The Beauty of the Ghetto.

I have been many places in my 29 years on this planet. I’ve seen some amazing things and met some amazing people. Of every location that I have ever journey to, no place was more important than the place my life started: the ghetto.

Growing up I lived in a number of different neighborhoods, from the time I was born to when I was 8 years old I lived in the projects. Between Greensboro and Chapel Hill, NC, I lived in a couple different housing projects. They were in different locations, but the same situation. As a little baby and toddler I didn’t know that my neighborhood was known as the “bad neighborhood”, I actually didn’t learn this until years after I moved out. The reason why I never learned about this negative perception of where I lived at was because my beautiful experiences there are what impacted me the most.

I don’t consider myself naive, the world of my community was bathed in drugs, crime, broken homes and death. One of the first and last things I saw everyday at my house was a roach. I went to sleep with roaches crawling around me before I went to bed and woke up to them in my bathroom in the morning. Most of the children where I lived came from a single parent household just like me. Many of them were taken from their homes and either ended up living with more suitable relatives or they ended up in the foster system bouncing around from group home to group home. Some of the children around me fell in with gangs and crime at a young age, some of those kids were my friends and even family. I hate to say that so many of those people I knew are now dead or in prison because they fell into the traps that were set for us in this place we called home, a place the rest of the world called the ghetto.

I have seen some very traumatic things in my life, but one of the earliest traumatic memories I have is from when I was three years old and my mother’s best friend in our neighborhood committed a murder-suicide right next door to us. This friend got into a bad argument with his girlfriend and took her to an area of woods nearby and butchered her. After butchering her he came home next door to us and shot himself dead. This event ripped my mother’s heart out and we left that neighborhood shortly after. Eventually we ended up living in another housing project by the time I was four years old. This place wasn’t perfect and it had its problems, but it was better than where we lived at before.

It was in this neighborhood that I grew to understand the true heart of what it meant to live in this place that the world outside of my community called “the ghetto”.

One thing about the ghetto that a lot of people overlook is how it is really a community that is more like a family. Over the course of the next several years this family helped raise me through great times shared. I’ll never forget how one family in the projects having a get together always meant the entire neighborhood was invited to that get together. One time my mother bought one of those little round kiddie pools from Walmart over the summer and when we started filling it up, every other little kid in the neighborhood joined us every time we filled it up, I use to call this a “ghetto pool party”. One of my oldest friends attended one of these parties and I remember he stole an m&m watergun I had after saying he was gonna fill it up and to this day whenever I talk to him again I always joke with him about stealing that toy gun of mine all that time ago.

Almost every ghetto has a person there who is known as “The Candylady”. Most of the time she’s a middle age to elderly woman who always sells snacks to the children of the neighborhood. I had an aunt who was “The Candylady” in another neighborhood and I had a Candylady in my neighborhood at that time. The Candylady wasn’t just our junk food supplier, she was also a matriarchal friend and mentor to all of us and whenever she passed away the entire neighborhood held a memorial service for her. When I was about 7 years old my Candylady passed away and we had a big memorial service for her at our community center and it was one of the most heartfelt moments of my life.

One of the biggest stigmas about the ghetto is that the relationship between the police and especially the Black community is all drama, but I saw different growing up. I did see drama growing up, but also saw peace and harmony as well. In my neighborhood I often saw the police spending time with us kids at the playground and going door to door just chatting with our parents about life. I remember a couple years after I moved out of the projects my mom told me that one of the female officers who used to patrol our old neighborhood died in a car accident, I have to say, it was terrible loss.

Not to state the obvious, but the most beautiful and precious thing about the ghetto is definitely the children. There has always been so much more to us who were and still are children of the ghetto than most people realize. We carried not only the same innocence, but also the same fears and inhibitions as all other children. We also carry the same joys and love that all other children carry as well. I once heard Tupac Shakur say that the inner city should really be called the outer city because it is outside of the rest of society, which I always felt was true, but also ironic when I think about how you couldn’t tell it was two different sides because of their similar taste in life. From the time I was born I was always a nerd, I loved to geek out on things like the Power Rangers, Nickelodeon, Marvel Comics, video games, etc. and it all started in the ghetto for me. Most other Black children who grew up next to me in the projects and beyond also geeked out on these same things, but due to social stereotyping, many people have associated the interest in this culture to White youth and fans more so. Coming from the ghetto I thought this was interesting because I felt if people knew this truth as it really then more bridges would be built. Nevertheless those bridges were built when I arrived in elementary school in 1998. Something people have noted about me my whole life was how much I’ve always had a racially mixed background of close acquaintances in my life. This trait of me was born in the ghetto when I attended school with the young Black children of my neighborhood and watched them interact and have fun with children from every other ethnic group. From there I followed where they led by example and I continue to carry that with me to this day.

Even after I moved out of the ghetto I still was there just as much as I was when I lived there because of all the family and friends I had that still lived in that environment. The first job I ever had in high school was working for one of my aunts at her house in one of the most infamous ghettos in the city. I was basically a caretaker and I loved that job. People used to ask me was I ever scared to stay there and I always told them no because I grew up around worse and was still so used to that environment even after I moved away from it.

The thing about women who live in the ghetto is they all have this natural maternal guidance at heart. My own mother was an example of this as she often talked to young women from our neighborhood at our local community center about being responsible upright young women and her words really resonated, but my mother was only one of many great women like this in our community.

What is the ghetto exactly? Like the rest of the world it is flawed and broken, but it is also beauty underneath ashes and roses that grow through concrete. The ghetto is responsible for some of the greatest times of my life and though I am far from perfect, I would not be who I am if it were not for the beauty of the ghetto.