Ghetto – A section of a city to which an entire ethnic or economically depressed group is is restricted; as by poverty or social pressure.

Life for Blacks who reside in the inner-city has never been easy, but in the years since crack cocaine hit things have most definitely taken a turn for the worse. A new breed of Black woman and manhood has arisen and they behave rather badly. It has become absolutely normal to be ignorant and ghetto and, more scarily, this behavior is celebrated with glee.

Take a stroll in any inner-city neighborhood: On any given afternoon, you will see groups of able-bodied young men lounging carelessly on street corners, smoking marijuana boldly, bragging about their bitches, whores and baby mammas. Although these young men show clear shiftless tendencies, throngs of ride-or-die chicks, sometimes with several children in tow surrounding them admirably, talking loudly while dressed in pajama bottoms and dingy white wife-beaters complete with the proverbial head scarf.

These words are not stereotypes but actual truth. Too many times, Blacks complain about their dirty laundry being aired publicly instead of fixing the problem and it is time to discuss an issue that is plaguing us as a people: the acceptance of ignorance. Although racism is, has been, and will always be a part of American society, social behaviors once deemed deviant are embraced and accepted by some Blacks.

Urban terrorists have hijacked Black communities throughout America, but calling the police is considered “snitching” and murderers walk around unafraid and unrepentant. Mothers hide the guns of their gang-banging sons and little children are left at home unattended with an empty refrigerator while their parents party in the streets. There are so many examples of this behavior that I could go and on but that would be redundant. However, one thing rings true, regardless if some folks do not want to face it: gutter, hood-related anti-social behavior is running amok in some Black communities.

Where did it all go so terribly wrong? The decline of the inner-city Black family can be traced to the crack cocaine era. Black families throughout America were decimated due to drug abuse and drug dealing and the children became collateral damages. An entire generation of Black children has grown up seeing their parents either use or sell drugs and it has destroyed their psyche.

For these young adults, the only thing worth living for is the mass consumption of expensive designer clothing, alcohol, drugs and sexual escapades with multiple partners. They have no goals or ambitions but to live for the day. An education is scorned as being nothing more than a worthless piece of paper and disputes are settled by gunfire, regardless of who is around. They shoot each other over everything from women to hearsay, and families who cannot afford to move away from these crime infested areas are living under siege in fear. Every weekend in Chicago, young people on the West and South Side are getting shot and murdered and it has become so commonplace, most people just shrug.

The blame for this generation of inner-city hoodrats can be laid at the feet of Black Generation X, my generation. Blacks born between 1965 and 1976 were the first recipients of the gains that the Civil Rights Movement had battled for and we squandered it by getting caught up in the “Greed is Good” era of the Eighties. We ran the streets instead of taking care of our children, shoving the responsibility of child-rearing on our weary, overworked parents. We were more concerned about outer appearances, spending money on a bunch of stuff instead of saving money for better educational opportunities and now our children still lag behind every ethnic group when it comes to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instead of being parents to our children, we became their friends, smoking blunts with them and allowing their boyfriends and girlfriends overnight privileges, creating the next generation of out of wedlock children.

We planted the seeds for mass destruction and now we have a garden full of weeds. It saddens me to write this but it is my opinion that little can be done to correct this hood-related behavior. These days, you cannot tell anyone anything bad about their children because it might cause a physical confrontation. The US government could put trillions of dollars into every inner-city in America, but this ghetto mentality will still exist because doing absolutely nothing with your life is accepted. An entire generation of Black young adults have accepted their caste in society as the lowest of the low, trapped by the narrow confines of their minds and neighborhoods.