conversation with themselves. You got your bouggie black folks and your hood black folks. This relationship is now probably worst than the one between white folks and black folks. When CH Flowers high school opened in PG County and the Largo residents didn't want the Kentland residents to go to that school, I knew Black people in America had lost their way. I mean suppose Largo would've been a predominantly white neighborhood instead of a predominantly black neighborhood. The NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton and the all the Black Media in this country would've been all over that. So I guess it's ok since it was a predominantly black neighborhood.

Law Enforcement agencies and black folks, especially in "urban" areas, need to have a conversation. The Cops treat black folks like crap and we hate them back. It really shouldn't be this way. I know there's a way for the police to be able to do their job with harassing black folks getting the same treatment in return.

Liberals and conservatives need to have a conversation as well. Do we really have to name call and tell each other how wrong the other person is just to get our point across. I mean people we getting into physical altercations over the election last fall. Yeah I voted for Kerry, but how much would be different had he won? Be for real folks.

Last but not least, we will not talk about race. This is the most puzzling one to me. We addressed this issue for damn near the entire history of this country and then when the 70's came, we just stopped. That's why you can see people so scared to say anything about it. I made a joke about my skin complexion to my friends and this white girl was around. She looked so uncomfortable when I told the joke. I wouldn't have cared if she laughed because it was funny. We still have way too many prejudices about each other; black, white, hispanic asian or whatever. This is madness folks...let's do something about it.