The inner city then (40 years ago) and the inner city now are different worlds. Different because times have changed and people have changed. For every Black soul over the age of 40 who have escaped the inner city into the suburbs and have raised children beneath suburban stigmas, there is a Black child in the inner city who has no knowledge of the society in which he lives other than what he or she sees and hears each day.

The majority of Black children awake to only their mother; the father is either living somewhere else or unknown by the child. The child has one strike against them. The reason the father is not there is because he and the mother met and played the game for a while and out comes the child. Afterward, temptation and or lack of respect on either part drive a separation between the two. Thus is born the single-parent household.

However, look deeper. Why the temptation and why the lack of respect? The answer is lack of moral values on the part of one or most likely both. Now these parents are in their early twenties thus their parents must be in their late 40s early fifties if not more. Now we come to a dilemma. If these children have lost the value of respect in a relationship, where did they learn these values? From their parents of course. So 40-fifty years ago, what was the social atmosphere like?

First, there were drugs, war, promiscuity, and other immoralities that began to plague American culture. Afterward, when all hell broke lose and the devil was released from the pit of abomination the sexual revolution hit the scene in the 70s and then came the crack-pipe 80s. At this point, the parents of today's parents were well into their careers, which birthed the prosperity age and the day care generation. People simply did not have the time to spend with their children anymore.

The 90s hit and hard times hit, especially the Black community. But wait, the white community was thriving like crazy. The Internet boomed and overnight millionaires came to be. All this time and sudden wealth made life faster, which left virtually no time for the family values. Therefore, anything went. Children raised themselves and school shootings rose, and teen pregnancy rose, and illiteracy rose in urban schools and many Black children fell to special Ed classes.

Now, here we are wondering what the hell happened to our families and our children. While all the moneymaking was going on, young Black men and women discovered that people listened to what they had to say even though they hated what they were saying. So they said anything they wanted and called it Rap. Now we have a Rap Culture that has destroyed our children? No, parents of today's parents destroyed the family.

We have to sit and listen to those over 40 and 50 crowd condemn our generation because of their failures? Not so. If this is supposed to be the age of personal responsibility, why cannot the older "baby boomer" generation own up to their mistakes and how they totally neglected the family structure and gave birth to all types of immoral lifestyles and multicultural, politically correct stigmas and stereotypes. Rap music? I think not. The problem is much deeper and when the mirror is really placed before the generations, who's uglier?

Today, the children of today's parents are into their teens. They have turned away from drugs, crack, and blatant promiscuity, but there is no structure to hold them together as a family, and that is because they grew without a structure for themselves. These children express themselves with tattoos, tongue, nose rings (blacks and whites), and they speak and dress like they want, just as we did and the generation before us.

Overall, the problem is not what our children are doing to "throw away their lives," but what opportunities are left to them after the resources are drained from society by a generation of millions of confused and hung over hippie revolutionaries. Really, who is uglier?

© 2004 by CR Hamilton