Rhonda, a long-time listener and supporter of the show saw the video about wannabe "thugs and thugettes" and felt moved to send me a lengthy letter about her experiences living in the "hood". Thank you for sharing Rhonda. Thank you for your courage to allow me to reproduce this piece.
"Real Thug Life = Death" - Rhonda H.
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Hey Reggie:
Please forgive me for writing such a long email. You may find this interesting and yet you may not. All of it is true and I haven't talked about this for a long time. I will share it with you tonight. I hate even thinking about these things since I have moved away from it. It was like a bad dream. But I think it might be something worth sharing with you. This is a response to your video on thugs and thugettes. Most of the people I will be talking about were usually under 25 years of age and all too often barely even 18 yet.
I applaud you for speaking out. That is a tough thing to do. I know exactly what you are talking about. I lived in the hood in Richmond for 8 years. Finally moved away and my life is at peace now. During those 8 years the real thugs and thugettes were part of my world. I lived in theirs. I saw many of those neighbors (the Afton Projects were two blocks down the street...with people who were second or third generation) wander just as you described, trying to be thugs. The kids could barely speak English or even get by in school. They actually worked at talking a certain way and acting a certain way and dressing a certain way. Many times I saw teenage girls rolling babies along. Babies having babies. Boys in groups talking loud or rapping loud and screaming at cars driving by. Little gangs and sometimes big gangs.
I always feared that gun shots would come through my window at any time. Drive by shootings happened all the time. Thefts, fights and so much more. I hated hearing guns shots all the time. It was a normal noise in the late quiet hours of the night. You could always guess exactly where they were coming from and all too often for me it was frightfully close.
Crack dealing was so heavy in front of my house (We had a corner house a block from a grocery store where there was so much foot traffic) and often I had to fight with people to get away from the front of my house dealing this stuff. The cars would drive by continually, coming from any and every where to get crack as the little homies would run up to do the exchange. Expensive cars would drive through the neighborhood and disappear. You knew they didn't live there. You knew what they were coming for. The dealers had an elaborate system. Lookouts, runners, etc. Several houses along my street were crack houses. There is often never just a crack house but it becomes a crack street.
It was sad to see many of my neighborhood kids hardly going to school. They would throw trash on the ground without blinking an eye. They had their pants pulled down like you said. Always wired and always talking shit (excuse my language but that is the best way to describe it) to people. I saw one guy's pants fall to the ground once, as he walked down the street and he tried to pull them up. It was funny, but not so funny. Sometimes fights would break out and an ambulance would come with a fire truck. I saw two teenagers fight in the street one night and one fell to the ground. He had been stabbed or hurt where they carefully put him on a stretcher. I saw these things through my bedroom window. That corner was active all times of the night. My corner house gave me an open view of the hood around me.
When they rode bicycles with their butts hanging out like that it was quite a site to see. One time a guy in the grocery store down the block (and we were always the only white people that shopped there) had his pants pulled down gangster style and he was standing in line. Many of the older people were disgusted looking at him and one little old lady finally said, "Son why don't you pull your pants up!" He just looked at her and had nothing to say because I think she embarrassed him. All the older men standing in line agreed with her about it and it was a Eureka moment for all who tolerate that in the hood who don't like it. People don't like to speak out too much there because you never know what that can bring and often people stay to themselves because they live in fear for their lives. That is the truth. I heard it all the time from the elderly people.
It wasn't unusual to see the younger guys with pants pulled down and wearing typical hood attire. Most of the thugs who were dealing had lookouts who would ride around checking for the 5.0 (police, of course). They had signals to give each other when they would spot a cop and they would walk off and quit dealing until the police moved on and then get right back on the corner. They would do it all day and all night until they looked like such a wired mess. They had those same clothes on for days sometimes. It was strange to watch all the time and hard to live there because you always had to watch your back and anything you had in your yard or on your porch was fair game for thieves. Nothing was safe because there was always something that was worth pawning too. Little old ladies kept their doors locked. All of us did who weren't part of the drug crowd.
Where the dealers were, there were the crack heads and prostitutes too. These hookers didn't look like the movies. It was sad. They were dirty and tired from working. That was the rare time you would see white girls around because they were the crack heads. Crack head women often become prostitutes in the hood.
One crack head named Rose was 53 years old and she would make 300 dollars in a night and then smoke it up on crack and go back and do it again. One of the local dealers told me he was concerned about Rose, which was a rare time I actually had a conversation with one of them. I was on the wrong side ..the law's side so I couldn't talk with them often. The crack heads could walk continually for days ..coming and going out of our neighbor's house. He had a crack house and the police never seemed to bust him. I always wondered why but it isn't hard to figure out. Behind our house were some bushes and once we found several condoms hung on the trees with remains in them. One neighbor who moved in across the street just before we had moved out, said he found the same kinds of condoms hung on the tree behind his house too. He had three kids and he was very concerned about the neighborhood. He told my husband that he grew up at one of the other projects in town and how he was trying to live right, but had been in trouble a lot in his life. A week or so after that conversation he called us collect from the Richmond Jail for something that he had to stay in for three weeks for. He had been dismissed for attempted murder previously but that isn't what he went in for. When I asked him what he was doing in jail he just said, "I can do time with my eyes closed, this ain't nothin." Then he asked me to knock on his wife's door and tell her to come visit him. They didn't have a phone I guess. We were hoping he was going to be a nicer neighbor than the ones who lived in that house before. Oddly after he did his three weeks he stopped by and he said that some people in jail were talking about the white people who lived on the corner (us) and how they didn't like us because we were always calling the police. He came to tell us that we should be careful and then he never spoke to us again after that. He must have made friends with some of the very people who wanted to hurt us I suppose. His wife was alone with the kids for that three weeks just before Christmas. So sad. Lots of sadness. So many stories..I hope I am not boring you. But the idea is ...this is thug life up close and personal. Real stories about the people you were talking about and the message you are trying to get across.
I had four stolen cars that I can think of just left along my yard over those eight years. People would steal them and leave them abandoned.
One night I was sitting on my porch with my husband. It was around 7:30 at night. It was in the summertime almost two years ago. We heard 6 gun shots just so close..it was only a block away. A young black male 20 years old was shot at and caught three of the bullets and died that next night. Probably one of the kids who stood on the corner all the time. I was to the point where I heard shots so often it became a ritual to walk to the phone and call the police knowing they may or may not show up right away. Sure enough many times some incident happen close by where it made the news the next day.
I was going for milk at the store a block away with my husband once. It was a beautiful night. I saw two men running in front and past me. One thug dropped to the ground on his face after he tripped and the other man put a 45 to his head and was screaming for him to empty his pockets. They were only like 10 feet in front of me. I screamed out loud for someone to call 911 and someone said to me .."It's the jump unit..that is 911!" It was an undercover policeman who had the gun. After it was over he came up and asked us to help him find a gun clip that he had lost while running. The police knew me because I had always had to call the police for help so much when the crack heads or thugs would threaten us around our house. Thugs called us everything under the sun. We were the crackers in the neighborhood. We were also the straight people too and they didn't like us. It was tough for us and very stressful. I still don't know why I lived there so long.
The school down the street was a grade school for the kids that only seemed to have black kids. ( I never saw many white people in my neighborhood because they were afraid to live there. Whenever we saw other white people we knew they may be coming through to score.) But I digress...getting back to the school kids. I would see them come off the bus. One time I was raking my lawn and they were walking by me and talking about shooting my dogs that were tied in the yard and they were using continual foul language that seemed almost weird for their ages. I kept my head down even though I heard them to act as if I didn't. Sometimes they want you to hear them and react, so often I wouldn't. Some of these kids were only seven or eight years old. I thought of how sad it was that they were already thinking about violence at such a young age. They learned it from their parents because many of the parents in my neighborhood were crack heads or people who just never seemed to get out of that mind set. The kids grow up on their own or around so much crime it becomes a normal way of life. One neighbor across the street used to leave her kids alone and one of them was sleeping in a broken down van they had parked out front. The mother had locked the door so she couldn't get in the house. Her other siblings must have been with somebody else at the time. I asked her what was wrong and she wouldn't tell me but I knew.
When they were at home sometimes the mother would leave and they would pretend she was home and I knocked on the door once and asked them if they were alright. One was a toddler, and there were 5 of them ..the oldest was 11. The oldest boy was so afraid of the police and he kept mentioning he thought he saw an unmarked car and I knew it was because he was afraid of human services finding out they were often left alone. What would an 11 year old boy know about an unmarked car anyhow? He told me his mother was asleep in the back room. I saw her coming home late that night. We kept an eye on the house because we just weren't sure. So he lied to us probably because he was afraid of getting turned in or found out. I did call human services but they told me it was ok for an older child to watch the younger children. But in our neighborhood that was extremely dangerous. It wasn't your average safe place to live.
The father they had hung around for a few weeks once and never worked. They used to roll joints on the front steps and drink beer. He hung out with the dealers. He later disappeared for good. She always had people coming and going out of the house.
One young boy used to talk to us who's name was Jamal. He lived in the projects down the street. My husband used to fix his bike because he told us 'his daddy don't have no good pliers.' We never saw that he had a father ever around. One day a girl his age rode by and he said "gul, wha yo name is?" Obviously I understand what you mean by them not learning to speak well. It was perplexing and sad to us.
Most of our neighbors who grew up there had all been in jail more than once and their fathers often were too. One family who had several older children who lived with the grandmother were always in trouble with the police. They moved in and at first the one boy who was a teenager seemed nice. I told him not to get involved with the kids who were into drugs, but he eventually did and ended up robbing the grocery store a block away with a dagger he got and dropped it in my yard and ran back in his house. It was around 9 AM that day when I noticed a policeman rummaging around in my back yard and he had the long dagger in his hand and showed me. He pointed to that house and told me what happened. I got cold chills about it. The police got him and took him off to jail. I guess he was finally old enough to go.
Previously he started calling my husband a bitch and say he was going to kill him when he would walk by. He and his cousins and friends taunted us all the time over the back of their yard when we were out in ours. It was so disturbing and so frustrating to live around such agitation. I could see he was getting worse and going wrong.
One little thug who was 19 was throwing stones at our house and when I asked him to stop he threatened us by pulling up his shirt and showing us a weapon. He said he had a gun. He told us he was going to come and 'shoot up in our house.' He called us MotherF'ers.., this and that and in between but you know the deal. We called 911 and the police arrived and actually took action. My husband took him to court and none of his homies came to back him up on it. He was all alone on court day when it came down to it and didn't act big and bad at all in the court room. He had a rap sheet already that was quite long so the police knew him by name. Imagine, 19 and already notorious.
We had two crack heads tell us we would see their 9mm soon. Then some people finally shot at my house three times at 8:30 in the morning and I ran out and started screaming for them to just get in their car and leave. (I had become a neighborhood watch captain with the police just trying to stop crime on my little corner and that was my warning) I realized how they could have shot me there but I think they couldn't believe this white lady came right out so they probably figured I had a weapon too and the one man who must have fired the shots jumped in the car and the three men sped off. Of course the police always arrive 15 to 30 minutes after you call 911 in the hood and they never did find that car but I never forgot it and always had an eye for a gold sedan after that.
Flavor Flav of Public Enemy is correct when his writes in his song about 911 is a joke. He isn't kidding about that. It doesn't matter what urban hood you live in it is all the same.
And you are right about the oppression of the white man. Since there were no white people in my neighborhood the only people I ever saw oppressing themselves were the homies. They actually had inspiration to be a thug. I would see the younger ones eventually take the place of the older ones right on the same street corner selling crack year after year. It seemed maddening to me.
I got so frustrated and depressed I started writing a diary about it just to find some relief from what I saw almost every day -the crime and crazy stuff. Mainly because no one who lives in the other parts of town know what is going on in the hood and they don't realize the rotting and decay that happens in the lives of people there. I had no one to talk to about it. Especially being white, I couldn't talk to black people about it at work because they would think I was just putting black people down, when it wasn't that at all. I was just needing to find someone to talk to about it and I couldn't find anyone to relate to on that issue. No matter who it was there were no people who lived in the hood where I worked whether they were black or white so they didn't understand.
This problem you talk about is true. It is a real thing happening Reggie. They pass it on and at some point someone has to realize it and make them stop. The violence and the drugs is a way of life. The self-hate and the lack of direction is so evident and it seems to be like some cancer that never goes away.
So when I saw your video I knew you were right on. I knew about the nigga word. I would hear them say that every single day. I often saw it written on poles as an endearment .."that's my nigga ." with names scribbled under each other. A buddy thing. But many black people have not grown up in the hood and they still want to aspire to be a thug even when they have opportunity to do better in life. They think it is funny and cool. They have no idea of what the truth of the matter is. The lives I saw there were sad and broken lives in most cases. Many faces would disappear. Were they dead or in jail now I would ask myself. Who knew?
They haven't seen the death like I have up front and personal. Too many people died in just 8 years of my living in that one little zip code. (By the way since Richmond made 5th most dangerous city in the US and my zip code was one of the most dangerous that gives you an idea.- you can look up 23224 and see) All around me it was a common theme. They would shoot and kill innocent people too. I moved last year at this time. Just before I moved, a small auto-dealer business down the street had two thugs come in and shoot his wife in the neck point blank, and one week later I saw that yellow crime scene tape wave in the wind where I walked my dogs. Within two weeks all the cars were off the lot and the little yellow building was empty. That happens to many buildings in the hood. I took a piece of that tape as a reminder never to forget just how sad the hood was and what I witnessed. I don't ever want to forget about it because it is a part of America that many people just don't know about. I often wondered how that could be, but then I never knew about it until I moved there and lived in the real hood and saw it for myself. It is a thing they show on movies. For most people it is something they will never understand...black or white. In that one last month in December before I moved there had been several people murdered within a short few minutes drive from where I lived. Some of those murders made big news for weeks. Some of those murders were a few minutes on the news and then forgotten, like the girl found in the garbage can. What a horrible and degrading ending for a human being who was in her mid 30's. She had so much more life ahead of her. But then that is the life and death of a thugette now isn't it? No life at all....
I can't possibly include all the horrible stories about the hood ..but three houses from where I used to live they found one girl from that block stuffed in a garbage can dead. This was just a week after we had moved out of there. I ended up seeing my street on the news. She had been a girl who probably walked by my house many times and went into my neighbor's house to smoke crack. They said on the news she had been known to have a drug problem.
So it is important for you to talk about it from your perspective. If you save one life and influence one little life you have done something very good. Even above all your good work in free thought I think that makes a bigger difference. One 18 year old gentleman who was named Lamall Lafar used to like to come and talk to me on my porch. He said he was sort of afraid to be seen talking with me because it wasn't cool to do that but I used to encourage him to finish school. He already had been in trouble with the police before and he told me it was very hard for him because his friends kept him down.
That is a real problem. It is encouraged to be a thug in the hood. I was never afraid of the thugs because I knew they were bullies who when challenged 99 percent of the time would back down. But I was still pushing my luck and I am lucky I was never hurt. I think they just thought I was crazy or something, because usually white people are afraid of them, right? I hate bullies in any color and never cared what color a person was in the first place. Wrong is wrong no matter how you color it.
Some people who were thugs were actually nice to me though. One guy Toni who moved in from Alabama on the corner house used to come over and try to sell me stuff. He always had a CD player or nice mountain bike or something. Who knows how he got it. I didn't know much about him but I saw him talking to his fence one night. Yes - his fence. I saw him wandering around. I knew he was unfortunately another lost soul. He had two dogs in the back yard. One day I noticed they were never getting fed and Toni's old car was parked in the back. It was like some 80's white Lincoln that was falling apart. I started feeding those dogs every day. I wondered where Toni was. The dogs hid under the porch and would come out when I would bring food. One day a guy walked by and said to my husband he noticed that I was feeding the dogs. He said, "Didn't you know what happened to Toni?" My husband said no. Then the man told my husband that Toni had been shot running from the police in one of the Apartment buildings down the road some time back. Eventually they came and emptied out the house and I captured the dogs and got them to the pound. That was normal life in our neighborhood. Isn't that sad Reggie? The man acted like it was nothing when the he told my husband about Toni, because he seemed so used to that. Just another day in the hood. Someone getting shot by a policeman, but more often by another homie. I felt bad and just felt so numb about that from the shock of it. It bothered me for quite a while.
For you speaking out they will dog you out and say you are turning them out or turning your back to the black race ..or whatever. I know the M.O..as they say. You know and so do I how it goes. But that is not important. Because you are right about everything you said.
One story that I shouldn't forget to include; A few years ago three girls were murdered behind my house when they owed a drug debt. They shot them, wrapped them in plastic bags and set them on fire. I had called the police the night before saying I noticed strange activity but the policeman ignored my call. The detective was knocking at my door the next day asking me if I had seen anything. Always too late. These are true stories. I am not making anything up. I wish I was. It is hard to believe isn't it?
We started putting up surveillance cameras in case something happened to us and I have some things on film up in my attic now. One day we heard them discussing next door what they wanted to do to us and they were talking about burning our house down. We found our back basement window opened and knew we better keep the tapes on. So I captured some of the activity of thug life on tape. May be years from now I might pull them out again to watch, but I can agree with you that there is nothing glorious about thug life.
So thug life sucks..and no one wins acting like one or being one.
I love you Reggie for speaking out.
Oh by the way I am one of your gold members.
You are awesome.
Sincerely and with great respect,
Rhonda H.