Real Niggas

I am a success story. I grew up in the ghetto. On my street, there are only two kids from my generation that "made it." I use the term loosely, because I haven't quite done anything in my life by my own standards yet, but I've graduated from high school, so that means I made it. That's how bad it is here. I grew up with gang violence outside my window, drugs and alcohol, gun fire every night, and loud hip hop hurting my eardrums. But I somehow managed to leave it all outside and go off on my own path. I thank my parents for allowing me a chance to rise up out of those dire straits. I thank my parents for sacrificing so much so that I could reach higher than they did.

I saw one of my childhood associates on Sunday. He's three years older than me, lives across the street, and hasn't managed to pull himself out of the ghetto. He is, as his own mother puts it, slime.

Sunday, we spoke for the first time in more years than I can count. I’ve been away at college and making a life for myself while he never left the block.

He didn’t outright say it, but he resents me. He resents me for being successful, and not letting him share in that success.

“You’re successful. I aint successful.”

That was his one admission of weakness. He fancies himself the king of the block and even referred to himself as Jesus more than once.

He wonders why I never went to his house to acknowledge him or let him know that I had graduated from Cal. To that I responded “It’s not a one way street.” He expects my respect, as if he did something to earn it. He expects me to fall in line behind him.

Then:

“Man, I gotta get home. I have work tomorrow.”
“Shit, nigga, I aint keeping you here. If you wanna go, go!”
“Alright, I’ll see ya.”
“Hey, you wanna come over to my house?”

It was half joke and half pleading. I went home.

To think that I could have turned left instead of right one day and ended up where he is now.

White people have moved into the neighborhood. Things aren’t quite the same anymore. But things are still the same.

He added me on facebook. He had as his status “real niggas ring my doorbell.” I guess I’m not a real nigga then.

But I’m okay with that.