Mightmare on MLK

We hear a lot of talk about this street or that street; namely Wall Street and Main Street but who’s talking about MLK Street. You see when they talk about Wall Street they are talking about the 1% or more aptly put the “Robber Barons”. Main Street is supposed to be where the rest of us reside surviving on the crumbs or what little we can scrape to survive. I suppose it is reasonable to place everyone in these two camps but why can’t MLK Street be added to the conversation.

There was a term or distinction devised not too long ago calling the neighborhoods where MLK Streets called the “Ghetto”. As cool and hip as it sounded it was not a positive description of the communities where people of color reside. I should say that distinction has been upgraded to a more modern term that many have embraced – “the Hood”. As it is by design, it carries the usually, although sounding cool, a negative connotation of the black community.

 In this place depicted as crime riddled and drug infested with gangsta’s rests the lives of the disenfranchised and the hopeless. When there are no jobs or in many cases no way to survive – it breads despair. I think we all know that this is cleaver social engineering at work and a misconception by design! Not a single soul living in the “Hood” has the means to bring in the drug or weapons into the community.

Moreover, when the people of these neighborhoods are deprived of educational opportunities as a result of being segregated - hopelessness is the by product. Let me suggest that if you are ever in the Nation’s Capital ride by the Capital Building you will notice that just a few blocks away you will find neighborhoods where just such a place exists – The Hood! Oh, did I say this is supposed to be the richest nation on this little rock called earth!

Dr. Woodson’s challenged his readers in the epic novel "The Mis-Education of the Negro” to become empowered by doing for themselves: regardless of what they were taught: “History shows that it does not matter who is in power... those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they did in the beginning.”  
And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

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