New Orleans on some Old Ish

So yesterday I ran across an article in the LA Times entitled: Post-Katrina, New Orleans still awash in violence which was a really sad commentary on the state of some black people. I encourage a full read of the article but a few things jumped out at me:

Duplessis, 24, could not resist the lure of the only hometown he had ever known. He would rap about it later, in recording sessions captured on a demo CD:
"Stressing on the phone with FEMA for hours
"While Nagin on TV, talking 'bout he need manpower
"I gotta head back to the N.O.;

"A-T-L too slow..."

He had partners in Dallas, he boasted, who could get him Ecstasy at wholesale prices. His shout-outs were to his old New Orleans haunts; his line of work was never in question:
"I'm a Einstein when it come to movin' that coke..." So home he went, about two months after the storm,to his old turf, and his old career.

On the one hand left to beg FEMA for shelter, when his old career..".. drugs paid his rent. They paid for expensive sneakers, a fancy GMC Yukon Denali truck, and for the upbringing of the daughter he had fathered with an estranged girlfriend."

See if this fool was such an "Einstein" he woulda had money aside for just such an emergency given that he lives way below sea level. But "Einstein" was only bright about what was in front of his face, and not even that bright, so it never occurred to him to save. Besides saving and living by some kind of rules for long life is, as he put it, "too slow."

But what of this demo CD? Well I suppose he will fancy himself a self styled "CNN" of the 'hood right?. Here he is:

In one verse, he compares himself to Jesus, predicting his return "on the seventh day" with a big haul of cocaine that will keep his people nourished "with water and bread."

Ahh yes, Crack vs. actual food. Oh, no, that's right, he sells crack to people to strung out and addicted to care about food, so he can make sure he has food on his table. Yes the logic is stunning isn't it. Though perhaps if I said this too him he'd get mad and try to kill me since he has a habit of not taking criticism:

Soon he started picking up drywall gigs for money, and for a while, he thought about going into business for himself. He even had a batch of business cards printed up.
But one day on the job, his boss, angered with his poor handiwork, tore up a wall Duplessis had just completed. Duplessis bristled at the insult, abruptly quit, and returned to the streets.


See that's the problem with these Negroes. Would rather do something illegal, get punked by the police, and risk death than take some criticism (which would have resulted in him being a better dry wall installer, resulting in more paying gigs) and step up his business game. Note to the too stupid: Difficult people come with legit work. You learn to either dish it back or suck it up, especially if YOU did a poor job. But apparently that is to hard for some people.

Now don't get me wrong. There is blame to be assigned to persons other than Mr. Duplessis:


Duplessis' mother sent him to a Catholic grade school until her drug habit ate into her finances. So he started sixth grade in a public school system that was considered among the nation's worst. Two years later, he dropped out.

Soon he was dealing in the streets. Finister thinks something snapped in her son when his grandfather, his only real father figure, died in 1994. Duplessis, in his songs, described a different kind of epiphany, one sparked by the sight of a friend from the 'hood who had acquired a slick new car.

It was "a whip [that] looked like a space shuttle," Duplessis rapped. "I knew right then my whole focus in life was to hustle."

It is simply unnacceptable that a country as rich as the US, does not spend enough money on it's public educational system. That failure is a large part of why Mr. Duplessis made the dumb decisions he made. It was very clear to him, especially having gone from a Catholic school, that the government could have cared less about his educational well being.

The second issue of note is that Duplessis was also a victim of his parents bad decisions. I have seen this too many times. There are too many parents simply do not understand that their most important job is to socialize their children. This means you can't be smoking crack and all that junk. You are there to instill values and teach your kids the importance of impulse control. It upsets me to see the fall out when children become victims of their parents bad (and I'm being clean here) choices.

However; that aside, there comes a point where people need to decide that a change needs to be made. I cannot understand, and perhaps a reader will help me with this, why after the devastation in New Orleans and the incredible need for community rebuilding these young men feel the need to kill each other at a rate that seems to be headed higher than before. I know there are some shady back room dealing going on, but DAMN. robbing people who are living in FEMA trailers? It's bad enough they have to deal with the toxic fumes emanating from the things, but to be getting robbed at gunpoint too? Just how low are these folks going to go?