As a member of a race that was enslaved, auctioned like animals and looked upon as inferior for more than four hundred years, I feel that I would be better off in the ghetto. Yes, give me the "black-on-black" crime, the higher possibility of getting mugged, shot at, or both, while walking to school or work. Put me on a block where there are drug dealers on every corner and drug users on the other. Put me in an environment where if you look at a person the wrong way there could be conflict. Let me see the poverty, the homeless Negro veterans on the street. Give me an extra dosage of getting betrayed and robbed, which Negroes often do to each other. I would not mind witnessing the excitement of a "Stop the Violence Movement" which happens when a kid gets shot and killed. Don't worry, if you missed it, just go to the one next week after another kid gets shot. Let's shout on our megaphones "Unity in the Community." Let's sit there and watch as absolutely NOTHING gets done and everything goes back to being the way it was before.
After getting another dirty look from Negro males and females, watch the fights that break out in front of a rent-to-own store. How about I join a barbershop discussion about White racism in Western Pennsylvania as per Rep. John Murtha, who has represented the region for years, who told the plain truth that Western Pennsylvania is racist. In that same discussion I can talk about my experience with discrimination on the job. I tell them that I was the only Negro copier technician on the payroll; I was paid the least and fought hard to actually fix copiers and not be on the phone asking for meter readings for eight hours. Let me put my children in a school that only teaches White history and the textbooks are forty years old, so they can condition them to become like their parents, ignorant of their own culture, where they came from, having an innate hatred self and given no real chance at the White American Dream.
Let's go to a Nation of Islam mosque and hear them talk about the "White Devil" while the government paints them as a terrorist group. Let's continue to foster not only the racial divide that has existed since 1776 or 1555, whatever you want. I walk to a day-labor agency, 95% black males, young and old, and watch the fruition of the Willie Lynch concept and the White Supremacist movement that will keep Negroes disenfranchised until the end of time. Come on, business in the Negro community is more than just the liquor store, the pawn shop, the barbershop, the 99 cent store, and a fast food restaurant whose bathrooms haven't been cleaned since the last time a "Stop the Violence" movement actually worked. Watch me canvass the neighborhood, unemployed, owe child support, and go to the county jail for selling drugs and have the same conversations with my cellmate, who is also black, that we had in the barbershop.
Or, I can live in a place where I own a house, front and back yards, two-car garage, and his-and-her cars to go with the garage. My kids are excited about going to college, my oldest plays football, and my daughter was homecoming queen last year. We had a wonderful Christmas, so many presents it is difficult to appreciate the six hours it took my wife of sixteen years to put those expensive department store trimmings on the tree. In the summer my wife and I can go on another honeymoon while the kids are away at camp and then we can take the ultimate family vacation and when we get home there it is, the words "Go home nigger, you don't belong here" in huge black letters. Then you think is Western Pennsylvania stuck in a time warp? Living here is like watching Dr. King get assassinated over and over again. When faced with the choice of the White American dream and self worth, I choose self worth. I choose the ghetto.