How I made it out the Hood.

I am from the so called “hood”. I come from working class parents and I grew up about 4 blocks from a housing project, a real housing project in the stereotypical sense. Over the years there were murders, robberies and assaults right in front of our home. I grew up around people on welfare and working class families. I grew up around current and eventual murderers, pimps, hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes and the like. However, the vast majority of people I grew up around were descent folks with Southern values all wanting the best life possible for themselves and their families.

My parents were not highly educated. They grew up in share cropping families and eventually in adulthood migrated from the Mississippi Delta to Michigan in search of a better life. Nearly everyone in our neighborhood had parents that came from Mississippi or Alabama with similar background as my parents. Of course, our neighborhood was not all black when we first moved there; it was about half black and half white. However, in about 5 years it became 100% black for blocks and blocks. I am not saying that my life and family are a microcosm of the often lamented “black experience”, but I dare say that the chapters of my life and family were shared by millions of other African Americans.

Today, I have a college education a good salary and live comfortably with my wife and children. All the children I have produced I have produced in wedlock. I now live in the frigid state of Minnesota in an integrated community. I have achieved an income stature significantly above most black folks and above most white folks as well (although the latter seems only theoretical). In light of this, people often assume that I have been responsible and made the right decisions in life and that is what separates me from those who still languish in the hood. This theory assumes that people like me demonstrated superior discipline, morality, values, choices and responsibility. People have actually told me this many times. In other words people assume characteristics of strength and responsibility allowed me to rise above my condition.

Wrong! What allowed for me and many others to make it out of the ghetto were relative weaknesses and this is a truth that is rarely mentioned. Some people do rise out of the ghetto from vision and discipline, but just as many, if not more, make it out because they were less competitive for stature in the hood because of personal traits and did not get trapped. You see the hood is no different than any other environment as it essentially revolves around the competition for mates and mating and all the materialism and posturing for rank and status that is part and parcel to that game. So the hood is no different than Beverly Hills other than the avenues to top ranking usually involves something nefarious if not athletics or entertainment. It has its own social hierarchy that motivates competition for ranking.

As an example, I look at my life vs. the life of my older brother, who is still trapped in the hood. Why did our lives turn out so differently? It was not personal responsibility, discipline and or a superior intellect that allowed for better choice making. Rather, it was personality traits out of our control. He was much stronger and more fearless than I was. He also had the better looks and was a ladies man by Junior high. The resultant is that the opportunities for him were different than the opportunities for me based upon what doors our genetics and personality opened for us.

My oldest brother (OB) could get all the finest women in high school, although he never actually attended high school. He got the ones who would give it up and the ones who would to give it up. All that varied frequent fornication led to children out of wedlock at an early age. Now, any brother that would tell you they would not have “hit” all those fine sisters if they had a chance would be lying. Lord knows I wish I could have, but I did not have the looks or the “game” at that time. This kept me from having kids out of wedlock. The best chance I had was telling some of these sisters that OB was my brother and they might give me some just to get to him. When I did get some I almost had to beg for it and I always had to have protection. So this is what kept me from being trapped by kids out of wedlock early on. Not personal responsibility, but fewer opportunities.

The streets were another example of how my brother differed from me. He was dealing drugs in the 9th grade and had brand new ride before he even had his driving license. Sometimes he would be gone for weeks and my folks would be worried to death having the police looking for him. He would come back and face the beat down from my folks, so he eventually moved out the crib and dropped out of school. He would tell me about shoot outs he had been in with cats in some other cities and about a guy who had gotten his head blown off by a shotgun blast and stuff like that. One of the major reason I could go to school in peace was because people knew my OB and feared the retaliation if they did something to me. So even though I did have problems, they would have been a lot worse if not for my OB.

My personality type did not allow me to run the streets like that. It was not personal responsibility and being a good choice maker. It was fear plan and simple. I was in the streets but I was not in the game because of fear. I wanted the rewards of that life like a lot of other cats did but I did not have the personality for it. I also could not see having my folks worrying about me like that or them being disappointed in me like that. I was too nice a guy, until you ticked me off. The streets are not cut out for nice guys like me. I always had a lot of compassion for other people and being a compassionate hood will get you killed, aside from being an oxymoron. It was not that my OB was a bad guy, but he just understood the rules of the streets and played by them. I guess he figured that he did not make the rules but was compelled to enforce them if he was going to compete in the streets for ghetto prizes. It was just a “businesses”.

In light of this, my OB became a victim of his own strength, which allowed him ghetto success momentarily, which became a trap long term. My personality and fears at that time shaped my options and hence choices. I was able to therefore come out of high school without a record or kids and was able to make it into my twenties with nothing really holding me back. That allowed me time to mature and figure out what I wanted in life and how to get it. Even though I flunked the 11th grade, I eventually went on to college. I left Michigan and went to Georgia were I attended school for awhile in Atlanta. I eventually moved back to Michigan and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Wayne State University. Had I been trapped by kids, child support, criminal record and other negatives at an early age like my OB, my life would be just like my OB.


It is very shallow for people to suggest that it is all about choices and that we all have the same pool of life choices. The choices people make are enable or disabled by their personality, genetics and circumstances outside their direct control. The ghetto has fruit trees for the hungry. The trees are tall, however, and not all have the natural strength or agility to climb. Some of the fruit is poison. Therefore, those who end up climbing the trees to eat are the strongest and the risk takers. Some climb the tree but cannot get down. Some eat the fruit and die. Some are lucky in that they climb up, eat the fruit and climb down. Those who can’t climb the trees or fear being trapped or eating a poisoned fruit also avoid the pitfalls and have the best chance of eventually finding good safe nourishment.

Personality traits go a long way in explaining why some black folks get trapped in the ghetto while others make it out. If my family had been reared in a environment that offered visible conduits to success that were more positive, my OB personality traits could have made him a Warren Buffet today, instead being a “has been” of the hood. The ghetto traps the strongest and bravest, which robs the black collective of its most promising alpha males and I don't think that it is by accident. In the past, from these alpha brothers came Malcom X, Marcus Garvey, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmicheal and the like. Society has given the alpha black males self destructive alternatives due to the revolution of the sixties. Now instead of fighting the power, they are figthing and destroying each other.

My OB is not a failure....at least not by natures metrics....nor mine!