Symphony, from Essential Presence wrote about a viscous crime committed against a young girl, Mildred Beaubrun, for having the good taste of refusing to give her number out to some man. For her trouble the young lady was shot:
http://essentialpresence.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-bother-with-calling-me-bitch-when.html
I remember growing up chasing girls with zero game in my pocket you did and say what you could to get attention, any attention, and if you were with your boys the ante was way high.
A rejection in front of your crew especially a bad one can hit you in that spot called pride and for the idiot who can not handle it, the response is always something that you know you can hold over a woman's head to attemp to show power, the threat of violence if not the act of it.
FU, B&%* with a menacing look daring her to say something in response, not even knowing were that would lead those can be the precurser to something more serious, like flying bottles and rocks.
When I was a kid though there was checks and balances for that type of behavior, there were brothers, cousins, uncles, father, friends that would come looking for you if you started talking sideways out of your mouth to to one of their own.
Not any more, a combination of guns to even the score and the idea that women are no longer worth it, has put a tarnish on the knight in shinning armor.
The rule of today is Bros above Hos, or Sistas above Niggas.
Cat calling, pulling numbers were all part of growing up back in my day, boys figured out what worked and what did not and girls learned to turn their nose up and be selective.
Now a days these kids out here, are born into violence, it's all around them and they are expected to partake in it or become victim of it, and some where along the line women have become fair game.
I couldn't even tell you why there is this loss of respect.
I could sit here and say it's the teaching to boys that "you don't love anything that can be taken away from you"as a self protection mechanism that still pops in me at my age is what did it, or that it is a class thing, or products of a broken home, a relic of slavery, or that it's women who brought it about themselves.
But those are half truths, and does little to explain the out right lack of respect for life that is a virus in the black community.
But can tell you is that I am not looking forward to is walking down the street and having a black woman clutch at her purse and cross the street when she sees me coming, or locking the car doors, follow me around the store, calling the cops because I am in her neighborhood.
And you can call it a day if my flirting with a pretty woman is more likely to strike fear in her heart than put a smile on her face.
And that is exactly were we are heading.
What women with half a brain in her head would not get nervous, after reading something like that, when approached by a black man.
She would have had to been surrounded by positive black men all her life to recognize one low life for who he is and not condemn us all.
But to hear every one else say it positive and black men are quickly becoming an oxymoron.
What happened to Mildred Beaubrun, should open flood gates in communities all over the country, to say that is enough it's time we all had a talk.
But I doubt that, she'll just be chalked up as one of many victims of violence no big deal.
And that is sad.
