5 Albums That Should Be Added To Your Summer Playlist

I rarely listen to the radio anymore. Call me old-fashioned, but most of the times I find it wonderfully…bad. When I’m at a club and EDM I find myself in a real bind because I get lost in the electronic rips and bass drops, and then I have a moment of clarity where I think, jeez this sucks.

Mainstream Rap and Pop, even though I may sometimes sing with you, you’ve been trending downwards too. You just have the benefit of being played so much that you randomly pop into my head. You are like Inception. With the exception of a few artists that goes surprisingly mainstream (I’m looking at Kendrick and Frank Ocean last year) it’s frankly just boring. There’s no surprise.

So when I do find an artist that can genuinely sing, that has interesting lyrics, and is  pushing the boundaries of their music, I get unbearably excited. The type of music that comes from an artist and isn’t the result of synthesizer. It’s an internal window into the thoughts and emotions of the artist. It’s organic music, soulful and just plain old cool.

It isn’t a coincidence that these artists also created incredible albums. Their albums are cohesive stories instead of a mixtape of singles and wannabe singles. In other words skipping through is robbing yourself of an experience, because they deserve your ears’ attention.

 1. The Lumineers – The Lumineers

This Grammy award-winning group, is one that I’m sure you’ve heard of. Their hit single “Ho Hey” is simple, clean, amazingly well written and performed. 15 years from now, we will probably listen to this song with the same excitement that we do today.

But what if I told you that “Ho Hey” is probably the 5th or 6th best song on the album? After listening to their album on repeat for the past few weeks that’s basically the truth. They’re all radio worthy in terms of quality lyrics, vocals, and musicianship. They songs are so clearly emotionally and poetic, that you drift a long for the ride. When it’s over you go right back to the beginning and play them over.

Songs you should go listen to:

Flowers In Your Hair, Classy Girls, Submarines, Dead Sea, Big Parade, Morning Song (I could probably list the entire album. Give it a listen the next time you’re relaxing in the sun.)

2. Robert Glasper  – The Robert Glasper Experiment: Black Radio

When I first stumbled upon this album, it was listed as one of best albums of 2012. So I was stunned by the fact that I had never heard of Robert Glasper the Jazz musician/Producer, despite the fact that the album is littered with known contemporary soul singers (Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Bilal, Musiq Soulchild) and rappers (Yasiin Bey and Lupe Fiasco).  The first time I listened to it, I was mesmerized by the seamless integration of different sounds such as Jazz, Hip-Hop, Soul, and Electronica.

I was even more stunned that I find this album in the Jazz section in album stores, because it isn’t Jazz in the traditional sense of the word. It doesn’t even feel like Contemporary Jazz. This is fresh and interesting experiment that succeeds.

Songs you should go listen to:

Why Do We Try, Gonna Be Alright, Always Shine, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Black Radio.

3. Michael Kiwanuka – Home Again

A lot of the songs that can be found on the free download of the week for iTunes can be forgettable; the title song to singer/songwriter Michael Kiwanuka’s album, Home Again, isn’t one of them. His personal and sober lyrics combined with the way that he mourns over his songs can best be described as enduring, comforting pathos. When you listen to it, you feel something. There aren’t any words left to be said.

Songs you should go listen to:

Always Waiting, Home Again, Bones, I’ll Get Along, Now I’m Seeing, Any Day Will Do Fine.

 4. Jennah Bell – Early Bird EP/ Live at Mother NY

You may remember this pleasant singer/songwriter from the 2012 BET Awards, and if you don’t then it’s because they cut to commercial about 30 seconds into her performance, thus illustrating everything that is wrong with BET. But needless to say this very young and still growing singer is pretty awesome and should make it to your summer  playlist. Think of her as a combination of Tracy Chapman, Jewel, and Ingrid Michaelson.

 Songs you should go listen to:

Yes, This Is A Hold Up, Chapter 3: The Hatchet, Follow The White Rabbit, Black Sheep.

5.  Gregory Porter – Be Good

Imagine the first time you hear Morgan Freeman or David Attenborough narrate a nature documentary. You got that feeling? That’s exactly what it’s like to listen to this Grammy Award winning, hat-wearing, Jazz singer do work. He draws you in with poetic and poignant lyrics and mesmerizes you with his voice. Before you know it his songs’ play count quickly reaches triple digits, and your Top 25 Most Played list becomes the Gregory Porter Playlist. Seriously. Go listen and find out for yourself.

 Songs you should go listen to:

Painted on Canvas, Real Good Hands (aka the new wedding anthem), On My Way To Harlem, Be Good (Lion Song), Imitation of Life, When Did You Learn, The Way You Want To Live, Mother’s Song

Note: This is essentially the entire album. Yes it’s that great.

So there you have it 5 amazing, relatively unknown artists that should be added to your organic music diet.  If you have any other suggestions feel free to comment below.

Leaning In To The Sharp Points

I’d like to preface this post by saying that the past year I have been greatly effected by the disruptive forces that even the threat of a bomb poses.  In the spring and final semester at The University of Pittsburgh, we went through well over 100 bomb threats that halted the operations of the campus. I personally had over a dozen classes cancelled due to them. Even further as a graduate student at the University of Central Florida there had been numerous, seperate reports of  “suspicious packages”. While these are minor in comparison to what occurred in Boston, I am fully aware of the type of paranoia and fear that can destroy a community in times such as these.

 

A little over a year ago, I received some the best writing advice that a teacher had ever given me. I was writing characters for a script and at that moment I was stuck. I did’t have writer’s block. Quite the opposite actually. I turned out pages after pages, but the story just didn’t move. The story had died.

This is when my Senior Writing Seminar teacher told me this, You characters has some fears, certainly. Whether it’s love. Loneliness. The neighbor’s dog or death, hey have fear. But like most people, they hide it. If you want to see the true essence of that character, then you must make them lean into the sharp points. That which truly frightens them, and see what happens to them when they reach the other side.

Now this notion of leaning into the sharp points isn’t inherently a writing technique to create drama or to spark the beginning of catharsis. It’s a life lesson taught by Buddhist monks. In English, character carries a duel meaning . It refers to your protagonist and antagonist, but it also points to your resolve . Your makeup as a person. And in that respect too many of us don’t lean into the sharp points. We don’t really know ourselves. What we’re afraid of. Our true makeup. We fall into the comforts of our routine and never leave.

Until something tragic happens.

On April 15, 2013 we were hit in a way that could only be called an act of terrorism, in the truest sense of the word.  A verbally or threatening act in order to create crippling fear into the public.  IED bombs filled with everyday items such as ball bearings and nails in a pressure cooker shows that anything can be destructive. An explosion on Patriots Day in one of the nation’s oldest cities, is  body blow to our country’s problematic yet remarkable history. Placing them at the finish line of one of the world’s premiere marathon damages the human psyche, because it says that no matter our achievements, our humanity and lives are fickle.

For someone who’s never ran a marathon, and who’s never been to Boston, it still hit me in a way that I imagine hit people across the country and the world. I became needlessly paranoid that the shuttle I catch to campus, or the library, or gym could hold destruction right around the corner.

For a brief moment, on Monday, I was terrified. I considered not going to class. I had a presentation, but my thoughts were bouncing between tragic despair and fear. Until I heard:

Lean into the sharp points.

It was a profound moment, and incredibly small compared to what was going on in Boston, but it was real and true.

All of the police, the bystanders, and even runners ran to help at the finish line. They leaned in. Despite all fear, they leaned in.

That’s who we are as a people and a country, we lean in.

But it shouldn’t take a tragedy to force us. We can confront our fears every day.

Do the right thing.

Get uncomfortable.

Lean into the sharp points for the people who no longer can.

Vine and Voyeurism

“I can see you in court now I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You’re pleading.  You say, ‘Judge, it was only a bit of innocent fun.'” *

I’m sure you’ve heard of it by now, but if you haven’t allow me to introduce Vine. Twitter launched a new video sharing app that takes the simplicity of Instagram and stretches it out to six or seven second videos. You edit the videos in real-time. It’s so easy, that literally anyone can make extremely short movies, without the workflow associated with the longer forms of video making.

Maybe that’s why Vine is so awesome. You don’t have to worry about lighting. Continuity. Coverage? Bah yeah right.

It’s montage in its purest form. If Eisenstein was still alive, he’d wet his pants just fantasizing about the unlimited possibilities.

However, as I began to scroll through the videos on my feed, another thought came to me. About the possible implications of Vine. And the idea terrified me.

At any given moment, our actions and words could be captured by anyone with an iPhone (and there are lots of us), captioned, and then distributed to the world in 10 seconds.

With Youtube, Vimeo, Break.com, and even Worldstar.com, I suppose that possibility was always there, but even in that, there was a considerable amount of  workflow involved. Files had to be copied to computers. Edited. Files converted to proper formats. Uploaded to a site, and frankly that 10 second video of you doing the cinnamon challenge wasn’t worth all of that work. The video just lived in oblivion on a phone, maybe getting the occasional nostalgic view.

But now Vine’s changed that.

It occurred to me that the most popular use of Vine would probably come after a few choice beverages. One could only imagine the outcome if employers and college admissions folks came across of some of those videos.

And I know. We’ve all been warned about using social media responsibly. Untag yourself in unflattering photos. Crop out the red solo cups and beer cans. Think before you press send.

But Vine opens a hidden compartment in Pandora’s box. It’s discreet and possibly out of your control. Every last single embarrassing and incriminating thing you do could be posted. The poster could be your friend. Your  cousin. That jerk in your 9 AM Physics class. Your nightmare roommate.

Or that one stranger who has nothing better t do besides watch you make an ass of yourself.

Yes,  I know. Vine is wondrous and can potentially lead to amazing cat videos. But us young folks are sarcastic and cynical enough to make it perverse. To turn it into pure voyeurism.

Into us watching our friends watching a stranger.

And as Makia Smith, would probably tell you, who and what you record can lead you down a slippery slope.

Eisenstein would have loved Vine. So would another filmmaker, and precisely for the potential of perversity.

Mr. Hitchcock.

And so I’ll leave you, where I began with a quote from one of his most famous films about people watching spying on people with cameras. Consider it a caution in the wind.

“We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How’s that for a bit of homespun philosophy” *

*Both quotes are from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954)

Photos courtesy of:

By chrishimself [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

By Fred Palumbo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Related articles

• Are we all voyeurs? (farrenlouise.wordpress.com)

I Don’t Play With No White Boy

 I wrote this piece of flash fiction in the Spring of 2012 after visiting the Teenie Harris Exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. For those of you who don’t know, Teenie was a fantastic photographer born in Pittsburgh, who managed to capture the rapid growth and cultural shifts in 20th Century Pittsburgh, most noticeably the Hill District. This was just after the time that Trayvon Martin was murdered, and the question of how do we begin to understand the concept of race and skin color began to interest me. I don’t quite remember the creative process that branched from this mixture of thoughts, emotions, and photographs, but somewhere I heard the voice of this older man reminiscing on his own experiences and in a way the moment that his own innocence was lost. I hope you enjoy.

And remember that we can always learn, even if the teacher is a child.

When I was a boy my best friend was white before I even knew what white was. I had heard people talk about what white people did to colored people from all the other folks in the neighborhood. So I said to myself, Ok, I’m not gonna be around no white people, cause if they was that bad then I don’t want nothing to do with them.

            So one day my momma called me inside the house when I was playing and she asked me, in that tone that my momma always talked in when I was in real trouble. “Why were you yelling at Mrs. Russell? She’s your friend.”

I wiped my dirty hands onto my overalls. Normally when she asked me something ‘bout talking back to an adult, I woulda already been gittin’ a switch, but not this time. “Cause, she said I was playing with a white boy. And I tried to tell her that I don’t play with no white boys. You know I don’t play with no white boys.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She said Jimmy was white.”

“Well he is white,” she said, like it was some fact at school.

I said, “No he ain’t. He’s pink”.

She said, “White.”

I said, “He’s pink. Now momma, you yaself taught me my colors. I know the difference.”

“White.” She said.

We went back and forth like this for a few minutes and finally I got fed up and I went to go grab my Superman volume 14. Issue 5. comic book from my room and I went back to the kitchen to wear my momma had sat down at the table. I was furious now. This is what my daddy would’ve called a matter of pride. Either she was saying I was a dummy or I was a liar, and I wasn’t neither, ‘cause I know I don’t play with no white boys.

I flipped to the first page and I pointed to the page. “What color is this paper?” I asked.

“White,” she said as she took out a cigarette and began to light it.

“And what color is Superman?”

“White.”

I slammed the book shut.  “No! He’s pink.”  I done had enough now. Superman wasn’t white and neither was Jimmy. White people kept colored people as servants. They beat on colored people, and hung them by trees.  Then a thought came to me. “What’s Mrs. Russell?”

Momma took a look drag from her cigarette and blew out smoke, as if she was tired. “She’s colored.”

“What color is she colored?”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “She must have a color because there ain’t no such thing as colored in the crayon box.”

The One Lesson Every Millennial Should Learn In College, But Hasn’t

Photo Courtesy of Chris Jenkins

“We have to get tough and frankly accept that the way we thought college and jobs were going to work for us is changing however fair or unfair that is, and we can’t complain about it…“

When I was a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, I officially switched my major from Neuroscience and the Pre-Med track to what has become one of the loves of my life, English Writing and Film Studies. To this day I have very few regrets… Well… maybe just one.

I’m completely unhirable.

I would also have really deep, detailed,  philosophical arguments with my Accounting major roommate (and still very good friend), over which was more important. Writing or Business? Business or Writing? I argued that studying the language of commerce enables the most important part of intelligence, communication, to be done in an effective way. He argued that nobody would ever study or teach the language  if they didn’t think the would be compensated for it. Maybe we were both wrong…

Let’s be frank. The economy sucks for us (read millennials). Even though unemployment dropped to 7.6% last month, that’s partly because a lot of people just stop looking. Also as many of you already know, a large number of us who did managed to find a job are grossly underemployed, with about 284,000 of college educated young adults working minimum wage jobs. That doesn’t even pay the interest on our loans, let alone the principal.

To make matters worst, we didn’t go to college to get a job. We came to get careers.

People, such as myself, that studied social sciences, arts, and the humanities are even more susceptible to this low wage, high inflation economy. Many of us go to grad school with the hope of teaching college level so that we can work on our craft, but even colleges are hiring more adjunct professors, instead of full-time professors. This means teaching at multiple campuses and multiple classes, with out the compensation and job-security that we were looking for.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. With greater access to school and people working longer. (Not to mention that recession) There’s quite simply an under-supply of jobs and a low demand for workers. We devalued ourselves just by virtue of sheer numbers.  What makes $100 bills so valuable? Partly it’s the fact that they’re usually hard to come by.

We’re all $100 bills and there are hundreds of thousands of us. Our degrees aren’t getting us those rare, highly specialized jobs that we thought, and it’s mostly because they’re filled. And the few opportunities that do exist, are highly competitive.

So yes. Things are bleak. Nobody is hiring and we’re drowning in debt. But even then. Even in this dreary, dreary, dreary reality.

I see a silver lining.

I ran across a great article by  Daniel Gulati that listed the top 5 career regrets from people who were already well into their own careers. Very briefly they were:

1. Choosing a job for money.

2. I wish I quit earlier to pursue a passion.

3. The confidence to start my own business.

4. I wish I used my time in school more productively.

5.  I wish I acted on my career hunches

Wait what? I’d take a job for the money in a heartbeat. (Kidding (Not Really)). But these are the people who we’re jealous of. These jobs are supposed to bring us money , which is supposed to bring us happiness. This list shows there’s some sort of breakdown. I know I promised the one thing that all Millennials should learn in college, and here it is.

ENTREPRENEURISM .

In order to survive, we must become highly specialized, high quality entrepreneurs in our fields. We can’t be the McDonald’s manager, making the wealthy wealthier. We must be “Joe or Jane McDonald”.

We must bootstrap , and build instead of succumbing to these underpaying, frankly unfair temp jobs.

The technology is there. We can produce high quality at low costs. We have the access to the information. (Google is a great teacher). We have to get tough and frankly accept that the way we thought college and jobs were going to work for us is changing however fair or unfair that is, and we can’t complain about it.

I’m currently in UCF’s Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema MFA program, where we’re encouraged to make a micro-budget (sub 50K for the program), and we’re encouraged to think of them not only as artists, but as entrepreneurs. Where aesthetics, finance, and technology merges to make fresh quality feature-length films at a fraction of the costs. Then we’re encouraged to think of strategies that will make our films as financially successful as possible, and keeping it within our control.

I don’t see why this mindset can’t be applied to other fields and industries.

Yes I know. It’s terrifying as hell.

But it’s incredibly liberating to know that I am in total control of my film from conception to screening. And it’s motivating to want to maximize profits for myself as much as possible. It’s forces me to be unorthodox. Fresh. It’s a career that I’ve created for myself and I love it.

So going back to that old debate me and my friend still have to this day. We’re both right.

You take what you love. You do it well. And you make money from it. You work to build your own wealth. You work for yourself. Yes it seems very old-school.

But what other choice do we have?

Related articles

• Millennials Will Redefine Our Economy (millennialambitions.com)
• Dealing With The Scars The Economy Has Left On Our Generation (millennialwomanspeaks.com)
• We’re Not A Lost Generation, Just An Exposed One (thoughtcatalog.com)

Cultural Democracy

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.”

Photo Courtesy of Steve and Sara Emry

You may recognize the quote as some of the last words that Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker in 2002’s Spider-Man. In the context of the movie it served as the wisdom from an elder for our soon-to-be hero, to teach him to use his powers to help others and not hurt them.

As an 11 year-old I understood those words on that level. But they’ve stayed with me nearly 11 years later, as I begin the journey of my film career. The gravity of the potential power that we have as artists begin weigh heavy. On some level, whether consciously or unconsciously your audience internalizes the spirit and energy that you put into a work. This internalization process can change a person. Inspire a thought. Spark a movement. Can plant a seed that takes years to grow.

Christopher Nolan was getting at something when he made Inception.

Of course each person’s reaction to that internalization process will be somewhat different. Uncle Ben’s words may have planted a seed that lead me to these words, and those same words may have led someone to an entirely different path. We are individuals after all, or so we’ve been told.

Before I digress, I’d like to propose an idea that may be so simple that its been forgotten. (Especially by artists and members of the media).

Writing is thinking.

Before we get into the limiting semantics of the word writing let me say that painters write with paintbrushes. Filmmakers and photographers with the camera lens. Musicians with lyrics and instruments. Sculptors with their hands and chisels.  So on and so forth.

Even we write. With tweets. Facebook statuses. Instagram pictures. Vine videos. Each one is taking an abstract thought or image that we have  or perceive and reproduces it in a way that’s shared.

So you see we all write. But further, that act of writing, when done in its purest form reveals some aspect about the person doing the writing. How they view the world. How they’d like the world to sound. Look. Feel. Think.

This is the great power that we all have.

It’s profound. Beautiful. Powerful. Education.

However as Uncle Ben tells us, with that profound and beautiful power comes the grave responsibility that you have to your audience. That responsibility extends to your intent, and an immense understanding not only of your work, but of your audience. To how they may internalize that intent. Even further it can change the way a person sees the world, especially if they’ve never seen it, and shapes the way they think of its inhabitants.

And so, as artists, we must demand better of ourselves and our peers. We must fight to express the world as we see it, not the way that a select few at the top of skyscrapers sees it.

To be specific let’s look at some of the demographics of my industry.

The Facts

How many of 2012’s top 100 grossing films featured non-white leads? 12%.

Female leads? 11%.

Non-Heterosexual lead characters? 0%[i] .

Now you may say, that’s only 100 films of thousands that were made in 2012 and you’d be correct. But the truth is that as you go further down the list, and those demographics diversify, the smaller public awareness those films carry.  After the top 150, most of the films are ones that even the most avid filmgoers will not have heard of, let alone seen.

Further there is even less diversity in the visible figures who are in the creative positions that could shift film’s contents to suit a more diverse population.  The implications of creating an illusionist type of film, with the casting demographics at this rate, is that audiences are forced to passively view the world through an extremely particular and narrow lens. Even when mainstream films attempt to shed light on a perceived marginal aspect of the population, they are still being created by an out of touch and small aspect of the population, which would be the bubble of the major production studios.

As a young, black male, I’m one of the most underrepresented/misrepresented demographics in my field of choice. Even further there are hundreds of years of stereotypes that I have to confront, because of the skewed representation.

Yes I like fried chicken. Yes I love watermelons. Yes I love basketball and Hip-Hp.

No I can’t dunk. No I can’t rap (well). I also love asparagus and salmon.

Yes I know/speak slang. Yes I am also articulate and can write well in a variety of forms.

Yes I’ve been on welfare.

Yes I have a B.A. and on track for an MFA.

And NO, none of these things should surprise you.

Because, Yes I Am Black, and I love it. But even further, I Am Christian Bryant Jenkins, and my blackness does not define me.
I am American, but if there are 313 million americans, then there are 313 million DIFFERENT WAYS TO BE AMERICAN, AND NONE OF THEM IS BETTER THAN ANOTHER.

Our culture is diverse, complex and layered, however our popular culture is not.

It’s shallow. It’s problematic. Even worst we know it.
We buy it.

So I challenge you. Find your local specialty theater and see a movie you’ve never heard of with actors that you don’t know. Find a musician that sounds different and buy their music. See a play by your local theater group. Find new playwrights. Skip the big art museum and go to a street art festival.

Yes they could be bad, but it’s cultural democracy.
Vote with your dollar.
Challenge yourself. Open your mind. You may surprise yourself.
You may truly discover that with great power comes great responsibility.

---

[i] According to Boxofficemojo.com.

A Misrepresentation, A False Reimagination of Life

Photo Courtesy of  “Thomas Thomas”

“Perhaps one can say that we are only alive when we life the life of the world, and so live the sufferings and joys of others. The suffering of others is our own suffering, and the happiness of others is our own happiness…We must be able to see the person in front of us as oneself and us as that person.”

– Zen Bhuddist Monk Ticht Nhat Hanh

 

This enlightened quote seemed to me, a very apt metaphor for art. In some ways it’s why certain stories, paintings, photographs, songs, and films stay with us long after they’ve left our present. However, with each choice an artist makes, they must understand the grave responsibility that they are undertaking, which is the issue of how to interpret and then represent of the people who that becomes the subject of their work. This is to say that an artist is an artist, because they’ve managed to express their thoughts and what they see in the world in a way that’s interesting to the public.

It’s art imitating life.

But at what point does life imitate art? A self-fulfilling prophecy.

At what point is an art form the only insight into a community? What if the subject matter (that which is being represented begins to conform and validate the art?

I suppose it’s what common was alluding to when he made I Used to Love H.E.R.…

Which is at, what point does the commercialization and “quality” of Hip-Hop/Rap and all of its variations and “Black Cinema” or to extrapolate even further, mainstream American Culture, begin to dictate and modify our behaviors?

At what point does us as public and potential artists demand alternatives, because the way we are represented on screens and in our ears isn’t aligned with who we are?

I leave this vague and repetitive, because it’s the elephant in the room, and whether we want to admit it’s affecting the way we see ourselves and each other.

 

We’d like to hear what you have to say. Tweet with #We2 or comment below.

 

Related articles

• “Life Imitates Art, far more than Art Imitates Life.” Oscar Wilde: “The Decay of Lying.” (folioandink.wordpress.com)
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Good Kids, Mad World

On February 18 and 25, the Chicago-produced podcast “This American Life”, premiered two fascinating episodes. A two-part, multi-acted, documentation of Harper High School, a turnaround school on the South side of Chicago. It’s facilities are new. Its staff engaged. Caring. At times extending beyond the extra mile  to take care of their own. Small things, like providing breakfast in the morning for arriving on time. Picking up kids on their way to school. Reminding them exactly how important they are  and that there is always someone to talk to. Everything to ensure that they get a normal high school experience.

But they never will.

The school year before, 29 recent and current students had been shot, including 3 who were killed.

It’s hard to tell without knowing all of them, but my guess is that they weren’t all bad kids, selling drugs. Stickup kids. Gangbangers. Thugs in the way that those words are understood. In that part of Chicago, there’s shootings every day. Bullets go astray. Guns are found in alleys. Your friends can give them to you. It’s a way of life.

The neighborhood has gangs, but they mostly don’t sell, and they’re not gangs in the sense that you join them, or are initiated. No. What’s unique. Enlightening. Startling. Terrifying. Is that you don’t join a gang, you’re born into it.

Not born in the sense that Michael Corleone was born into the mafia, but that it’s involuntary . It’s controlled by where you live. Your street. The house that your parents buy. It’s inescapable even if you want no part of it. You inherit the weight and the pressure of it.

This inevitability felt universal. I didn’t have to see the faces of the kids, or know the streets to understand it. It’s understood in Compton. Harlem. North Philly. DC. B-More. Bankhead. New Orleans. Houston.

It’s a forced mentality that turns the streets and projects of certain neighborhoods in American cities into it’s own form of incarceration.It’s a a type of slavery with guns instead of whips. Section 8’s replacing plantations.

When you hear the voices of the students talk about the violence around them, it’s frank. Indifferent. It’s normal. Most of the kids in the neighborhood have either seen, known, or have been shot or shot at. Many have witnessed someone die.

The apathy is a byproduct of only seeing one way of life, knowing that it’s skewed, but believing that it’s the only way. It’s a sort of psyche scarring that seeps into your voice as it matures. It bubbles in your blood and rises to the surface as anger or fear, or perhaps some mixture of both. It’s a type of scarring that even if you leave it, it never leaves you.

This is the thing that most people who have never lived this way have a difficult time understanding. With such a flawed communal mentality and a damaged psyche, personal achievement and upward mobility seems fantastical and impossible, because by the time you reach puberty the possibility of death becomes a daily thought. To be clinical, it’s PTSD, without the P.

Harper High is proof that you can’t throw money at a problem and expect it to resolve itself.

It becomes evident that if we want our school systems fixed, violence to subside, and our future to seem brighter, we need more than policy reform.

We need to change our mentality. How we see ourselves as individuals. Neighbors. Friends. Family. Lovers. Citizens. 

Sometimes we need to be reminded exactly how important we are.

– Christian Jenkins

Related articles

• ‘This American Life’ Looks at a High School Marooned in Violence (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)
• From One to Fifteen (seeingthesword.com)

Photo Courtesy of

By Francois Polito (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Dreams

All the progress that human beings have made on this old earth of ours grew out of dreams. That’s why it is wise, I should think, to hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that can not fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go life is a barren field frozen with snow.

– Langston Hughes