The emasculation of the black man

While living life as a black man in America can be a daily struggle and difficult enough as it is, too many of us are displaying behaviors detriment to our treatment here by other people. It appears as if every other race seems to have a vendetta against black men because of society's bad perception of us. It doesn't matter whether you're a doctor, lawyer, president, writer, engineer, governor, garbage man, maintenance worker and teacher, we all seem to get the worst treatment in sociey as a whole. For those of you who actually choose to sell drugs to your own people and feel that your actions are justified because of the hardships that you face, you're just soft and not strong enough to be a man. I have yet to write a memoir because I don't think it's time yet. However, hardship and struggle lived at my doorstep from the time I was a teenager when I was forced to leave home and almost had to fend for myself. The easy(some people actually think it's easier to sell drugs than getting a job) drug money and other petty crimes weren't oblivious to me, but I chose to stay focused in order to keep, not just my integrity, but also my sanity and pride. I wanted to be a man, not just some punk who felt going to prison had to be a rite of passage for all black men.

It's all good for the former drug dealers to recognize their mistakes after serving time, and some of them even end up capitalizing on their mistakes by writing about it in books that so many people have developed voracious appetites for. However, on the grand scale of things, your poor decisions and your mistakes have cost an entire race of black men their dignity and pride at the hands of police and society as a whole. Those of us who took pride enough in ourselves to do the right thing by attending college to become lawyers, doctors, engineers, and even those who have buckled down to maintain menial jobs to feed their families, have suffered the consequences of your actions. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be pulled over on the highway and to have your hands placed on the hood of your BMW or Mercedes that you work so hard to pay for, because a few drug dealers have enjoyed the same choice of luxury? Have you ever been pulled over just because you are a black man and the cop wants to keep you from getting to work or your destination on time because he has to make sure your car is legit? Do you how denigrating it is to be followed around in a store because you're a black man? Do you know the frustration we experience when people's assumptions of us is always criminally related?

The real questtion is, who's emasculating us? Are we the main culprit in our emasculation?

I'm sure many people will stand up to remind me that white people commit crimes and do all the things that are associated with black people as well. To be honest, I don't really care about what white people are doing, because we don't have as much of an impact on their lives as they do on ours. When was the last time you saw a group of black cops beating on a white man in a video? When was the last time you saw a white man getting pulled over for driving while white? Have you ever heard of an unarmed white man getting shot to death by cops? I can go on and on, but the point that I want to make is that we need to change our direction. We need to become the leaders that we were born to be and stop using lame excuses for our failures. The next time you're out there thinking about committing a crime, just think about the impact it will have on a generation of men that are not even born yet. Your poor decision in life will impact the life of my future son, your son, the neighbor's son, your brother's son and anybody out there that you don't know who end up with a black son.

Let's put a stop to the emasculation of oursleves!