Stop Snitchin'

Peace,

Today's mathematics is Power. Power is the ability to affect and change your environment. There are many types of power (coercion, influence,domination), however when using power in the most supremely mathematical sense, it is the abilty to move something in a positive direction based on a righteous way of life. One's power should always create equality (balance, homeostasis) in the environment.

I wanna talk about snitching for a minute. I must say in advance that I have a perspective that won't go over well with some segments of the population that read my blog. What I'm finding is that if you have a perpesctive that is in line with the Black "intelligensia", you're probably out of touch with the "common folk". Okay civilized people, here we go: I am anti-snitching as it exists in a contemporary sense. Enter a hypothetical conversation/debate with a person who is pro-snitch:

I: I can see where the kids are coming from with this "stop snitching" thing

T: How can you say that? Drugs and violence are tearing apart our communities. How can you say that someone shouldn't tell on criminals?

I: When I say that, I mean that people who engage in criminal activity should not tell on others who engage in criminal activity to get a "get out of jail free" card. I'm perfectly fine with civilians reporting criminal behavior to the police; that's part of the game.

T: Still, how can you condone crime and intimidation? That's part of destroying our communities!

I: I don't condone intimidation, b.u.t. I also don't condone lack of accountability or responsibility. People know what they're getting into when they get into the game, and they don't have much remorse when they out there hustlin', so dont get holier-than-thou when you get caught. Besides, snitches are notoriously bad pipelines of info, and are replacing real police work in many cases.

T: Don't you agree that we should get drug dealers off of the streets?

I: What I think is that we need to look at the problem realistically. First of all, the drug game has become a industry in our communities, and it ain't because our youth are out to destroy us, either. As a people, we still haven't adjusted to post-industrial America, so our children are making due with anything that they can. Add in the institutional racism that permeates all fibers of our society, and you get generations who really believe that hobbies and crime are the way to go (See Basketball, Hustling,& Entertainment). So while I do think that we need to reduce the negative impact of open-air drug markets and the resulting violence, locking them all up and throwing away the key isn't the solution. The larger issue is that we need to start policing ourselves, b.u.t. that would be getting off topic a little.

T: All I know is that drugs is choking the life out of our community

I: To me, unprincipled drug selling, use, and the resulting behavior is chocking the life out of our community. All communities have drug sellers, users, and abusers, b.u.t. ours is out of hand due to the absence of any rules or morals when dealing with that cipher. In Washington Heights, they sell more powder than a little bit, b.u.t. every block isn't a drug market. This idea can be extended to other aspects of our community as well. We need to establish rights and wrongs and convey them to our children so that the youth don't continue to terrorize the elders and the larger community. If we want the youth to stop hustling we have to advocate for better education, create industries in our communities, and change the way that we look at a communities survival in the wilderness

T: On to the next topic...