The Ghetto Survival Guide for Blacks and Latinos

By L Robinson

Get in... Get Out.. Keep it moving!
Useful hints tips an advice that somehow has gotten lost while we have been chasing a dream not our own! Written for the Black and Latin urban dweller... However good advice is good advice for any race!

• Language: English
• Publisher: XTC Media
• Release date: Nov 20, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452308128

L Robinson

Writer, photographer, person with a whole lot to say... A.K.A. Creative!

Book preview

Introduction

Why a Survival Guide? Why a Guide for Blacks and Latinos? Essential Gear… If you don’t have these 5 things… Used versus new 5 things you probably don’t need

Daily Essentials… Before you leave the crib checklist… Using public transportation to go to school/work… Essential financial techniques… Eating well and sensibly… Staying off the radar when you owe… Saving for a rainy day… Bouncing back when the chips are down… Making money the legal way Or creating opportunities out of thin air (Told you that you needed that computer)! Taking the for now job

Dealing with the law… Avoiding confrontations with the law Know your rights… but never remind a cop that he is breaking the law! Treat cops like vampires! Never invite them in!

Navigation in and out of your area Get in… get out Acting like you belong or blending in Is this the end?

Introduction… No matter how far we come as people of color, some things always stay the same. The world in general likes to think that everyone lives by the same rules. Meaning that the law is there to help and the work place is a fair place in which if you do your best; you will move quickly through the ranks.

Landlords and property owners do not see people’s color when it comes to renting or selling living quarters.

In this day and age, prejudice is a thing of the past, right? It’s something that people do not want to remember. It is treated almost like this is something from America’s history that is an embarrassment to the country. There are many safeguards put in place to ensure that this dark place (no pun intended) in our country’s history will never be revisited.

In any event, all of that is… bullshit! We, as far as people of color are concerned have seen very little change! Maybe a new coat of paint has been slapped on the problems to make everything look a little more appealing. Maybe our culture has been integrated into western society almost like a national treasure once the rest of the world takes a liking to it. Then, people ‘not of color’ begin imitating our culture and then call it their own. See – Jazz, Blues, Reggae, Hip Hop, Soul foods, graffiti, Salsa, Reggaeton, slang terminology and many of the things that we once wore as a badge of courage as we tried to make due with what would be considered substandard to the rest of western civilization.

Damn! What makes it even worse is seeing things that your mother made for you to eat because cash was low in the house has now become considered gourmet! I will never forget one day watching the news and hearing a white reporter giving reviews on what could only be called soul food in a four star restaurant. If you grew up in the ‘70s you know that tongue, tripe, sweetbread, chitins’ and ox-tails were some of the cheapest cuts of meat in the store but with a little style, mom would make a meal out of it!

If you want some of those same foods, you will pay top dollar now because just like in the times of slavery what was thrown at us instead of being thrown away as trash we made due with. The slave owners were like, Wow, who would have thought?

And as we all know the Latin culture is getting raped as well! I just find it strange that Bobby Flay, Emeril, and other celebrity cooks like them are being lauded for creating (?) dishes with a Caribbean or Latin flair using recipes that your grandmother and great-grandmother have been using to feed the family for decades! Mainly because there was not enough money to buy a lot of meat and it had to be spread out so that everyone ate!

But now you have places where dinner for two with a couple of drinks would run about $100.00 serving those same meals and getting rave reviews and I guarantee that your grandmother is not getting any credit for it… or for that matter any ethnic person.

Which is probably why the best Soul and Spanish foods are sold in the ghettoes of America and white America knows it; they just hate to admit it! But every once in a while you will see diners sitting in the local ‘hood restaurant looking completely out of place with that look of sinful delight plastered on their mug! Yeah, they go to these little spots but you probably won’t find them listed in Zagats or any other guide or review.

But see, what it all means to us as a people was that - Our mothers, grandmothers and aunts knew how to survive in less than agreeable situations! Shit, some of you got fat off of that cooking that cost maybe two or three bucks to feed a family of four.

See… back in the day the Colonel or Mickey D’s was a treat to be savored not an everyday or three times a week occurrence! Fast food in our communities is a multi - billion dollar business that it is because we have forgotten a lot of those basic survival skills!

Women in our communities have begun to wear the fact that they cannot or do not cook as a badge of accomplishment and not to say that the burden should fall on our women. I really do think that a man should be able to do everything necessary to be self sufficient and that means being able to cook, clean and yes, wash our own draws, but on a whole we seem to default to Popeye’s or Boston Market for a wholesome meal basically throwing money away that sometimes we do not have. And no it’s not just the food, it’s everything!

Looking around at the rest of the world, we sometimes get caught up in the illusion that we are all equal and we lose our edge… our survival skills. Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying the world is a horrible place for Blacks and Latinos who live in urban environments! However, there are a lot of things that We conveniently ignore as we begin to chase that dollar, as we begin to venture out into the world to make our mark.

It’s like being a rabbit in the middle of the Serengeti… for years you have been on point, then a couple of weeks go by and you figure why do I have to be nervous all the time! You tell yourself that its paranoia! All this running and hiding crap! So you just hop around the jungle all care-free like, day by day. No major problems happen for weeks, even months!

So you stop looking over your shoulder…

Then you forego staying in the bushes and lounge about on the open plains. Shit! You don’t even have those nervous, skitterish mannerisms anymore! This goes on for like what seems to be forever…’til that fateful day when you are in the jaws of a lion… seconds away from getting your neck snapped and becoming a midday snack, you begin to wonder when everything went all wrong?

That’s part of the problem! We ignore what we have been taught. Just to fit more in line with what we think society expects of us! So, sometimes common sense goes out the window in what would have been simple survival skills!

How many times have you seen two white people get into a disagreement at work that gets loud and maybe even almost comes to blows? Now imagine if that same incident happened between two Black or Latino workers. Do you think that they would be afforded the same treatment? It’s kind of too late to wonder what went wrong as you are being escorted out the building!

We are constantly reminded everyday in the workforce of the old adage Do what I say, not as I do! To bring this to a personal experience, I worked in a hospital as an Orthopedic Technician and as most of you are aware, hospitals have dress codes and grooming standards not too different from most organizations but they in any event are in place.

One day while entering notes on a patient’s chart, I overheard a conversation between a nurse and a nursing supervisor. The supervisor was reprimanding the nurse for her braids in her hair!? Explaining to her that they were indeed noted as to not be an acceptable mode of dress in the hospital setting and she was directed to have them removed by the next time she reported for duty. She was told that this was considered a verbal warning. Of course, the nurse in question was not too happy about this, but her argument fell on deaf ears.

Fast forward a few months later on that same ward, another nurse had just come back from vacationing in the Caribbean and was showing off her new hairdo that she had done…braids! Similar in design to the other nurse’s hair, basically the same length, yet the supervisor gushed and praised this nurse for her wonderful looking hair and they talked as woman do about things like - how long did it take to do, how easy was it to care for and how it really complimented her face…

I guess you can figure out what the main difference was between the two nurses? The first nurse’s only mistake in this case was being Black! So I guess a dress code that is basically written for people of color (braids?) exempts white people from disciplinary action? Does the Black nurse have any recourse? Probably not, since the supervisor told her it was a verbal warning! So if she did say something it would probably be cited as being a miscommunication or a misunderstanding. I am sure you can recall cases of your own where in the back of your head you said to yourself, "I could never get away with that! The sad thing is you are probably right.

There is indeed a double standard in America as far as the work force is concerned but as one of my old instructors once told me, I get paid to do a job not make friends, not worry about who is doing what, not to worry about how or if management is running the joint into the ground! I come in, do my work and get my paycheck as long as they have my paycheck everything is A –OK! Now, if they don’t have my paycheck; then we have problems!

I always took that to mean as long as I am doing what is in my job description, all the personal crap AKA workplace politics really does not apply to me! All the talking behind people’s backs and making alliances and getting involved in who does more than who really counts for shit! Just let me do my job and get my paycheck. I mean that’s what you hired me for, correct?

But a lot of us have the bad habit of taking part in the work place politics game and we go deep with it! But when the smoke clears and all is said and done; we usually see that we ended up with the shitty side of the stick and we are getting that "Wow, I’m really sorry it turned out this way for you. If I can help with anything, please

let me know… but the truth of the matter is you are becoming a distant memory even as they are walking you to the door."

Don’t be fooled by the whole team mentality thing because just like in Animal Farm (a wonderful novel by George Orwell that probably every ethnic person in the U.S. should read!) Some people are more equal than others. Now not everything is dim and dark. And we are not doomed! But something has to be said! Blacks and Latinos just take a lot of these things in stride. It seems that we are constantly either ignoring stuff that is happening around us or we are not paying attention to our surroundings.

Years ago, we had family figures and older folk that would pull us to the side when they saw us doing something stupid or they would impart to us little life lessons; almost like ghetto based Aesop fables only with real people instead of animals. Sadly, we do not have that anymore as we all try to attain the American dream it seems that no one has the time anymore to say anything to our youth or our neighbors.

And usually when the shit hits the fan, you always hear folks saying Wow he/she was such a smart child, I wonder how they could have gotten themselves in such a mess…

So that’s what I hope this book will do, somehow fill that void that we are missing from our everyday lives. Maybe, even to just pull our coat when things seem to be steam rolling out of control. And of course, to find an equal balance to surviving in the ghetto.

Why A Survival Guide? As unemployment rises, the economy continues to tank, or for a myriad of other reasons you could find yourself up in the hood living your life like an episode of Good Times!

Or you may already be living in the hood with family, due to maybe watching a sick relative or you might have shacked up with new romantic interest and decided that you might give it a go!

After about 48 hours (sometimes as soon as an hour) you might come to realize that this sure as hell