Old Heads , How Much Did The Crack Epidemic Affect The Black/Spanish Community ?

[HiphopRelated]

 

[Gutzman]

ive known people who crack fukked up their lives but in my community, mexican american community it was heroin that really fukked everyone around me up. i was lucky enough to never even want to try any of that and just learn from what i saw though. cant say that about a lot of people i knew though. moved away from that neighborhood and glad i dont have to raise my kids there.

 

[NYC Rebel]

It was different. I can't do it any justice to quickly talk about it in a short post. It was a time when you'd have a crew of 30 & about two or three guns at most between all of them. It was before the gun culture that took over. It was a time of shooting a fair one...where certain cats around the way were known for their hands and if two of them happened to meet, it was a neighborhood event. It was a time when my mom, a Nigerian immigrant, was a part of a sewing circle of black women who'd get up once a week in the community center and create wonders with thread. It was a time where I couldn't get outta line because the neighbor in the apartment downstairs would have let me have it or tell my parents. It was a time where I could stop at my man's crib and his mom would cook for us. It was a time when who I looked up too as a mentor would go uptown and come back with the latest popping moves or newest hip hop. Itwas different. And I saw it all stripped away around 85'. The same mom that fed us would leave my boy and his sisters for days on end to get her fix. It was a time when my same man I looked up too "went uptown" and it took on a whole different meaning which meant to go and cop some work. It was a time where the fabrics my mom wove with that sewing circle in our Bed Stuy complex was torn apart by the distrust which grew out of the zero care of who a former friend turned crackhead placed on the people around him. It was the time where everyone suddenly had a gun. It was a time where those same hands to handle beef were now ruled by the index finger. It was a time where the thugs who didn't want you to be like them sought us little niqqas out because we were juveniles. It was a time when "the chicken taste like wood" was replaced by the seriousness of Ra's rhymes. It was a time when my father saw young brilliance get caught up in the streets and coined the term "they were too smart too soon." It was a time where the multipurpose stadium schoolyard across the street from my apartment building where I learned to play stickball and played football well enough to take me places beyond my neighborhood became a haven for criminals and forever locked up and taken away from the kids that came after me. It was a time where the music programs that gave me life suddenly disappeared.

It was a time I have never truly recovered from...

 

[DMGAINGREEN]

Had a conversation with an old head on the bus this morning and she said the erratic behavior of my generation is a direct linage of the chaos of the crack generation and alot the the morals that we're lost during the 80s when crack hit transcended into ours



Great contributions from all the people who provided a vivid imagery of what it was like btw

 

[DMGAINGREEN]

Bump