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Re: The games people play part 2

I would have to say that yes, so far, that I do believe in everything that I had posted. However, I will go on record and say that some of what I last posted is debatable. One could easily debate some of the subject matter that I touched on that was based from personal experience.

If you wold have said what I said, you probably (judging by your previous posts) would have made the situation of some sound absolute in reference to the majority. Thats the one of the reasons why you have been attacked before.

I was able to conclude that some blacks who live in the ghetto don't want to leave, because I used to hang out in the ghetto. My family wasn't rich growing up, but we lived in a middle class town in a middle class neighborhood. I learned alot from community. At the same time, my mentality before was that of accepting the social norm and lowering myself to almost destroying my life and others around me. I do not whish to discuss in deatil too much of this.

I have told you that my father was from Trinidad. I don't know if I told you that he was orphaned at about eight or nine years of age. I don't know if I told you that he lived a tough life in Trinidad untill a caring family took him in in Arouca. I don't know if I told you that even though he could have rightfully given up on life, he saw fit to always try to get ahead and learn a decent life for himself. I personally think that was because he was foreign. I'll go into that later. My brothers and I weren't raised by him because of complications with his marriage to my mother. He wasn't always around, but he was there when we needed him the most. In the limited time I spent with him, I learned alot and payed attention even though I often disagreed. This is the part were you may understand how I came to some of my conclusions and why I attempted to open my eyes to observe for myself. If my brothers and I earned bade grades (marks) in school, at least once he said, " I have tree blasted sons, and none of dem doing a blasted ting wit dem life! Why is it that the Chinee an de Indian can come here and succeed, but I have tree sons born here not doing ating!" Even though I chuckled to myself as I made eye contact with my brothers I seriously gave thought to what he was saying. Especially after he thought we were'nt taking him serious and made us kneel in the corner with our hands straight up in the air. That one statement alone was what got me to start focusing on history and social studies. From that one experience, I started dismissing race as an excuse in rating my expectation of success. He went on to tell us how his friends children who all happened to be born in Trinidad or elsewhere in the Carribean were doing in school and the workforce and they were of African Ancestry. So I could not equate race with how far I went in life.

When he wasn't around, I was just out being another bad "Black" kid. I didn't have an accent, and that was how I was perceived and that is how I acted. There is a saying that goes something like this. "If they call me a monkey, I'm going to show them a Gorrilla." I lived that up. Gang fights or bullying others around school or in the neighborhood were the norm. I happened to be good at American Football, and had a few big colleges looking at me for scholarship offers. My dad supported the scholarships, but he didn't support this idea of playing sports. He wanted his boys to be mentally sound. We didn't talk because I felt that he had a foreign philosophy that he should have left in Trinidad. However, My grades were so bad that I couldn't accept the offers that I wanted by State Institutions, and I didn't want to go to a historically Black University because the football program wasn't as good and I didn't want to be brainwashed. At any rate, I started hanging out in rough parts of the city after graduation. There was a old hip- hop song that I lived by until I got robbed and put my Girlfriends life at risk by association. It was by the group called Mobb Deep and the had a verse in a song that went, " why you want to end your life like this? Now you bumped heads with kids that are lifeless. I live by the day only if I survive, etc...." After I was robbed, I realized that I wasn't lifeless, and that I bumped heads with kids that were. Not long after that, an high school friend who had become a drug dealer had some friction with a rival click. They couldn't catch him by himself or unarmed, but one day his defense broke down and he was executed. They tied his hands and put a 12 gage or sawed off double barrel in his mouthe and pulled. Not long after that I had the opportunity to play college football in California and I accepted. When I got to school, I noticed that everyone there seemed foreign. I decided to become a Cultural Anthropology major to learn more about people of the world. In a couple of the classes that I had, we had many heated discussions on race, class ethnic groups, and how they assimilate, and whate "roles" they have in society. I did really well in those classes, but I let my Math suffer. At any rate I know I may have not displayed my then newly found knowledge in my post, but I haven't had the opportunity to use any of this in a field of work.

This isn't a complete account of how I came to the conclusions that I stated in my last post, but I felt it was important to tell you that I have come in contact with people who don't care. As a matter of fact, my younger brother realised that he wasn't lifelesslater in life than I did, but he had already had to serve time before he recognized it. His friends and himself were way worse than I, and if there was a time that I did use my education from college it was when I first came back to the East coast to try to persuade him and some of his friends to try to achieve better more productive lifestyles. At first, they didn't listen, because I used to talk at them like they knew nothing and I had all of the answers. Then I started speaking to them and relating real life situations and eamples into what my message was. The friends of his that are in prison or still on the street hustling were the same ones that ran every time they saw me comming, because they didn't want to hear the truth. My younger brother, is doing well. He is still rough around the edges from being instutionalised, but he is at least aware of his self worth.

So I have had some formal education on the subject, and I have unfortunatly had some experience to prove my theories. It's no different than a chemistry major that has to learn about the chemicals and then go into the lab. We are discussing social sciences. I will admitt that my experiences are not the same for everyone. But I have given two reasons for why I believe what I said, and to recap they are Personal Experience,and Education.

I also wante to add something about what you call Black Unity. Many "blacks" in the United States refer to anyone with an accent as foreign. While they may acknowledge you as being black in color, they don't in culture or lifestyle. There was and maybe still is a rift between the "traditional black" community and those that are immigrating here because of ignorance on both sides. My mothers side of the family may have seen my father as black, they considered him foreign. He didn't speak like them, he basically had different cultural values. Culture is very important in the U.S.. It's the people without culture or who are dictating race as the main factor for placism in this nation. When I say no culture, I mean that they subscribe to the ways and ideology that this country was founded on. That way of life is dying in this society. Many don't want to see it go, but at the same time, they want to diversify, and by doing that, people will not fit into the social boxes that have been constructed to regulate society.

Also, I wanted to say that the underlying reason that we have this underlying mistrust in the black community as a group of people is because of the diaspora, and in the United States more recently would be the cointell program that J edgar Hoovver had in place. By the way, the Bush campaign is trying to get congress to approve the patriot act that contains some of the old practices that the Hooover campaign had in place. GW Bush is trying to get it passed in the name of National Security. If that happens, then these racial communities that you praise now may fall faster than the that of "blacks" in the sixties and and early seventies.

I would like to say That I am learning alot by haveing to think about how to express what I mean. So I would like to continue this discussion because I realize that my opinion is only that. By the way, I do miss the Kween. She was full of fire, and sometimes other things.

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