PICS: T.I.P. Gives Back w/Grand Hustle Block Party

Ms. Kimba

You are right, the block party likely kept the children out of trouble for a few hours one day. A summer program could keep them occupied for most of the time they are out of school and they could have a block party at the end of it. In a perfect world all parents would be good parents, but the world is not perfect and the hood is less perfect than the rest of the US. A hood mom is often ill equipped to parent. They don’t even have the wherewithall to get themselves out of a dangerous environment where they have a much better chance of failing than succeding. Does that mean that we should continue to let our community fall apart? Someone has to step up and T.I. has shown a willingness to do so. He just needs some guidance on how to do it.

Yesterday my brother essentially called me a bleeding heart and told me to hell with the rest of the community. I should only be concerned with me and mines. It would be lovely to think that way, but I’ve seen too much and my heart aches for the children in our community who are born with no chance BECAUSE OF their parents. The prisons are bursting at the seams with those kids and the projects are full of their baby mamas, many of whom were teenagers when they gave birth. Yeah, I admit it, it makes me cry sometimes.

missamerica Says:

It doesn’t matter how many programs or rec centers their are, if your home is f’ed up, more than likely you won’t fill any type of motivation to do better if nobody cares.
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Recreation programs worked for me, my brothers and my friends. My siblings and I were born and raised in the hood in a dysfunctional home as were most of my friends. When I was growing up (ages ago) we had summer rec programs and free summer camp with counsellors who made us act right. In addition, free school trips still existed at that time. My whole 9 female crew is gainfully employed and all but one of us didn’t start having kids until we were adults. We have done dirt and continue to do ghetto dirt, but we don’t let our dirt destroy us. Programs do help. Children with bad parents can do very well if they have a mentor or program that can show them something differant. Kids are going to have fun. Even in the hood. Kids will create fun if they have to. We just have to give them some constructive fun like the kids in the suburbs have and keep our boys away from the crack game by any means necessary including chaining them in the house if we have to. Every man who works and handles his business can mentor an underpriviledged boy and teach him to be a man because if the black community has proven anything it’s that black women make horrible fathers to their sons. If we are being real, black men are waaaaaay more f*cked up than black women. We are making our girls strong and our boys weak and it’s a vicious cycle.

Anyway, let me get off my soap box because posting these thoughts on a blog isn’t doing anything for our community.

Mz. Magnificent,

I must have come off wrong judging by goat76’s comment. I didn’t say that T.I. needed to do it alone. I also agree with your comment about the difficulty in starting such programs. I tried to mentor 4 children on my own years ago and failed miserably. The two girls both became teenaged mothers, one of the boys wound up molesting my daughter and the other boy hit my daughter with a plastic bat for no reason.

So in recent years I started volunteering with a program geered toward black girls between the ages of 11 and 16. The young lady that started it obtained government funding and has educated professionals in the teaching positions. My only job is to chaparon, sign the girls in for each meeting and set up for the meeting. We were firmly told to hold them to a certain standard, which means I have to check them when they cut up. It’s definately not something you can throw together. I also just talk to people who are cutting up. No I don’t run up on kids in the street who use the n-word in public. I’m not trying to get shanked. But as a black person who gravitates toward black people I have plenty of opportunity to share my experience and I do at all times, which you can tell from my comments. We can all do that.