Imerica you said your from Robert Taylor. That name rang a bell with me and I did some research to see if what I remembered was right. Sure enough what I remembered was right.
Robert Taylor Homes housing project was built and compleated in 1962 it was to serve as low income housing. For anyone interested I know we don't care for 'Wiked-pedia'but it describes this place well in a brief format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
Did you know the place was named after by some accounts the first accredited African American architect in the United States.
http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/story.asp?S=1174805
When I wrote in my post the other day about how destructive black society is no other place could show this more plainly than Robert Taylor Projects. Here is a place that was built to house people for the lack of a nicer way to put it would be out on the street freezing to death and starving. They build this place for low income folks shortly however it had a demographics of 96% black folks most with no income living on relief. Now all this is well and fine no one should starve to death here in America but why did it turn into the hellhole it did if the place was only meant to help the underprivileged. [/b]
The place turned into a hellhole, like most public housing projects in America because some of the people there let the bs get to them. Instead of using living there as an opportunity to further themselves away from being undepreviliged, they kept themselves there as punishment for not doing anything better with their lives. I'm not speaking of those who used Robert Taylor as a stepping stone or launch pad to do better things, I'm speaking of those who feel like the 'white man' stuck them in the position they were/ are in. Even my mom and dad knew that as young parents, they'd have to get their lives together some how so that they didn't have to raise us there for the rest of our lives.
We acually moved in when I was 4 years old and left when I was 15. That was a good chunk of our lives there. But I'd like to offer my experience up as proof that the Projects weren't always what they are now. There were times when my dad would have company over and they'd congregate on the porch until early in the morning with no one bothering them. Now its either unsafe to walk outside of your apartment or enter the building. We left around the time that the OOZIE was taken to America's streets. Thank God.
I think some black people are a glutton for punishment. The "man" tells them they're nothing, then they believe it. The "Man" tells them they'll never be anything of worth, they wind up doing NOTHING. Its the slave mentality that kills blacks who feel they're not capable because a white man said so. Now there are blacks committing cultural suicide. They kill the good culture and the bad culture is taking over.
This place became so crime infested, so dangerous, so debilitated due to arson and plain destruction that it had to be completely razed in less than 50 years after it was built. Buildings that white folks would have lived in for a hundred or maybe 200 years and after that time would not have shown the scars this place had.
I know you will tell me that it was warehousing of blacks and yada yada yada but in actuality it was a place to live and could have been keep very nice if the people who lived there only took some pride in the place. People living there could have formed some organizations to keep some order in the place it not like most of them had to go out and work each day.
I really don't like it when people try to assume they know what I'd say or think so please don't try it. Blacks who went into the public housing system put themselves there. My mom and dad included. This isn't warehousing, its a matter of making the right decisions for your life. I've met some wonderful people there though, people that I continue to keep in touch with to this day. Most of the people I know are alive and prosperous, some are dead, some are in jail.
Every person I know and has ever lived in public housing had a choice not to put themselves in that situation. [/b]
Now the solution is to put this element in smaller more spread out places to live and guess what. Instead of the people trying to uplift themselves they come to the new environment and pick up where they left off in Robert Taylor. Here in New York we have LeFrak City. It was a place much like Robert Taylor that started off housing working class families. In the first 20 years of its existence it was occupied by white folks and was actually a very nice place to live. It had even less green space than Robert Taylor but for some reason it was always a very safe and well kept place. In the last 20 years or so things are different. Blacks and other minorities started moving in displacing the older residences who were either died off or could not take the animal element and crime any longer and had to move. The place while not as bad as Robert Taylor is not considered a desirable place to live by most white New Yorkers.
I understand what you're saying and don't disagree.
So now here is my questions to you Imerica.
Why is it that even when a roof is put over their head and food is put on their table Black society cant be thankful and at least take care of what is given them when they can't do no better for themselves? Why must they bite the hand that feeds them like a mad dog?
Like I said before, blacks who live in that situation got that way because they decided to make it their way to live. Why some blacks in the system bite the hands that feed them, as if they "Deserve" poverty and to be fed by the government, I don't know really. Based on the situation in which the family got to that point, it would depend on whether they had any value system at all. It would depend on whether or not they had dreams of their lives turning in another direction before their reality turned into '[censored]' (basically). The horrible thing is the fact that the negative element (I'm not speaking of crime but of low self-worth) has been passed down. Its now attempting to become part of the culture, by those on the outside looking in. Thats probably why some blacks in the "ghetto" act as if they deserve to be the underdog.
What makes the difference so great between White and Black folks that when White folks of low income are given a place like Robert Taylor to live in the place become better and Robert Taylor had to be taken down after 50 years without a trace?
I was there when the buildings were standing but I wasn't there when they were torn down. But I guess I can offer this much in answer to your question. The difference between white people on low income when Robert Taylor was first erected and between blacks who eventually turned turned the Robert Taylor homes into the hellhole we spoke of earlier are hopes, dreams and aspirations. White people back when RT was first built had dreams of ruling the world while blacks were slighted to be people who wouldn't make anything of themselves because they were black. No matter where those blacks had gone in life, even if they'd struck it rich and moved into the affluent neighborhoods of yesteryear, if you don't have any self-confidence, high self-esteem, you'll always stand out like a sore thumb. The way you act, talk and treat others, dispite money will always dictate to the people around you how you feel about yourself.
