    
H_i_c_k_s_o_n
First Time Poster
Username: H_i_c_k_s_o_n
Post Number: 1
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - 12:50 pm: | 
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Worldwide, come together! HICKSON proudly presents to you, The First Lady of GHETTOHEAT®: SHA!
Lady Speaks the Truth, Volume 1
Essay written by S H A
Growing up in Urban America isn’t easy. Throw in the race, gender and age cards. You walk through life with iron-filled crates shackled to your ankles. How can you climb the ladder of success with so much holding you back?
This isn’t about me outlining how to live your life or what’s right and wrong—I don’t know the answer to that. This is about me asking you to wake up! What’s up, Urban America? Have we’ve become so complacent as to stop our complaining because we’ve been reassured that everything is new and approved, and comes backed with a money back guarantee if we’re not satisfied?
I don’t know about you but, I’m not satisfied! I’m not a part of the “walking dead” that rest assured in what they’ve been spoon-fed, that would’ve been the easy way out: I like it hard.
I don’t think you understand me. As my third-grade teacher put it, I wasn’t “born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” I was born in Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. It happened sometime after the birth of “THE MONSTER” (HIV/AIDS) and just before the Crack epidemic hit hard. Though my father owned a bodega and I attended parochial school, I was far from rich. It wasn’t steak and lobster; 34th Street Miracle Christmas’ and such. However, what we lacked in finances, we made up for through love and unity.
No money meant a closet filled with out-of-style clothes and ridicule from my peers; it was whatever! I was too focused on school to really give a damn. Then my body decided it wanted to start puberty at nine-years-old. Don’t think that made me special, there were other girls in the fifth grade with bangin’ bodies.
While they were using what they had to get what they want, I stayed in my books. Of course I wasn’t popular with the boys, but everybody knew my name. Rhymes were my reason and Hip Hop saved me from the cruelty of the bullies. Well, at least, some of the time.
Being from BK, my ability to write poetry and to get lyrics from any song off the radio, made me tolerable. My strict Haitian father didn’t allow me to hang out after school, go on go-away trips or participate in any of the bullshit that happened in my neighborhood. If it didn’t happen on my stoop, I wasn’t able to go.
Soon after, I was in Queens and desperately wanted to go back to Brooklyn. I thought I’d be much more popular back “home”, but the reality was if I wasn’t “doing it”, I was wack. I accepted that. I had no choice but to be wack and watch every single move that everybody made.
Then I reached high school. I attended a school that made headlines for acid-throwing, gun-toting, monster-infected students! It was the closest one to my house, so I really didn’t have a choice. It was then when I got the fever for the fast life. I wanted to be that chick with the fly dudes that pushed the baddest cars, dipped in jewelry of every caliber.
I started asking around for the fly boys from elementary school. Surely by then, I thought, they had to be on top of the game. Dudes were either in Spofford, just recently released from juvenile detention, dead or strung the fuck out on crack-cocaine. Real talk, a sixteen-year-old junkie is not a joke.
Then I started watching the older dudes. This was the era of The Sleepwalkers, The Lost Boys and others. My young self got a thrill walking through the neighborhood with the older boys checking for me, because of my over-developed body; that made the girls hate me even more. I was already catching hell because of my hair and swagger. Yet, that was dealt with accordingly. I’m not saying I won every battle, but you damn sure won’t be able to call me cara cicatriz (Scar face)!
It was all fun and games until someone got his head blown off in Brookville Park one hot summer night…That brought me to the reality of things. I sat back and started making connections. It didn’t take too long to figure out who were the major drug dealers, the minor drug dealers, the wannabe drug dealers, the stick-up kids, the car thieves and the wankstas (Suckers). Before long, I had them all figured out and knew most of their modus operandi; it was too easy.
For the rest of high school, I met a whole slew of characters. I met guys who were predicate felons at the age of twenty; guys who snapped their fingers and made anything you desired appear like magic. I’ll admit crime life is very enticing! But the end results are not.
I played my cards well, at that time, holding them close to my chest. I was very careful about who I was seen with and where. Undercover detectives were all over the place all the time. Every other day, somebody was getting locked up, and females were getting caught out there on technicalities. That right there was what really made me think twice about all my moves. I lost count of how many females I’ve seen get charged with years and decades, just because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Damn those RICO and Rockefeller laws! They will get innocent people and first-time offenders caught up in the system every time.
Besides the jail time aspect of a hustler’s life, I realized that Uncle Sam makes fun and games out of hustlin’. That’s another reason I just observed the business of drugs. Tell me why a black man getting caught with crack rocks in BK will get at least ten years, but a white man getting caught on the island with cocaine will get a much lesser sentence? Doesn’t crack come from cocaine? Wake up, Urban America!
Why is it that Caucasians dominate the welfare system, but yet African-Americans and Hispanics are portrayed as being the dominate races in the system? Isn’t it strange how families stay stuck in the same situation generation after generation? Your momma had you at sixteen, her momma had her at fifteen and her momma had her at fourteen! Yet, all of you still live in the same project apartment? F.Y.I., the projects, no matter how “luxurious” some may seem, are designed to keep the masses psychologically disabled so we can perpetuate the cycle, over-and-over again.
Uncle Sam put up the projects. Uncle Sam allows drugs to come into the country. Trust that if America really wanted to be drug free, then we damn sure would be! Then what would the DEA do? Do you realize how many federal, state and city jobs would be lost if there wasn’t any illegal drugs in America?
Thousands of people would be out of work and the economy would fall apart. The Great Depression wouldn’t be able to compare to the economic state of America if drug money wasn’t in circulation. Uncle Sam can keep his VESID vouchers and his rehabilitation programs: I know the score.
To my young people of Urban America: hustlin’ is what it is. We all do it in one shape or another. For most of us, it’s a part of life. Victims of our socio-economic status, we have to do what we have to do; just do it wisely. Know when to hit HARDER, know when to ease up. I thank God for that ability. Too many times I’ve come this close to being state property…I’m free. Wake up and you’ll be too.
SHA is the First Lady of GHETTOHEAT®, an 80s baby born in Brooklyn who grew up in Queens. In 2006, SHA attained her Bachelors of Science degree in Psychology and is currently working towards her Masters. Writing has always been SHA’s way of dealing with life, penning poetry since the age of nine.
SHA recently tried her hand at fiction, growing tired of the monotonous titles that filled the African-American section of the bookstore where she worked at. Proudly representing for young women within the inner-city, being a creative force who speaks directly to her generation, SHA is currently working on the sequel to her suspenseful novel, HARDER.
To mail comments or questions to SHA, send all correspondence to:
GHETTOHEAT®
P.O. BOX 2746
NEW YORK, NY 10027
ATTENTION: SHA
or e-mail her at: SHA@GHETTOHEAT.COM
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